Fantasy Worlds: A Day of Talks

Art, Maps, Monsters and World Building

This event will take place on 9 December 2023 11:00

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Fantasy Worlds: A Day of Talks
Art, Maps, Monsters and World Building

This event will take place on 9 December 2023 11:00

A packed day of talks and conversations featuring some of the most compelling and fascinating voices in Fantasy writing and art.

Programme

  • Fantasy Maps (11:00 - 12:00)
  • Mary Shelley, Uprisings and Rebellions (12:30 - 13:30) – How Frankenstein paved the way for generations of marginalised voices in fiction
  • Visualising Fantasy Worlds (14:00 - 15:00) – Brian and Wendy Froud and Alan Lee in conversation with Terri Windling
  • Rebecca F. Kuang in conversation (15:30 - 16:30) – With the award-winning author of The Poppy War trilogy, Babel and Yellowface -World Building in Fantasy (17:00 - 18:15) – Aliette de Bodard and Adrian Tchaikovsky with Matthew Sangster

Fantasy Maps (11:00 - 12:00)

We always talk about reading maps, and as lines on a page and, as two-dimensional depictions of a three-dimensional world, they can only ever offer us a representation of reality. But what of maps of fictional or even fantastical places? Why are fantasy writers from J.R.R. Tolkien to George R. R. Martin, in particular, so drawn to cartography? What do these fabulous charts add to the story? When did it all begin? How close do they map onto the timeless worlds they illustrate? Where does the line lie between truth and fiction in the weird and wonderful landscapes of gamers, ancient and modern? Our panel will help unravel the mystery of fantastical maps in conversation with the author Travis Elborough.

Mary Shelley, Uprisings and Rebellions (12:30 - 13:30)

This illustrated lecture traces the roots of Mary Shelley’s writing in traditions of myth, fantasy, and romance, and shows how she inspired a creative efflorescence of genres through her novels Frankenstein (1818) and The Last Man (1826) and her short story "The Invisible Girl" (1832-33). Eileen Hunt explores the post-apocalyptic, feminist and anti-racist literatures — often articulated by the marginalised voices of women and Black writers — that have flowed from these pioneering dystopian and gothic texts.

Visualising Fantasy Worlds (14:00 - 15:00)

Brian and Wendy Froud and Alan Lee are three of the most celebrated artists in the fantasy world, with The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings amongst their design credits alongside countless books and illustrations.

Together the three artists have created some of the most acclaimed mythic artwork of our time and some of the most well known fantasy images and designs of the recent decades. At this special session the artists join writer and editor Terri Windling to discuss their wonderful creative careers.

Rebecca F. Kuang in conversation (15:30 - 16:30)

Rebecca F Kuang’s Babel: An Arcane History, was one of the most acclaimed novels of 2022, of any genre. It was described as ‘A masterpiece that resonates with power and knowledge.. a stark picture of the cruelty of empire, a distillation of dark academia, and a riveting blend of fantasy and historical fiction – a monumental achievement’ (Samantha Shannon). A Sunday Times bestseller, it was named the Bookseller Fiction Book of the Year, a Blackwell’s Fiction Book of the Year and a Waterstones Book of the year finalist. among many awards.

This year has followed it with Yellowface, a thriller set in the world of publishing that tells the tale of two young novelists in Washington DC. Join Rebecca F. Kuang for an exclusive U.K appearance.

World Building in Fantasy (17:00 - 18:15)

A fascinating conversation on building a world in fiction with two writers who are equally at ease with working in Fantasy and Science Fiction. Aliette de Bodard and Adrian Tchaikovsky talk to Matthew Sangster, guest curator of the British Library exhibition Fantasy: Realms of Imagination.

Image Courtesy of British LIbrary [K.T.C.102.a.15] - Thumbelina She should be Queen of all the Flowers, Harry Clarke, from Fairy Tales ... Illustrated by Harry Clarke, 1916

Speakers

Rebecca F. Kuang

Author

Rebecca F. Kuang is the #1 New York Times and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy, Babel: An Arcane History, and Yellowface. Her work has won the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and British Book Awards.

