Robert J. Sawyer

Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Science Fiction Writer

When Words Collide coming in August

by Rob - May 16th, 2015.
Filed under: Conventions.

NOTE: When Words Collide in Calgary has a membership cap — they sell a finite number of admissions — and they’re 78% full already for the August 2015 convention.

When Words Collide is my favourite convention, bar none; there’s simply no better networking opportunity for professional fiction writers in Canada. Conference chair Randy McCharles — himself an award-winning writer — has taken the best elements of the World Fantasy Convention and Boston’s Readercon, stripped out the stuffiness and pretension, and inserted a healthy does of fun.

The programming is always first rate, but the conference organizers pay a lot of attention to the social aspects, too, making sure that writers and readers have many opportunities to mingle and chat one-on-one.

The actual conference is excellent, but so are the seminars and workshops held just before or after it; the 2014 day-long seminars with Penguin Canada’s Adrienne Kerr and Kobo’s Mark Lefebvre were among the best publishing-related talks I’ve ever attended.

I go to lots of conventions as an invited guest — I was one of the guests of honour at the first When Words Collide — but WWC is the only one I fly back to year after year at my own expense.

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