It’s that time again: My schedule for Readercon 34 has dropped, and I am in love.
Housekeeping details first: It’s July 17 – 20, this time at the Boston Marriott in Burlington, MA, with Guests of Honor Cecilia Tan and P. Djèlí Clark. As always, I absolutely recommend registering and attending if you can. Previous years’ schedules can be seen (and drooled over) here: https://readercon.org/readercon_past
This year I’ll also have had a new flash story published in Lightspeed a mere ten days prior to the con, so I’m delighted to have a solo reading slot– right now I’m intending to do a reading of the new work (“How to Win Against the Robots”) plus some additional Interesting Things while I have a table at my disposal. (And if I can get my sister, longtime Viable Paradise staffmember and No Story Is Sacred collaborator Pippin Macdonald, on board, we’ll also do a double-act performance of “They’re Made Out of Corn“, one of my favorite unicorn-chaser pieces to perform with her for Entirely Normal Reasons.)
And now — BEHOLD THE SCHEDULE:
Reading: Katherine Crighton
Format: Solo Reading | Room: Empower / Embrace
17 July 2025, Thursday 9:30 PM EDT
“How to Win Against the Robots” (Lightspeed, July 2025) with Q&A, potentially followed by: “They’re Made Out of Corn” (Daily Science Fiction, 2020), performed with Pippin Macdonald, and some slight human experimentation without IRB approval.
Fiction in Surprising Places
Format: Panel | Room: Salon G/H
18 July 2025, Friday 12:00 PM EDT
Some writers make stories a perk of their Patreon. Some paste new fiction into Amazon product reviews. Michael Swanwick writes a story on leaves every autumn, and puts it up on his webpage. Panelists will discuss the delight of finding fiction in unexpected places, as well as the motivations for, approaches to, and pros and cons of publishing fiction in nonstandard venues.
Gennarose Nethercott, Jeff Hecht, Katherine Crighton, Mur Lafferty, Chris Rose (mod)
Worldbuilding Office Hours
Format: Panel | Room: Salon I/J
19 July 2025, Saturday 10:00 AM EDT
Does your story need a geophysical reason for your alien species to have developed flight but not the wheel? Do you need a newer ansible (enough with the quantum entanglement already)? How likely is bilateral symmetry, anyway? Stop handwaving, and ask our panel of garrulous scientists to brainstorm solutions!
Erin Roberts, John Murphy, Katherine Crighton, Rob Cameron, David R. DeGraff (mod)
Where Have All the Shared Worlds Gone?
Format: Panel | Room: Salon 3
19 July 2025, Saturday 6:00 PM EDT
The 1980s saw a number of prominent shared worlds, with multiple writers contributing stories—particularly short stories—set in the same world. Other than Wild Cards, edited by George R. R. Martin and Melinda M. Snodgrass, these have largely fallen by the wayside. What made shared worlds work well, when they did? Why did they vanish? Has their niche been filled by other things? And how are they different from public domain canons like the Cthulhu Mythos?
Ellen Kushner, Katherine Crighton, Sarah Smith (mod)
Beyond the Bio: Weird Jobs & the Worlds They Inspire
Format: Panel | Room: Salon F
20 July 2025, Sunday 12:00 PM EDT
Author bios love to boast of quirky occupations: “Shrimp boat captain,” “puppeteer,” “former professional hot dog eater,” etc. Hear panelists’ real-life occupational (mis)adventures, what—if anything—they learned, and how some became grist for their fiction… plus, you might get to share some of your own!
Cecilia Tan, Gennarose Nethercott, Katherine Crighton, Matthew Kressel, Matthew Mercier (mod)
(Header image adapted from Edgar Degas “Bookshelves, Study for ‘Edmond Duranty’, via The Met Museum Open Access collection)
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Katherine Crighton 