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New year irresolution, Potlatch/Foolscap
Jan. 3rd, 2013 01:01 pmIt's a new year. Once again, I make no resolutions. I have plenty of good intentions, and I'll do my best to follow up on some number of them. Doesn't have the satisfactory oomph! of A Fresh Start! but it's considerably more realistic.
One of my intentions is to attend the composite Potlatch 22/Foolscap 15, February 1-3, at the Redmond Marriott Town Center. Jo Walton's Among Others is Potlatch's Book of Honor this year. Foolscap's Guests of Honor are celebrity librarian Nancy Pearl and artist and animator Michel Gagné. The Clarion West scholarship auction will take place on Saturday evening (check the con websites for exact times; I certainly don't know them).
The whole combination should be an eccentric lot of fun. I always enjoy going to conventions I'm not working on, and I'm intrigued by this combination convention. They're both small (around 200 people), hand-built conventions, with a longstanding friendly relationship. Potlatch is focused on the intersection between readers and writers, with an emphasis on shared experience and conversation and twenty-two years of helping beginning writers attend Clarion West. Potlatch doesn't traditionally have a guest of honor or an art show; it has traditionally travelled up and down the west coast, taking place over the years in Seattle, Portland, Eugene, San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, and Sunnyvale. Reading the Book of Honor prior to the convention can both inform your understanding of panels at the convention and give you a conversation starter with people you've just met in the con suite. True, sometimes the conversation starts out, I haven't read the Book of Honor, have you? This year, I have already read it and recommend it enthusiastically; last year, it won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, so a great many other people recommend it as well.
Foolscap is focused on flat things and their custodians: books, paintings, prints, collectors, librarians. Foolscap traditionally does have guests of honor and an art show, with a bit more emphasis on programming and a bit less emphasis on those exuberant conversations in the con suite. It doesn't travel up and down the west coast, though it did travel around the Seattle area for a while before settling in its current comfortable hotel in Redmond. It came out of the same tradition of small communities as Potlatch did, and many of its committee members have worked on both conventions over the years. Foolscap has always taken place in the fall when I've had other obligations before this, so I've rarely been able to attend it for more than a toedipping. I've always liked it in concept, and I've especially liked their focus on libraries and librarians, the gateway pushers of literature for anyone who lives in books. I'm looking forward to being able to go to the whole thing this year.
I hope I'll see many of you all there.
One of my intentions is to attend the composite Potlatch 22/Foolscap 15, February 1-3, at the Redmond Marriott Town Center. Jo Walton's Among Others is Potlatch's Book of Honor this year. Foolscap's Guests of Honor are celebrity librarian Nancy Pearl and artist and animator Michel Gagné. The Clarion West scholarship auction will take place on Saturday evening (check the con websites for exact times; I certainly don't know them).
The whole combination should be an eccentric lot of fun. I always enjoy going to conventions I'm not working on, and I'm intrigued by this combination convention. They're both small (around 200 people), hand-built conventions, with a longstanding friendly relationship. Potlatch is focused on the intersection between readers and writers, with an emphasis on shared experience and conversation and twenty-two years of helping beginning writers attend Clarion West. Potlatch doesn't traditionally have a guest of honor or an art show; it has traditionally travelled up and down the west coast, taking place over the years in Seattle, Portland, Eugene, San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, and Sunnyvale. Reading the Book of Honor prior to the convention can both inform your understanding of panels at the convention and give you a conversation starter with people you've just met in the con suite. True, sometimes the conversation starts out, I haven't read the Book of Honor, have you? This year, I have already read it and recommend it enthusiastically; last year, it won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, so a great many other people recommend it as well.
Foolscap is focused on flat things and their custodians: books, paintings, prints, collectors, librarians. Foolscap traditionally does have guests of honor and an art show, with a bit more emphasis on programming and a bit less emphasis on those exuberant conversations in the con suite. It doesn't travel up and down the west coast, though it did travel around the Seattle area for a while before settling in its current comfortable hotel in Redmond. It came out of the same tradition of small communities as Potlatch did, and many of its committee members have worked on both conventions over the years. Foolscap has always taken place in the fall when I've had other obligations before this, so I've rarely been able to attend it for more than a toedipping. I've always liked it in concept, and I've especially liked their focus on libraries and librarians, the gateway pushers of literature for anyone who lives in books. I'm looking forward to being able to go to the whole thing this year.
I hope I'll see many of you all there.
