Another January has come, and that means February and March can’t be
far behind. As we kick off 2023, we wanted to share a bit of
information about what Foolscap has been doing, and what our plans
are.

Is there going to be a Foolscap next month?

No. We’re not going to host a major event in February or March. We’re
balancing the health and safety concerns around hosting a gathering
with the desire to reconnect as we adapt to the new normal of life. As
video-conference fatigue is settling in, we don’t want to host another
fully virtual convention, but we’re also not ready to physically
gather. Instead, we’re going to keep up our ongoing regular online
events, and begin planning for an in-person gathering later this year
with appropriate precautions.

You mentioned an upcoming in-person gathering. What’s the plan?

After watching other events return to in-person gathering, and seeing
what’s worked and what hasn’t, we’re currently looking at hosting a
one-day event over the summer in the Seattle area. We think it will be
easier to have appropriate airflow and space when we aren’t in the
middle of the rain and snow, and we’re hoping that the sun and warmth
will be a bit of extra support for everyone’s health.

We don’t have a specific plan to announce yet, because we wanted to
hear from you before we went too far down this path. Would you want to
attend a day of Foolscap this summer? What are the aspects of
in-person Foolscap you’re most excited to see return? Are there
specific changes you’d want to see? Would you prefer to stick with our
online presence instead? After a summer gathering… then what? Are we
back on track for 2024?

We don’t know what we’re going to do from here, and that’s
okay. Foolscap has changed multiple times since its inception at the
turn of the century. We were already taking a serious look at our
structure and purpose before Covid threw everything we knew into
disarray. Today’s Foolscap community is more geographically
distributed than it was a few years ago; we have regular members at
our weekly events across multiple states and time zones. At the same
time, we know there’s a lot of value in finding ways to connect in
person and share experiences that we can’t replicate from our own
homes. We want to hear from you about what you’d like to see Foolscap
doing.

What ongoing online events are those?

After two years of hosting virtual conventions using Discord, we’ve
got a small but friendly community on our Discord server throughout
the year! We’ve been keeping in touch with regular events:

Virtual Game Nights

Virtual Game Nights still run on Zoom nearly every Thursday at 7:00 pm
Pacific with a core set of regular players. We cycle between Jackbox
trivia, drawing games like Gartic Phone, cooperative Geoguessr, even
jigsaw puzzles on low-key nights — whatever feels casual and
accessible, with a focus on teams and being sociable.

Our virtual Music Nights have continued to be popular, particularly
the Halloween and Christmas/Winter-themed shows that closed out 2022
which drew in some new viewers. We're holding to the same format that
worked well for Foolscap 2021: one hour of prepared tracks fitting a
chosen theme, like Unusual Instrumentation or Songs You Probably
Didn't Know Were Covers, then an hour of viewer suggestions.

Foolscap Reading Group

One thing Foolscap members love to do is read—it’s part of what
brought us all together over two decades ago and it still is a core
activity we all have in common. Once the pandemic lockdown became our
everyday reality, Beth Mitcham and Kathleen Retz decided we’d start an
online version of our bookish discussions. And so, the Foolscap
Reading Group was born.

Since April 2021, we’ve been meeting at least once a month to discuss
a book we’ve all chosen to read; what makes our discussions different
than most book groups is we expand our discussion of the monthly book
to include other books in the same general genre or theme. For
example, for this month (January 2023), we are reading Tinker by Wen
Spencer and the overall theme we’ll also discuss is Romance in SF/F.

We’ve read books both within the SF/F genre (Six Wakes, Tinker,
Curse of Chalion, A Deadly Education, The Last Graduate, and
others) as well as books that are marketed as mainstream or other
genres but with an element of sf/f within them: Curiosity Thrilled
the Cat
(cozy mystery), Murder in Time (mystery/time travel),
Absolution by Murder (historical mystery), The Twisted Ones
(horror), Parable of the Sower (graphic novel), and Wyrd Sisters
(humor).

We’d love to have more members join us in both choosing what to read
and to nitpick all those fun details we love so much. We meet on the
fourth Sunday of the month from 2-4 pm Pacific time. You can find the
Zoom link to reach us by going to the
#reading-room
channel on Discord. There you’ll also find the book picks for the
next couple of months. Oh, and those lists of other books on the
themes we’ve discussed in the past: lots of good stuff there!

  • join discord
  • Drop us a message
  • Come Thursday, 7pm PST to gamenight on discord
  • Come the fourth Sunday, 2-4pm PST to reading group