Serious Wiscon

There will be two Wiscon posts this year, and rather than doing them chronologically, I’m going to do them thematically. This year, I felt very much like two people at Wiscon. First-time author Cath, who flitted around socially and went to readings gets the frivolous Wiscon post. Deep-thinking Cath who went to readings that she couldn’t fit a square peg in, well, she’s writing today.

One of the things that this Wiscon had going for it was that there were some fairly serious guests. Both Mary Anne Mohanraj and Nnedi Okorafor write books that no one else can write, given who they are and where they sit culturally.

I was particularly affected by Nnedi’s readings from Who Fears Death. Nnedi told us the book is about what’s happening in the Sudan right now. It also pulls in biographical experience, and is in part about the death of her father. It will be a book that matters. My innate professor sense tells me that it could be a book that transcends genre. It was a book that was emotionally wrenching to write, and she did not back away from that.

There were other authors that stepped right up to the plate, and wrote books that perhaps only they could have written–that spoke uniquely to who they were in space and time.

Chris Barzak penned Nebula-nominated The Love We Share Without Knowing because of the experiences he spent as a Westerner in Japan.

Amal El-Mohtar read poetry and stories that spoke to someone living in two cultures, as did Shveta Thakrar in writing about her grandmother and Peer Dudda, performing a spoken and sign language work. These stories represent unique individuals, bringing an important message into the conversation of human experience, expressively through fantasy.

The more I though about these particular works, the more I felt obligated to represent. My experiences leave me in a unique place, with a story to share, and fantasy could be a strong medium to tell it in.

What might be missing in regard to stories about coping after abuse is more of a story of what it’s really like. I have no plans to write a lurid book full of voyeuristic detail. I would like to write a book that frames what comes next for someone, and how it’s neither the whole life of someone, nor how it is easily forgotten.

Clearly, I have some other deadlines and projects I need to get to first. I need to think about this, and let the ideas sort of happen. But it is a unique place I’ve been to that might help the conversation of experience that enriches us all.

Sorry to get all thinky. I promise more fun in the next entry.

Catherine

Author: Catherine Schaff-Stump

Catherine Schaff-Stump writes fiction for children and young adults. Her most recent book, The Vessel of Ra, is the first book in the Klaereon Scroll series. She is currently working on its sequel, as well as penning the middle grade adventures of Abigail Rath, monster hunter. View all posts by Catherine Schaff-Stump