My Readercon Schedule

1:00 PM    VT    Reading: Matthew Kressel. Matthew Kressel. Matthew Kressel reads a soon-to-be-published short story.

11:00 AM    ME    The Art of Critique. Jeanne Cavelos, Ellen Datlow, Matthew Kressel (leader), Ken Liu, Eugene Mirabelli, Betsy Mitchell. Criticism is a large part of a writer’s life. What are the elements of a good short story or novel critique? How does one go about critiquing another writer’s work? What are the most effective techniques? What types of things do we look for? Is there such a thing as destructive criticism or are all kinds of critique helpful? How does a writer learn what to listen to from a critique and what to ignore? We will explore these and other questions.

Proposed by Matthew Kressel.

1:00 PM    ME    Crowdfunding: The Glory and the Peril. Mike Allen (leader), Kevin E.F. Clark, Matthew Kressel, Ken Schneyer, Cecilia Tan. In this troubled market, small publishers, authors, and editors are all turning to crowdfunding to get the backing for their cherished projects. Novelists, anthology editors, and magazine publishers are asking for funds on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and other sites, and some are coming away triumphant. If you want to try it for yourself, how do you make it work? What do you avoid? What unexpected problems lurk? Author, editor, and publisher Mike Allen, veteran of a $10,000 campaign to fund the anthology Clockwork Phoenix 4, will lead a discussion of what works, what doesn’t, and what successful campaigners wish they’d done differently.