Readercon 31 • August 13–15, 2021 • readercon.org
Sunday – 2:00 PM

In the 2019 Atlantic article “Was Shakespeare a Woman?”, Elizabeth Winkler writes, “Stories about women’s lost and obscured achievements so often… [reveal] a history different from the one we’ve learned.” Kameron Hurley’s 2013 essay “‘We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle, and Slaves’ Narrative” observes, “It’s often hard to sort out what we actually experienced from what we’re told we experienced, or what we should have experienced.” How might fictional histories explore realities that feel unreal because people are taught that the untrue is true? When the historical research writers depend on is itself biased, how can inadvertent erasures and obscurations be avoided? And what makes narratives about women feel like what should have happened, or like what did happen?

 

Lesley Wheeler (she/ her) (mod)
Aliette de Bodard
Gwynne Garfinkle
Andrea Hairston
Ada Palmer