GenCon Writers Symposium (Aug 2022) : R. A. Salvatore Guest of Honor

Saturday, June 25, 2022 SELindberg Comments 3 comments

GenCon Writer’s Symposium is back!

Aug4-7th, 2022; Indianapolis, IN

Gen Con just announced that legendary fantasy author R. A. Salvatore is the 2022 Author Guest of Honor!

Thirty-four years ago, he created the character of Drizzt Do’Urden, the dark elf who has withstood the test of time to stand today as an icon in the fantasy genre. With his work in the Forgotten Realms, the Crimson Shadow, the DemonWars Saga, and other series, Salvatore has sold more than thirty million books worldwide and has appeared on the New York Times bestseller list more than two dozen times. He considers writing to be his personal journey, but still, he’s quite pleased that so many are walking the road beside him!

He will be participating in several Writer’s Symposium events (click to browse and register via the GenCon portal) during the convention, including book signings and appearances.

Gen Con

The Gen Con Writer’s Symposium is a semi-independent event hosted by Gen Con and intended for both new and experienced writers of speculative fiction. Although many of us love and play the games Gen Con offers, our program is focused on the craft and business of writing, particularly in the speculative arenas. In the past 27 years, the Symposium has grown from a small set of panels over a day or two of the convention to one of the largest convention-hosted writing tracks in North America. Gen Con itself is the largest tabletop gaming convention in the world. In 2019 (the last pre-pandemic year for the convention) they welcomed over 65,000 unique visitors and offered over 19,000 events. By its nature, Gen Con attracts a large number of reading-oriented attendees who enjoy speculative fiction.

Writer’s Symposium

This year, the Writer’s Symposium will have ~40 Authors, 75 panels, 42 workshops, and special events like the Meet-the-Pros (Thursday night) and D&D-with-Authors (Friday night)! In addition to the GenCon event link above, browse the dedicated website for the Writers Symposium website that explains more and has other views of the program.

The Writer’s Symposium also features two Special Guests, Carlos Hernandez and Brandon O-Brien!

New York Times Bestselling author CARLOS HERNANDEZ is the author of The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria, Sal and Gabi Break the Universe (which won the Pura Belpré award in 2019) and Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe, along with many short stories, poems, and works of drama. By day, Carlos is a CUNY Professor of English and a game designer: most recently, Negocios Infernales, the TTRPG he is co-creating with C. S. E. Cooney.

BRANDON O’BRIEN is a writer, performance poet, teaching artist and game designer from Trinidad and Tobago. His work has been shortlisted for the 2014 Alice Yard Prize for Art Writing, the 2014 and 2015 Small Axe Literary Competitions, and the inaugural Ignyte Award for Best Speculative Poetry. His work is published in Uncanny Magazine, Strange Horizons, Reckoning, and New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean, among others. He is the former Poetry editor of FIYAH: A Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction. His debut poetry collection, Can You Sign My Tentacle?, is out now from Interstellar Flight Press.

S.E. Lindberg is a Managing Editor at Black Gate, regularly reviewing books and interviewing authors on the topic of “Beauty & Art in Weird-Fantasy Fiction.” He is also the lead moderator of the Goodreads Sword & Sorcery Group and an intern for Tales from the Magician’s Skull magazine. As for crafting stories, he has contributed five entries across Perseid Press’s Heroes in Hell and Heroika series and has an entry in Weirdbook Annual #3: Zombies. He independently publishes novels under the banner Dyscrasia Fiction; short stories of Dyscrasia Fiction have appeared in Whetstone and Swords & Sorcery online magazines. He is also one of the co-coordinators for the GenCon 2022 Writer’s Symposium.