4th Street Fantasy Convention, June 20-22

Last weekend I met up with Gail and day-tripped to 4th Street Fantasy Convention, in Bloomington, MN. This was our first time at this conventions, which was on hiatus for several years and restarted this summer. This is a smaller, more intimate convention, with about 100+ people attending (who seemed to all know each other really well).

I had a thoroughly pleasant time and was disappointed I was unable to attend the rest of the weekend. The theme or emphasis for the weekend was writing. The guest of honor was Elizabeth Bear. The panel discussions were lively, entertaining, and a single tract. This meant we were in one room and the moderators and panel participants rotated through.

We attended:
The Dreaded Second Draft
The Chewy Bits

Skipped the after lunch panel which was advice writers. We’ve been there, done that.
Playing with Structure.

I had to head back north after the panel on Structure, which gave me enough time for some dinner with Gail.

My only complaint with the one track programming was the length of each session. I can sit comfortably for about 1 hour. These were running an hour and fifteen minutes or an hour and a half. After 50 minutes I start to get fidgety. I'm not good at sitting still for long periods of time - I need to get up and move regularily.

Here is a links to the conventions LiveJournal website which from there are various links from folks who did attend and took copious notes for the rest of us.

Web rumor had it that they might be moving to a different location next year (closer to the downtowns); a Con-chair has been selected and the GoH may be Cory Doctrow. I would like to attend again, this time for the full weekend.