Exploring Beyond the Borders: Breaking the Conventions of Genre in SF/F/H

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Are the boundaries that define genre fiction constructs of publishers’ marketing departments?  Created by readers’ demands?  Or reflections of important storytelling traditions?  What happens when writers and readers travel to the dangerous and exciting spaces in-between?  As changes in publishing and social media offer more options for the ways in which stories are told and consumed, what will the next generation of SF/F literature look like?

Larissa N. Niec is author of The Sky Seekers novels Shorn (Mercury Retrograde Press, 2008) and Cael’s Shadow (Mercury Retrograde Press, May 2013). Currently, she serves as president for the Board of the Interstitial Arts Foundation. In addition to her work in the world of art and literature, Larissa is a clinical child psychologist, a professor of psychology and the director of the Parent-Child Interaction Therapy Clinic and Research Center in the middle of Michigan. Although her writing may not always be interstitial, Larissa is herself an interstitial writer living in the fertile borderlands between academia and fiction, psychology and fantasy. Find Larissa online at www.LarissaNiec.com.

Julia Rios writes, hosts the Outer Alliance Podcast (celebrating QUILTBAG speculative fiction), and is part of the fiction editing team at Strange Horizons. She's half-Mexican, but her (fairly dreadful) French is better than her Spanish. Visit her online at www.juliarios.com.

Catherine Lundoff is the award-winning author of Silver Moon: A Women of Wolf’s Point Novel (Lethe Press, 2012) as well as the short story collections Night’s Kiss (Lethe Press, 2009), Crave (Lethe Press, 2007) and A Day at the Inn, A Night at the Palace and Other Stories (Lethe Press, 2011). She is the editor of Haunted Hearths and Sapphic Shades: Lesbian Ghost Stories (Lethe Press, 2008) and the co-editor, with JoSelle Vanderhooft, of the anthology Hellebore and Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic (Lethe Press, 2011). In her other lives, she's a professional computer geek, the spouse of her fabulous wife and an occasional teacher of writing classes at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Website: www.catherinelundoff.com

Kristen McDermott is a Professor of English Literature at Central Michigan University, specializing in Early Modern Drama and Theater History. She has dedicated her teaching to bridging the gap between scholarly research and an appreciation for the living arts of drama, music, and storytelling. Dr. McDermott is the co-author, with her husband, Prof. Ari Berk, of an interactive book for young readers, The Life and Times of William Shakespeare (Templar Books 2010), and the editor of Masques of Difference: Four Court Masques by Ben Jonson (Manchester University Press, 2007). She has published articles on Early Modern Drama in the G.K. Hall anthology Critical Essays on Ben Jonson, Early Theatre, Renaissance Papers, Shakespeare Magazine, and The Language Arts Journal of Michigan. She has also written a series of articles on drama, fantasy literature, and folk traditions for Realms of Fantasy Magazine, and served on the Board of the Interstitial Arts Foundation from 2006-2008.