Our last hotel FOGcon – FOGcon 10 in March 2020 – was lovely, with a theme of Turning Points and Honored Guests Mary Anne Mohanraj, who launched her new cookbook "A Feast of Serendib"; and Nisi Shawl, who attended remotely; and Honored Ghost Terry Pratchett. (Their intros are here: Mary Anne's and Nisi's, and Sir Pterry .) Just ahead of the Covid pandemic lockdown, it fortunately did not become a superspreader event. Or even, to our knowledge, a spreader one.
In 2021, we made the decision to go virtual, with a series of events through the year. We kicked off the event series on our traditional FOGcon weekend, the time change weekend in March, with a FOGcon social on Zoom and Gather.town. Thanks to everyone who came out and helped us play with this new-to-us interface! We followed that with an Authors Read! event featuring SB Divya and Juliette Wade, and then a Writers’ Workshop led by Marie Brennan and David Levine.
In April 2021, we had another Authors Read! event featuring Effie Seiberg and Marie Brennan. We added a new feature called FOGcon Rapid Reads, in which writers could sign up to read 5 minutes of their own work. In May, we had a Writers’ Workshop led by Arley Sorg and Madeleine Robins.
In July, we had our first ever Zoom panel discussion, on New Magazines in SFF, with panelists Christie Yant for Fantasy magazine; Coral Moore for Constellacion; Laura Blackwell for The Deadlands; Julia Rios for Mermaids Monthly; and Eric Fomley for The Martian Magazine; FOGcon’s own Wendy Shaffer moderated. We also had another Authors Read! event featuring Claire Light and Nancy Jane Moore and reprised our FOGcon Rapid Reads at the same time, and then another one in September with Daniel Marcus and Madeleine Robins.
Our final event for 2021 was another panel, Small Press and Self-Publishing, with a deeply knowledgeable group of panelists: Liz Gorinsky of Erewhon Books; Bill Campbell of Rosarium Publishing; Sarena Ulibarri of World Weaver Press, as well as self-published/ hybrid authors L.S. Johnson, James Maxey, and Ayize Jama Everett. Again, the discussion was moderated Wendy Shaffer.
These events were brought to you by the Virtual FOGcon team, the FOGconners behind the scenes, and all those who participated in our socials, our readings, our workshops, and our panels.