Garrett Calcaterra at FOGcon 6

I'm very excited to be participating in this year's FOGcon, FOGcon 6 to be precise. The guests of honor are Jo Walton, Ted Chiang, and Donna Haraway. The posthumous "ghost of honor" is Octavia Butler. Butler is a big influence of mine, and incidentally enough, I just discussed her novel Wild Seed in a guest blog post I wrote called "The Fantasy and Sci-Fi Novels that Inspired The Dreamwielder Chronicles." I'm pretty excited to catch some panels on her work. I'm also excited to hopefully meet Katherine Kerr, who will be appearing on several panels. I remember enjoying her Deverry series when I was in my early teens.



I personally will be doing a reading and then appearing on two panels. This is my second time appearing at FOGcon. The first time was two years ago, and it was my first time appearing on a panel ever. I was little jittery and uncertain of myself that first time (you can read about it here), so I'm glad to be going back with a little more experience and insight this time around. I learned a lot from the the other authors and panelists two years ago, and I have incorporated what I learned there both into my writing and my teaching, so yeah, it's great to be going back.

My appearance schedule is below, and you can find the full FOGcon schedule here. If you're attending the conference, please do introduce yourself. The convention is located in Walnut Creek, California and both day passes and full weekend passes are still available.

• Friday, 4:30 - 5:45 PM, Santa Rosa Room: I'll be reading an excerpt from Souldrifter, but don't worry, not for the entire hour-plus segment. I'll be joined by two other authors who will be doing readings of their own work: Sunil Patel and Daniel Marcus

• Saturday, 10:30 - 11:45 AM, Salon C: The Ethics of Magic: I'm really excited to sit on this panel with moderator metaphortunate and co-panelists Marie Brennan, Madeleine E. Robins, and Steven Schwartz. We'll be talking about the casual abuse of magical power by good characters and the underpinnings of magical systems themselves.

• Saturday, 9:30 - 10:45 PM, Sacramento Room: More than Meets the Eye. This should be another great panel, this time on the topic of characters who defy our expectations of them. The panel will be moderated by Michele Cox, and will include Megan E. O'Keefe, Madeleine E. Robins, Terry Weyna, and myself as panelists.