Andrea Hairston is a novelist, playwright, poet, and L. Wolff Kahn 1931 Professor Emerita of Theatre and Africana Studies at Smith College. She ran away from the physics lab to the theatre when she was a young thing and has been a scientist, artiste, and hoodoo conjurer ever since... Read More →
BrightFlame (she/they) writes, teaches, and makes magic towards a just, regenerative world. In her debut novel, The Working, a modern coven must thwart a looming eco-cataclysm and find the key to the bright futures we need. She's a member of the Climate Fiction Writers League and... Read More →
Clara Ward lives in Silicon Valley on the border between reality and speculative fiction. Their latest novel, Be the Sea, features a near-future ocean voyage, chosen family, and sea creature perspectives. Their short fiction has appeared in The Neurodiversiverse: Alien Encounters, Tales... Read More →
Programming Coordinator, Writespace Writing Center
Hello! I am an author, editor, and community organizer in Houston, Texas. I am a cohost of Writers Lunch, a member of the Tomeworks Editing Collective, and the Programming Coordinator for Writespace Writing Center.
Katherine Souza is an interdisciplinary creator residing in Maine. Professionally she keeps afloat by making quests for Elder Scrolls Online. As an avid SFF fan she is juggling dozens of background projects that involves pictures and words and buttons.
Many conversations about disability focus on 'accurate' or representative characters, which is great. But many times they are most recognized as disabled because they live in a world of able assumptions. What then does disabled worldbuilding look like? Who has done it? Where do we start? Panel can include a discussion of HBO's See, and John L Clarke's Touch the Future.
Jaye Viner lives on what used to be the plains of eastern Nebraska with two feline fur bombs and a very tall man. She knows just enough about a wide variety of things to embarrass herself at parties she never attends. She holds an MFA and MA from the University of Nebraska. Her writing... Read More →
Anna is the author of two YA fantasy series (Ember of Elyssia Quartet, Fortune's Calling Trilogy), an adult romantasy (The Bridal Party), and adult high fantasy (The Prince With Six Faces). All of her books feature queer and disabled characters. She is headed to the University of... Read More →
K. M. Enright is the Sunday Times Bestselling author of MISTRESS OF LIES and the upcoming LORD OF RUIN (August, 2025). Find out more about his writing at kmenright.com or follow him on social media at @KM_Enright.
Do you have questions about WisCon Online, your membership, the program, or how to participate in panels or discussion? Or do you just want to hang out and chat? Someone from the Registration / Info Desk team will be here to help.
Severance season 1 explored themes of personhood, labor exploitation, bodily autonomy, and psycho-sexual waffle parties. With season 2 airing this year, let's discuss! What does it mean to make the metaphor of alienation from one's work literal?
Sam is a public defender in New York City. His interests include rock climbing, artistic gymnastics, roleplaying games (tabletop or virtual), and splaw (space law).
This panel will feature two academic paper presentations followed by a live Q&A.
A Study in Scarlet: Examining Wanda Maximoff and Gender Through the Lenses of Rage and Grief Panelists: Jeremy Brett (he/his) and Jessica Tucker (she/her) Abstract: The journey of Wanda Maximoff (aka the Scarlet Witch) has been one of the central emotional pivots of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, from her introduction in 2015 through her presumed death in 2022. This presentation explores various aspects of her character that speak to her gendered use and misuse as a character, including the denial of Wanda’s ability and agency to express profound grief, her emotional isolation and the failure to find empathy from anyone save herself, and the societal unacceptability of female rage that marks Wanda with a singular villainy but leaves angry or ‘unstable’ male MCU characters free from judgement or consequence.
Somos 2074 y Muchas Más: Marching in the Name of Sterilized Women in Peru Panelists: Valeria Fabj (she/her) Abstract: More than 200,000 women were forcibly sterilized in Peru during Fujimori’s regime between 1995 and 2001. This presentation looks at how Somos 2074 y Muchas Más become the public face of sterilized women, organizing colorful demonstration in cities across Peru. Women dressed in traditional Andean garments, their legs covered in red paint, march chanting “We are the daughters of the farm workers that you were unable to sterilize!” and “Forced sterilizations: Never again!” Their actions bring national and international attention to the plight of these women in an attempt to ensure retribution and justice for the victims of forced sterilizations.
Agriculture these days has some wild and woolly frontiers happening, between precision agriculture, vertical farming, fermentation technology, and more that can cross over into areas of security, pharmacology, and more. It ain't Grandpa's farm anymore.
Ursula Whitcher is a writer, mathematician, and poet whose work has appeared in places including The Deadlands, Frivolous Comma, and Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. A collection of linked short stories, North Continent Ribbon, is published by Neon Hemlock Press.
Chris Gerrib has been an avid fan of science fiction and space exploration since he was a child riding his bicycle to his small town’s library where he memorized every book they had on the subject. Since then he spent a tour in the US Navy, got an MBA, and now has a day job with... Read More →
AJ Super is a queer, disabled author trying their best to write diverse, queer, and disability normative science fiction and fantasy worlds. A member of Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers and a full SFWA member, they have a trilogy published by Aethon Books and Blackstone Audio... Read More →
Jaye Viner lives on what used to be the plains of eastern Nebraska with two feline fur bombs and a very tall man. She knows just enough about a wide variety of things to embarrass herself at parties she never attends. She holds an MFA and MA from the University of Nebraska. Her writing... Read More →
From fairy tails, to Disney, to comic books, it seems old stories are much more likely to be recreated than new stories told. Why is this happening? What is the value of telling old stories again? What are the pitfalls?
