Monday, February 17, 2014

All Cons Great and Small



My last post, Conference Season Is Upon Us, mentioned some strategies for finding financial help to attend cons (conferences and conventions).

Today I'm going to list some cons, and I know for sure that I'm bound to miss some, so feel free to link to your overlooked favorite in the comments!

In no particular order, here are some venues you might want to check out:

Mysteries:

Bouchercon: Murder at the Beach, Nov. 13-16, Long Beach, CA 
Sisters in Crime have a number of regional and national events throughout the year
Crime Writers Association offers the same sort of events in the UK
Mystery Writers of America holds a full day MWA University

Romance:
Romance Writers of America has a national conference as well as regional chapter events
RT Booklovers Convention brings together romance writers and their fans

Children's, including YA:
Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators has national and regional events throughout the year
YA Fest, April 19, Easton, PA
UtopYA Con, June 20-22, Nashville, TN
Austin Teen Book Festival, 2014 date TBA (in Sept 2013), Austin, TX
YALLFest, 2014 date TBA (in Nov 2013),Charleston, SC

Horror:
World Horror Convention, May 8-11, Portland, OR

Science fiction/fantasy, including steampunk:
Hal-Con, Nov. 7-9, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America's events include the Nebula Awards weekend
Comic-Cons happen in virtually every big city now, but the biggest are in San Diego and NY
DragonCon, Aug. 29- Sept. 1, Atlanta, GA
CONvergence, July 3-6, Twin Cities, MN
Broad Universe promotes sff/horror writing by women and has an extensive calendar of cons*
FOGcon, March 7-9, Walnut Creek, CA
RavenCon, April 25-27, Richmond, VA
Megacon, March 21-23, Orlando, FL
Steamcon VI, Oct. 3-5, Bellevue, WA
Gaslight Gathering 4, May 2-4, San Diego, CA
The Steampunk World's Fair, May 16, Piscataway, NJ

*I seriously mean "extensive calendar of cons"--I should have just started here, and it would have saved me a lot of researching. A list of more steampunk cons can also be found here.

Online Cons:
IndieReCon, Feb. 25-27, with a focus on indie/self publishing
WriteOnCon, dates TBA (last year it was in Aug), with a wide range of genres & categories

Feel free to add your favorite con in the comments!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The LDStorymakers conference is in April, this year, in Layton, Utah. It's not just a conference for LDS writers (Mormon), it's for everyone and covers a broad range of genres. This year we have Orson Scott Card as our keynote speaker, and agents Daniel Lazar, of Writer's House, Eddie Schneider of Jabberwocky Lit, Laurie McLean of Foreword Lit, Josh Adams, of Adams LIt, and editor Melissa Frain from TOR. Great conference, great classes, great guests. I highly recommend.

http://ldstorymakers.com/conferences/2014-conference-2/

Angelica R. Jackson said...

Thanks, Jennyproctor, I've heard good things about that one!

Christina Mercer said...

Great list! Also, the IndieReCon is hosting IndieReConLive in Utah October 2014 :-) http://www.indierecon.org/p/indierecon-live.html

Angelica R. Jackson said...

Thanks Christina! I had no idea they were planning an offline version. :)