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We look forward to seeing you this September at &Now: Points of Convergence!
Registration is now open. Please visit Ticketspice to reserve your pass and order boxed lunches.
Complete conference details, including travel, accessibility, and technology information, can be found at the conference website: andnowfestival.com.
General Inquiries: andnowfestival2019@gmail.com.
Registration questions: iasinfo@uw.edu.


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Friday, September 20 • 9:00am - 10:15am
The Bear is at the Door, Knocking: The Absolute Need for Weird Fiction

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How does one write into a society of corporate personhood and greed, climatological disaster, and the reemergence of nationalist hate groups? How do they write into a world that has grown more obscene with each rotation of the news cycle? In mainstream fiction, this has led to a massive rise in adoption of Magic Realism, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy, as the strange has stepped into the rift of horror that our reality has created. But these marvelous fictions have created their new worlds with the same rules of plot, character and storytelling. Avante Garde, Experimental, and Weird fiction, however, seeks to undermine the cultural mores of society by exploding form, deconstructing characterization, and fracturing the very bounds of language. With the bear at the door, these weird fictions challenge the reader to try something different, scary, and uncomfortable.

This panel will discuss how strange stories told in new ways can create new possibility spaces. How challenging conceptions of storytelling allows us to challenge the systems of the world.
Speakers
JA

Jessica Alexander

Jessica Alexander’s story collection, Dear Enemy, was the winning manuscript in the 2016 Subito Prose Contest, as judged by Selah Saterstrom. Her fiction has been published in journals such as Fence, The Collagist, and DIAGRAM. She lives in Louisiana where she teaches creative writing... Read More →
JD

Jason Daniels

Jason Daniels is the author of the novel, Mount Fugue (Kernpunkt Press 2016), and numerous stories, published in The Southeast Review, Notre Dame Review, and Juked, has an MFA from the University of Houston, and is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Utah.
JG

Janalyn Guo

Janalyn Guo is the author of the short story collection Our Colony Beyond the City of Ruins (Subito, 2018), and her work has appeared in various literary journals, most recently in Indiana Review, The Collagist, and Denver Quarterly. She lives and writes in Salt Lake City where she... Read More →
EH

Eric Howerton

Teaching Assistant Professor/Interim Director of ENGL 3332 Tech Writing, Oklahoma State University
Currently a Teaching Assistant Professor at Oklahoma State University, Eric Howerton was raised in the Midwest and New Mexico. He studied at the University of New Mexico before earning his MFA from the Pennsylvania State University (Fiction) and PhD from the Creative Writing Program... Read More →

Friday September 20, 2019 9:00am - 10:15am PDT
UW1-040
  Panel

Attendees (16)