Daphne (she/her) is an intuitive editor who has her finger on the pulse of what gets a reader’s heart pumping. A lover of both horror and romance, Daphne has a unique command of how to pull a reader in close and play on their emotions. Her degree in psychology and years of working... Read More →
Naomi Kritzer is a science fiction and fantasy writer from St. Paul, Minnesota. In Minneapolis and St. Paul, she is probably best known for her political blog, which provides deep-dive information on candidates in local political races. Outside of the Twin Cities, she is best known... Read More →
Cecilia Tan is the award-winning author of over a dozen novels (and three collections of short stories) including the Magic University series and The Prince's Boy . Her work has appeared everywhere from Ms. Magazine and Asimov's to Nerve and Best American Erotica. Her novel Slow Surrender... Read More →
Jaye Viner lives on what used to be the plains of eastern Nebraska with two feline fur bombs and a very tall man. She knows just enough about a wide variety of things to embarrass herself at parties she never attends. She holds an MFA and MA from the University of Nebraska. Her writing... Read More →
Melissa A Watkins is a writer now, but used to be a teacher, a singer, an actress, and a very bad translator(thankfully, not all at the same time).. Her short stories have previously appeared in midnight & indigo, khoreo, Fantasy Magazine, Lightspeed and The Magazine of Fantasy... Read More →
This panel will feature two academic paper presentations followed by a live Q&A.
The Mothership: Embodiment of/as Domestic Space in Shawl and Little Badger Panelist: Tessa Crosby (she/her) Abstract: This project examines the “colony ship” trope in SF, from its imperialist, heteropatriarchal roots to its queer, feminist, decolonial resurrection. In its mainstream configuration, the colony ship distills and embodies the problematics of social reproduction: “her” raison d’etre is not only to maintain and reproduce humankind, but to maintain and reproduce the structures and hierarchies that “her” programmers believe will afford a productive labor force. This presentation highlights texts that challenge this trope’s logic and, more broadly, the logic of a genre that seems stuck in rigid, overdetermined formulations of love, care, and kin.
Speculative Reproduction in Joanne Ramos’ The Farm and Cherie Dimaline’s Hunting By Stars Panelist: Dana Smith (she/her) Abstract: This talk argues that speculative fiction is a prescient framework through which to analyze the critical and pressing stakes of the contemporary fight for reproductive justice. By analyzing two near-future speculative fiction novels, I demonstrate the inextricable nature of extractive capitalist practices and the state’s prioritization of heteropatriarchal reproductive futurity–and how this is deeply tied to settler-colonial projects which commodify vulnerable populations to reproduce whiteness. Yet, while each text reflects tensions between “choice,” power, and survival–differentially mediated by hegemonic constructions of cultural, gender, and/or racial difference–they also present the powerful potential of reproduction and kinship as resistance.
Sumana Harihareswara is an open source contributor and leader who has contributed to pip, GNOME, MediaWiki, Dreamwidth, GNU Mailman, and other open source projects -- and is working on a book to teach what she's learned along the way. She has keynoted LibrePlanet and other open source... Read More →
Katherine Souza is an interdisciplinary creator residing in Maine. Professionally she keeps afloat by making quests for Elder Scrolls Online. As an avid SFF fan she is juggling dozens of background projects that involves pictures and words and buttons.
Science is often seen as a limiting factor in creativity, but this panel wants to turn the tables and use science as a source of creativity, taking what is possible and using it as a launching point for the creation of new species.
Cecilia Tan is the award-winning author of over a dozen novels (and three collections of short stories) including the Magic University series and The Prince's Boy . Her work has appeared everywhere from Ms. Magazine and Asimov's to Nerve and Best American Erotica. Her novel Slow Surrender... Read More →
Angeli Primlani is the Event Manager and Volunteer Coordinator for the Speculative Literature Foundation. She's a novelist, a playwright, a former journalist and director in the Chicago theater scene. Her novel The Marlen of Prague: Christopher Marlowe and the City of Gold was published... Read More →
Naomi Kritzer is a science fiction and fantasy writer from St. Paul, Minnesota. In Minneapolis and St. Paul, she is probably best known for her political blog, which provides deep-dive information on candidates in local political races. Outside of the Twin Cities, she is best known... Read More →
Andrea Hairston is a novelist, playwright, poet, and L. Wolff Kahn 1931 Professor Emerita of Theatre and Africana Studies at Smith College. She ran away from the physics lab to the theatre when she was a young thing and has been a scientist, artiste, and hoodoo conjurer ever since... Read More →
Eugene Fischer is writer living in Austin, Texas. He has a physics degree from Trinity Univeristy, an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. He was a Teaching/Writing Fellow and later an adjunct professor... Read More →
