There isn’t too much left to tell. Sunday I had lunch with Shveta Tharkar . We know each other on line, and long ago discovered that we both had some weird variant of the outcast Midwest childhood. Shveta writes mystical fairies of South Asia, and it’s pretty interesting stuff. When I read her work, I get a sense of being in two places at once.
After lunch, and an afternoon of panels and readings, I met up with Dan, Lisa, and Lisa for the dessert salon. Yes, we did eat dessert. Nisi Shawl gave her guest of honor speech, there was a heart-rending tribute to Joanna Russ, and the Tiptree was given out to a Baba Yaga book, which suited me fine.
Then, parties. Seanan McGuire (or if you prefer) pulled another night of bartending at the Whedonistas release. Later, we returned there for the Buffy Sing-a-long, and Dan spat alcoholic Shirley Temple on the sleeve of my posh dress. Good news? I’m funny. Bad news? Now I have dry cleaning.
Some time was spent at the superlative Genderfloomp dance, sponsored by Meghan McCarron and Liz Gorinsky. Why we hadn’t thought of this before at Wiscon, I’ll never know. They couldn’t get me to wear a mustache for love nor money: I did so many years ago at a reverse gender day at the high school where I used to teach, and by God! that was uncomfortable.
Met up and spent a bit of quality time with Julia Rios, who seemed to enjoy her first Wiscon mightily.
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And the good times continued Sunday morning after the panel I’ve already written about. At the sign-out, I had a great time catching up with Lynne Thomas and Kathy Sullivan. I had some books signed, traded witty repartee about smart books with Nnedi Okorafor, regretted that I missed my Suzy McKee Charnas window, and packed up, ready to head back to Iowa.
Overall, a very satisfying experience.
It was awesome to see you. I’ll miss you at Readercon.