Monday, March 29, 2010

ICFA-31: Sydney

This photo of Sydney Duncan fits none of my other groupings, but I like it, and she's my wife, and she did a great job as author wrangler this year, so she gets a posting all to herself. John Kessel took this photo at the (excellent) Thursday-morning Kathy Goonan / Kij Johnson / Tom De Haven reading.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

ICFA-31: The wrap party

Below: The Dell Award finalists barely could contain themselves. Anthony Powers, Lara Donnelly, Rebecca McNulty, Rachel Sobel, Rachel Halpern (almost visible) and Miah Saunders.Below: Rebecca McNulty, Anthony Powers (almost visible), Rachel Sobel, Rachel Halpern, Lara Donnelly and Miah Saunders.Below: Rebecca McNulty, Rachel Halpern, Miah Saunders and Lara Donnelly.Below: Lara Donnelly and her dad, Richard Donnelly, who's so proud of her he will overlook the hat.Below: Pepe Rojo and Sydney Duncan.Below: Chrissie Mains.Below: Elizabeth Hoiem.Below: P. Andrew Miller.Below: Bill Senior.Below: Elizabeth McManus, winner of this year's Graduate Student Award for her Friday-afternoon paper "Protecting the Island: Interior and Exterior Space in Lost."Below: Jedediah Berry, winner of this year's Crawford Award for best first book of fantasy for his novel The Manual of Detection.Below: Jim Casey, new president of the IAFA, with the unclaimed power cord he cherished for much of the evening. Jim and I were classmates at the University of Alabama, where we had such hopes.Below: Joe Berlant and Mark Wingenfeld, dazed by their release from the book room.Below: Amelia Beamer and Rick Wilber.Below: Ellen Klages, Amelia Beamer and Charles Vess.Below: F. Brett Cox and Francesca Myman.Below: Two views of Liza Trombi and James Patrick Kelly.Below: Veronica Schanoes, Jeana Jorgensen and Marie Brennan.Below: Ellen Klages fails to frighten Russell Letson.Below: Amelia Beamer successfully frightens Peter Straub and Gary K. Wolfe.

ICFA-31: Ambushing people in the lobby

Below: Gary K. Wolfe, Joe Haldeman and Peter Straub.Below: Rachel Sobel, Rebecca McNulty and Joe Haldeman.Below: Steven Erikson and Aidan-Paul Canavan.Below: Stephen R. Donaldson and Jennifer Cox.Below: Nora Jemisin and Karen Burnham.Below: Liza Trombi and Amelia Beamer.Below: Liza Trombi, Amelia Beamer and Francesca Myman.Below: Jeanne Beckwith and F. Brett Cox.Below: Graham Sleight.Below: Peter Straub.Below: Rusty Hevelin.Below: Rusty Hevelin and Gary K. Wolfe.Below: Tom and Santa De Haven, Rachel Sobel and Rebecca McNulty.

ICFA-31: Saturday banquet

Below: Kij Johnson and John Kessel.Below: Jen Gunnels and Ellen Klages.Below: Three photos of Sydney Duncan, Liza Trombi and Karen Burnham. Their conversation eventually focused, as you can see, on Karen's amazing tattoo, a 14-hour job I should have gotten a photo of.Below: Sydney Duncan, Karen Burnham, Liza Trombi and Amelia Beamer.Below: Daphne Grace and Kij Johnson.Below: James Patrick Kelly and Ted Chiang.Below: F. Brett Cox and Jeanne Beckwith.Below: Jen Gunnels and the ever subtle Stefan Hall.Below: David G. Hartwell and Amy Branam.Below: Andy Duncan (photo by John Kessel).

ICFA-31: A Friday outing

Several of us, conference-crazed, took advantage of the nice weather by fleeing the hotel Friday afternoon for the Nature Conservancy's Disney Wilderness Preserve, just south of nearby Kissimmee.

Below: What are Ellen Klages, Charles Vess and Karen Vess looking at?Below: Oh, it's a family of sandhill cranes.Below: Karen Vess and Ellen Klages on the boardwalk.Below: Two views from the boardwalk.Below: Ellen Klages meets a turtle.Below: The turtle demands a close-up. Moments later, it got tired of us and crawled off the road and safely back into the brush.I wish I had taken some photos of East Lake Fish Camp, a bit of Old Florida where we relaxed and ate exactly the lunch we wanted (catfish and beer, in my case). I did, however, take a photo to prove exactly why straying off the "main roads" in the Orlando area can be so bewildering, at the intersection of Boggy Creek Road and Boggy Creek Road:(Yes, we all immediate thought of the 1972 drive-in classic The Legend of Boggy Creek -- it was that sort of crowd -- but I believe that was set in Arkansas, not Florida.)