I’ll be at Readercon for roughly the twelfth (12th) time this year. Here’s my schedule:
Reading:
Salon C Thursday, July 11, 2024, 8:00 PM EDT
I’ll be reading from my story “Tamaza’s Future and Mine”, which is in the current (July/August) issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine
Meet the Pros(e):
Salon 3 Friday, July 12, 2024, 10:15 PM EDT
(Multiple Participants)
“At the Friday night Meet the Pros(e) party, program participants are assigned to tables with a roughly equal number of conferencegoers and other participants, and then table placements are scrambled at regular intervals so that everyone gets to meet a new set of people in a small-group setting. Think of it as a low-key sort of speed dating where you need never be the sole focus of anyone’s attention, and the goal is just to get to know some cool Readerconnish people”
Panel: Striking the Right Genre Balance:
Salon B Saturday, July 13, 2024, 10:00 AM EDT
(David Anthony Durham (m), Caitlin Rozakis, Caroline M. Yoachim, Kenneth Schneyer, Meg Elison)
“Almost every author considers how to satisfy readers’ expectations while also keeping them guessing with inventive plot, character, or settings that might be unusual for the genre. It’s a balance: tip too far toward the tried and true, and one risks reader (and author!) boredom; tip too far on the other side and the reader may feel that the writer has reneged on what they expect from a given genre. This panel will consider striking the right balance.”
Panel: Responses to Omelas:
Salon 3 Saturday, July 13, 2024, 3:00 PM EDT
(Ann LeBlanc (m), Carlos Hernandez, Kenneth Schneyer, Leon Perniciaro, Tom Greene)
“In February 2024, Isabel J. Kim’s ‘Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole’ became the latest of a number of responses to Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic short story. Others include N.K. Jemisin’s ‘The Ones Who Stay and Fight’; ‘The Odyssey Problem’ by Chris Willrich; ‘The Ones Who Come Back to Heal’ by Cynthia Gómez; Naomi Novik’s Scholomance trilogy; and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds‘s episode ‘Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach.’ Panelists will discuss what these responses tell us about the original story, the times they’re written in, and the perspectives they’re written from.”
Panel: The Speculated Audience:
Salon 4 Sunday, July 14, 2024, 12:00 PM EDT
(Andrea Martinez Corbin, Ann LeBlanc, Chris Rose, Erin Roberts, Kenneth Schneyer)
“Imaginative fiction is generally written about people or places that do not exist, and is often written from the perspective of a narrator who doesn’t exist, but it can also be ostensibly written for an audience that does not exist. Panelists will explore sundry examples where the alleged intended audience is fictional, such as epistolary fiction, research reports included in science fiction, public service announcements, and textbooks about a fantasy subject. When are these tools used merely as devices for delivering information, and when is such a format essential to the kind of story that is being told?”
I don’t happen to be moderating any panels this year. Although I really like moderating, I must say it’s refreshing to be free of the extra responsibility for a change. 
I hope to see lots of you there!
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Kenneth Schneyer 
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