What's a Padre?

So I'm going to little literary SF convention called Potlatch in February. (Full disclosure: I'd better go -- I'm chairing it.)

But what's Potlatch? What's it about? Potlatch is about books: the books we love, and why we love them. Potlatch is about speculative fiction, both SF and Fantasy.

Potlatch is about good conversation, conversation about books, and how they fit in our lives, and also about almost anything else you can think of. Good scotch and bad movies, religion in fiction and atheism in fandom, knitting, square dancing, square-rigged sailing ships and replicating life on Mars -- it's all fair game.

Potlatch is about sharing: sharing with old friends as well as the ones we just met: sharing great meals, sharing small adventures, sharing our favorite tipple, and sharing our ideas in the ongoing conversation that is Potlatch. At the center of that conversation is a single great book, one we hope everyone will have read by the time we get together, so that we can take a common starting point to range out from. This year the book we’ve chosen to anchor our conversation is Jo Walton’s AMONG OTHERS. If books were ever your refuge as a kid, if books were ever how you found your people, we think you’ll love it. It’s about that, plus fairies, and magic, and families, and discovering fandom, and growing up as a lonely kid figuring out how to make friends in a new and seemingly hostile place.

And finally, Potlatch is about conviviality, about creating a cozy, relaxed atmosphere where it’s easy to pull up a seat, hang out, find the friends you were looking for, and get caught up in a pell-mell conversation that careens on late into the night, takes a nap, and starts up again, fresh and enthusiastic the next morning.

It's a good time. If reading SF is your thing, I hope I'll see you there.