Schedule

View or Download Mythcon 38 schedule here.

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Progress Reports

Progress Report #1 follows; View or Download Progress Report #2 here.

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Mythcon XXXVIII

The 38^th Annual Mythopoeic Conference

Progress Report no. 1
August 3-6, 2007

Clark Kerr Campus, Berkeley, California

Becoming Adept: The Journey to Mastery

Guests of Honor: Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman

REGISTRATION

Membership rates in Mythcon are good through July 15, 2007:

• $75 for Mythopoeic Society members
• $85 for non-members
• $50 for registered students, age 12 or up
• Children under 12 free

If you are uncertain of your Society membership status, please contact our Membership Secretary, Marion Van Loo, at mvanloo@comcast.net.

To register or to send in room and board payment (see below), PayPal registration is available.

To pay by check, make checks payable to The Mythopoeic Society, and mail to:

Bonnie Rauscher, Registrar
2231 10th St.
Berkeley, CA 94710
bonnier@fpcberkeley.org

ROOM AND BOARD

Rates are per person, for Friday dinner through Monday breakfast, including banquet, and three nights lodging:

• Residence hall, double occupancy: $275
• Residence hall, single room: $335
• Suites, double occupancy: $290
• Suites, single room: $365

The principal distinction between the residence halls and suites is the location of the bathroom. Each room (single or double) in the suites shares a small semi-private bathroom with an adjacent room. In the residence halls, larger bathrooms are located down the hall. Suites also have small kitchenettes.

The Clark Kerr Campus contains several housing units and we cannot guarantee which we will be assigned to, but the residence hall we have used in the past is immediately adjacent to the main programming building, and itself contains several small lounges we have used for additional programming. Suites are in another building on the other side of the main entrance. We encourage attendees to take the room-and-board package. Even if you plan to stay off campus, we strongly recommend that you take meals on campus. Shared meals are a large part of Mythcon, and give attendees the chance to mingle with fellow mythopoeics. Attendees of past Mythcons will confirm that Clark Kerr serves some of the best meals we’ve had.

There are no restaurants or hotels less than ½ mile from campus.

If you are staying off campus and wish to take meals, or if you wish to stay on campus extra nights, or have other special needs or concerns, including disability limitations, please contact the Registrar.

All payments for room and board must be received by July 15, 2007. See PayPal and check registration information above.

GUESTS OF HONOR

Readers who follow the Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards will know Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman from their MFA-winning novels, Kushner’s Thomas the Rhymer and Sherman’s The Porcelain Dove, works exploring the nature and meaning of folk ballads and fairy tales. Their latest books, published last year, are Sherman’s The Changeling, a young adult story set on the border between faërie and modern-day New York City; and Kushner’s The Privilege of the Sword, the tale of a young swordswoman set in the imagined world introduced in her famous first novel, Swordspoint, and continued in the Kushner-Sherman collaboration The Fall of the Kings. There’s more. Sherman is also the author of Through a Brazen Mirror, also inspired by folk ballads. Kushner writes and hosts a public radio series, Sound & Spirit, exploring aspects of the human spirit through a mixture of music and intellectual ideas. Its vast array of programs on a wide variety of topics include features on myths, fairy tales (featuring past GoH and MFA winner Jane Yolen), and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Both authors are active in the Interstitial Arts Foundation, discussing and promoting “art that flourishes in the borderlands between disciplines, mediums, and cultures.”

Both our Guests of Honor are now on the final ballot for this year’s Nebula Awards of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Kushner for The Privilege of the Sword and Sherman for the short story “Walpurgis Afternoon” (in The Year’s Best Fantasy for 2005, edited by David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer, Tachyon Press). Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman have made great contributions to the mythopoeic and interstitial arts, and we are proud to welcome them to Mythcon 38.

SCHEDULE AND EVENTS

Starting and ending times for Mythcon are still approximate, but for trip planning you can assume that registration will open about noon on Friday and programming will begin no earlier than 2 PM. The first meal on the package is dinner, offered 6-7 PM. On Monday, breakfast, the final meal on the package, closes at 8:30 AM. Programming will continue into the Society members’ meeting and closing ceremonies which will finish no later than 1 PM.

