🚀Captain's Log, Stardate 47634.44, USS Foolscap (ANS-42)🚀

Thanks!

I had a great time at Foolscap 2019, and I appreciate all of you who helped make it a great weekend. Particular thanks to Nancy Kress, our wonderful GoH who really embraced the spirit of Foolscap. I had good discussions, learned some things, picked up some good books and even more good book recommendations, and even managed to put in a few puzzle pieces.

It was a privilege and a pleasure to serve you as Captain for the past two years. I’m handing on the Captaincy to Doug Beal, who makes everything work better, so I’m expecting to enjoy Foolscap 2020 even more. See you all next year!

-Retiring Captain Beth Mitcham

🚀Captain's Log, Stardate 47634.44, USS Foolscap (ANS-42)🚀

Foolscap came to my attention when Ursula Vernon mentioned she was the GoH in 2015. But it captured my heart with panels like "Lawn Crayfish are Real (and other weird nature stuff)" and "Craft 'n Meet". Soon I was helping with tear down, decompressing at a post con meal, and helping out on the concom. In my eyes, Open Programming really elevates the experience at Foolscap from other conventions.
We weathered some rough times together and came through stronger. I look forward to continuing Foolscap's proud traditions.

-Freshly Minted Captain Douglas Beal

📆 Foolscap 2020 - Save the Date - Feb 7-9 📆

Foolscap 2020 will return to the Hilton Seattle Airport on the second weekend in February (7th through 9th).

🎉Applause for Nancy Kress 🎉

We’d like to thank Nancy Kress for her graceful turn as Foolscap Guest of Honor. She managed to out-Foolscap Foolscap with her reading and ensuing discussion of the roles of stories in affirming or challenging our ethical worldviews. As fitting for our theme of Coming of Age, Nancy provides a great example of adulthood both in her works and in her personality. I hope I grow up to be cool like her!

🎙 The Voices of Foolscap 🎙 Podcast Teaser

Listen to a short preview of the new Foolscap podcast. Start By Looking Back: First Bite

🚧Participate in Building Foolscap🚧

Foolscap is a small convention, but it still needs a committee to make it happen. Please join our convention committee March 6th (or April 3rd) in Queen Anne! Our concom is particularly in need of someone who knows how to communicate on social media, or how to do publicity in general. If you want to help out in that or any other capacity, or just to watch for a year to see if there is anything you are interested in, come join us! Send an email to volunteers@foolscap.org for meeting details. 🍬

Signed

• Outgoing Foolscap Captain Beth Mitcham
• Incoming Foolscap Captain Douglas Beal

Quick Schedule Highlights

Go to full schedule here

Friday

3pm Registation Begins
6pm Dinner
8pm Opening Ceremonies and BYOM
12 BYOM ends

Saturday

10am DIY Crafting: Clay
10am Writer’s Workshop “Journaling for Writers”
11am OPEN SPACE GENERATION
12pm Lunch
2pm Nancy Kress - Guest of Honor Panel
2pm Writer’s Workshop “Writing Tight but Epic”
4pm Maker Panel: Needlecraft +
8pm “Oz: the Untold Story” - a musical

Sunday

12 Bite of Foolscap
1:30pm Auction
3:00pm Deconstructing Foolscap
3:30pm Dealers & Art Show Closes
7:00pm Foolscap Decompression Dinner

What to Bring

BYOM - Bring Your Own Music

We really enjoyed last year’s music party, and we’d like to do it again. Please be on the lookout for songs to bring to our BYOM event on Friday night. We’ll provide some snacks and you bring the tunes.

Open Space Generation

Do you have some good ideas for panel discussions? Did another con have a panel that left all the questions unanswered? Did you discover something amazing this year that everyone needs to know more about? Do you have nebulous ideas that only intelligent conversation will bring into the light? Do you have a rant that needs honing? Bring these ideas to to Foolscap and present them at the program planning session. (You can present them in person or just turn them in for others to read).

Open Space Generation is at 11:00 AM on Saturday!

Special One-Day Rates

Got friends who are still on the fence about Foolscap? Bring them down to try it!

We don’t want money to be the thing that keeps folks from being a part of the community at Foolscap, so this year we’re piloting sliding scale one-day memberships.

Our one-day memberships are $25, but this year we’re making them available on site only on a sliding scale basis, for any amount of $10 or more. Bring your friends! Come spend a day with us and learn what makes Foolscap unique!

Ribbons Galore now carries pronoun ribbons as a standard item

You saw it here first! But if you want to see it elsewhere, you can order them at Ribbons Galore. The story of the design can be found at http://www.pronounribbons.org

Links

Get your Foolscap membership

email workshop@foolscap.org to register for the workshop.

Signed: Foolscap Captain and First Officer, Beth Mitcham and Douglas Beal

First appeared in a newsletter

We are delighted to welcome author Nancy Kress as our GoH in 2019.

From her Bio:

Nancy Kress is the author of thirty-three books, including twenty-six novels, four collections of short stories, and three books on writing. Her work has won six Nebulas, two Hugos, a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Her most recent work is TERRAN TOMORROW, the conclusion of her YESTERDAY’S KIN series. Like much of her work, this series concerns genetic engineering. Kress’s fiction has been translated into Swedish, Danish, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Polish, Croatian, Chinese, Lithuanian, Romanian, Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, Russian, and Klingon, none of which she can read. In addition to writing, Kress often teaches at various venues around the country and abroad, including a visiting lectureship at the University of Leipzig, a 2017 writing class in Beijing, and the annual intensive workshop Tao Toolbox, which she teaches every summer with Walter Jon Williams.

From a personal standpoint, I remember Kress as my first Hugo pick. I read "Beggers in Spain" and thought: "This is the kind of thing that should win an award." It then picked up the Hugo and Nebula for Best Novella. Hmm, I thought, maybe these Hugo people know something...

For an added bonus, Nancy comes with Jack Skillingstead, her husband and a writer in his own right, with three novels and over forty short stories to his bibliography.

also in newsletter

Experience a taste of Foolscap at the May Mini-Foolscap, May 20 - 1:30 to 4:00, Kent Regional Library in the Small Meeting Room

Mini-Foolscaps are held in an afternoon and are a fun chance to talk with friends and show off our Foolscap Flavor. We hold a mini-panel, then brainstorm a bit, then discuss whatever we've come up with. The first topic this month is "Spoilers: When, Why, and How", inspired by the huge discussion about where people can discuss the latest Marvel installment.