A Marshall Scholar, she has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford. She is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale, where she studies diaspora, contemporary Sinophone literature, and Asian American literature.

Headshot of Rebecca F. Kuang

Adrian Tchaikovsky

Author

Adrian Tchaikovsky is an award-winning and highly acclaimed science fiction and fantasy author with works published at home in the UK and internationally. He has written many series, including the Children of Time, Final Architects and Echoes of the Fall, as well as numerous standalone books.

He primarily explores deep themes, such as artificial intelligence and alien awareness within epic galactic and fantastical settings.

He has a deep interest in the animal world specifically insects from his studies in Zoology and has a particular penchant for spiders.

Headshot of Adrian Tchaikovsky

Aliette de Bodard

Author

Aliette de Bodard writes speculative fiction: she has won three Nebula Awards, an Ignyte Award, a Locus Award and six British Science Fiction Association Awards. She is the author of A Fire Born of Exile, a sapphic Count of Monte Cristo in space (Gollancz/JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc., 2023), and Of Charms, Ghosts and Grievances(JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc, 2022 BSFA Award winner), a fantasy of manners and murders set in an alternate 19th Century Vietnamese court. She lives in Paris.

Headshot of Aliette de Bodard

Alan Lee

Artist

Alan Lee is globally celebrated for his artwork inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novels, and for his work on the conceptual design of Peter Jackson's film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

Brian Froud and Alan Lee collaborated on the bestselling 1978 book Faeries, an illustrated compendium of faerie folklore.

Headshot of Alan Lee

Brian and Wendy Froud

Artists, Puppeteers and Designers

Brian Froud and Alan Lee collaborated on the bestselling 1978 book Faeries, an illustrated compendium of faerie folklore. Brian was then invited by Jim Henson to be conceptual designer for the cult films The Dark Crystal (1982) and Labyrinth (1986) where he met and married puppet-maker and sculptor Wendy Midener, who had made her name as the her work fabricating Yoda for Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and also was working on the Henson productions.

Brian’s numerous best selling other works include Good Faeries/Bad Faeries and Lady Cottington's Pressed Faery Book, while Wendy has continues to make models and mythic figures and has illustrated A Midsummer Night’s Faerytale, The Winter Child, and The Faeries of Spring Cottage.

Headshot of Brian and Wendy Froud

Travis Elborough

Writer and Broadcaster

Described by The Guardian as ‘one of the country’s finest pop culture historians’, Travis Elborough has been a freelance author, broadcaster and cultural commentator for over two decades now. Elborough’s books include Through the Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Life of Spectacles and Atlas of Vanishing Places, winner of Edward Stanford Travel Book Award in 2020.

Headshot of Travis Elborough

Eileen Hunt

Academic

Eileen Hunt is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. Her interests cover modern political thought, feminism, the family, rights, ethics of technology, and philosophy and literature.

Her books include Family Feuds: Wollstonecraft, Burke, and Rousseau on the Transformation of the Family (SUNY, 2006); Wollstonecraft, Mill, and Women's Human Rights (Yale, 2016); Mary Shelley and the Rights of the Child: Political Philosophy in 'Frankenstein' (Penn Press, 2018), Artificial Life After Frankenstein (Penn Press, 2021) which won the David Easton Award for "a book that broadens the horizons of contemporary political science by engaging issues of philosophical significance in political life."

Her newest work is The First Last Man: Mary Shelley and the Post-Apocalyptic Imagination (forthcoming 2024).

Headshot of Eileen Hunt

Terri Windling

Writer and Folklorist

Terri Windling is a writer, editor, and folklorist specialising in fantasy and mythic arts. She has published over forty books, receiving ten World Fantasy Awards (including the Life Achievement Award in 2022), the Mythopoeic Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the SFWA Solstice Award. She has edited many of the major fantasy writers in the field; writes fiction for adults and children, nonfiction on fairy tales and faery lore, and a long-running blog on myth, nature, and creativity: Myth & Moor.

Headshot of Terri Windling