Mythcon will offer a mix of scholarly papers, discussion panels, readings, films, Bardic Circle, Guest of Honor presentations, and other programming. A dealers’ room will sell books and other items of mythopoeic interest. Friday evening will feature the opening night reception, and English country dancing taught by our veteran dance-master Alan Winston. Saturday evening will include a concert by Brocelïande, the Celtic/Medieval/Renaissance band well-known in the Society for their (alas out of print) album of Tolkien settings, The Starlit Jewel. Sunday evening will feature the Banquet, presentation of the Mythopoeic Awards, costume presentation, the annual strangeness from the Not Ready for Mythcon Players, and other delights yet to be known.

POST-MYTHCON EXPEDITIONS

Are you interested in continuing mythopoeic activity into Monday afternoon? We are considering two possible post-con events: a walking tour of mythic and fantasy sites in Berkeley, and a driving tour of the Valley of the Na from Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home. (Transportation would be provided for the latter, but a fee might be charged.) These events will only be scheduled if members express interest beforehand, but no firm commitment to participate is required at this point. If you’re interested, contact us via the Registrar.

PAPERS

As a Mythcon attendee, you are invited to consider presenting a paper to the conference. We particularly encourage papers related to the conference theme, “Becoming Adept: The Journey to Mastery” in fantasy literature. We also welcome papers focusing on the work and interests of the Inklings (J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams), of our Guests of Honor, and on other topics in myth and fantasy literature.

Papers should be no more than 40 minutes in presentation time. Abstracts (250 word maximum) and contact information should be sent by April 15, 2007 to the papers coordinator, Eleanor M. Farrell, at emfarrell@earthlink.net, or at P.O. Box 320486, San Francisco CA 94132. Further information on papers is available from the papers coordinator.

TRAVEL

Air travelers are advised to fly into Oakland International Airport (OAK) if possible. It’s smaller and closer to our site than San Francisco International (SFO), less subject to weather delays (San Francisco can be very foggy in summer), and thus easier to use. OAK is served by many major airlines, including Alaska, American, Continental, Jet Blue, Southwest, and United. But if your plans make a flight to SFO more desirable, it isn’t difficult to get to Clark Kerr from SFO, just more expensive and time-consuming than from OAK.

Several shuttle services will take you directly to Clark Kerr from either airport, and this is the easiest and most advisable method of getting here from there. BayPorter Express (www.bayporter.com), phone 415-467-1800, charges $23/person from OAK and $27 from SFO. SuperShuttle (www.supershuttle.com/htm/cities/sfo.htm), phone 415-558-8500, charges $32 from OAK and $40 from SFO for the first person and $8 for each additional person. Reservations must be made in advance, by phone or online, except for SuperShuttle coming from SFO.

BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (www.bart.gov), serves both airports, SFO directly and OAK via the AirBART shuttle bus. But Clark Kerr is over a mile (uphill) from the nearest BART station, and the nearest bus route passes three blocks away. So travelers taking BART should consider catching a taxi at the Berkeley BART station or arranging to be picked up there. The Clark Kerr Campus street address is 2601 Warring St., Berkeley CA 94705, between the cross streets Derby St. and Dwight Way. Driving directions are located at http://conferenceservices.berkeley.edu/conf_dirto_CKC.html and will be in Progress Report 2. Cars may be parked in the main entrance loop briefly for check-in only. Parking in the campus’s Southwest Lot (behind Krutch Theatre, our main programming building) is $12/day, purchasable from ticket machines in the lot. Non-resident street parking off campus is limited to 2 hours except on Sunday, and is hard to find anyway.

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MEMBERS

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COMMITTEE


Additional committee, Lynn Maudlin (Mythopoeic Society Secretary for Mythopoeic Conferences), Elizabeth M. Daniels

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