Ascendio 2012

TEAM ASCENDIO is enchanted to announce that Aimée Carter, author of The Goddess Test and next January’s Goddess Interrupted (both from Harlequin TEEN), will be attending in July. Aimée has written fanfic and original stories for nearly fifteen years, and has long participated in the Harry Potter fandom; she was on staff for POAIMAXNYC in June of 2004.

Aimée will be doing readings and signings at Ascendio, and participating in panels on writing, including the differences between writing fanfic and writing in a self-created universe. On her website, Aimee wrote that fanfiction is:

“how I learned how to write, and there is nothing like the kind of feedback you get online from total strangers who just want to read a good story. Talk about toughening you up. Most of what I wrote was Harry Potter fan fiction from roughly 2000 and on, but I did dabble in Hanson fan fiction before then.

Yes, I am a geek and totally proud of it.”

You can find Aimée on Twitter, Facebook or her website.

We are thrilled to announce that young adult author and Harry Potter fan Beth Revis will be a special guest at Ascendio 2012! Beth’s debut novel, Across the Universe, is a sci-fi thriller and New York Times Best Seller that has been described as Wall-E meets The Giver. A Million Suns, the second book in the AtU trilogy, comes out in January 2012.

In addition to hosting a reading and signing at Ascendio, Beth will be participating in several panels relating to writing, the publishing industry and themes in Harry Potter.

Beth Revis lives in rural North Carolina with her husband and dog, and believes space is nowhere near the final frontier. A former high-school English teacher, Beth can’t help but blog about writing, grammar, and publishing at Writing it Out. She is the founder of the new popular dystopian blog, the League of Extraordinary Writers and blows off steam by trying to come up with something witty in 140 characters or less, lusting after books on GoodReads, or wasting time on Facebook. Beth is represented by Merrilee Heifetz at Writers House and published by Razorbill, a Penguin imprint.

Ascendio 2012: A Harry Potter Symposium welcomes proposals and plans for Informal Programming sessions inspired by, themed on or related to the Harry Potter book or movie series, the fandom, Young Adult, fantasy or genre literature or films, workshops on crafting, art, writing, music, film-making, podcasting, podficcing or costuming, or anything else you think would be of interest to Harry Potter fans.

Informal programming happens all hours of the day and night, with a heavy focus on evening activities. If you’d like to hold a more informal craft workshop, topic discussion, fanfic/fanart event (drabbles/drawbles!), or even play an acoustic set, the Informal Programming form is for you.

Note:  if you are interested in planning a meet-up, please see here for the separate Meet-Up Request Form. If you want to do a fanfic reading, please fill out this form. If you’re a published author, we’ll have a form for you to fill out soon.

Examples of Informal Programming:

• How-to workshop on vidding
• Acoustic Wrock set in the Common Room
• Drabble/Drawble activity
• Live-action role playing game/cosplay demonstration
• Performance art
• Trivia game

SUBMIT AN INFORMAL PROGRAMMING PROPOSAL

October 13 is International Beta Reader Appreciation Day, or possibly International Beta Readers’ Day, but never International Beta Reader’s Day, as it’s a day meant to celebrate all beta readers around the world.

The Harry Potter fandom has been marking Beta Readers’ Appreciation Day since at least 2000, when the ZENDOM mailing list hosted a Beta Reader Appreciation Day questionnaire and discussion. By 2002, October 13 found LiveJournal full of authors praising and thanking their beta readers for making them better, more thoughtful writers.

If you’re not familiar with the term, a beta reader is someone who reads a draft of your story and edits it for continuity, compliance with the canon (such as the Harry Potter books, or films), grammar, spelling, and, of course, magical spells. Some sites, such as SugarQuill, required new authors to work with a site-approved beta reader before posting a new story, while other sites allowed authors to choose their own beta readers, but would not post fics that had significant grammar or spelling issues.

Cons have consistently provided opportunities for authors to meet longtime beta readers in person, sometimes for the first time. Other attendees find a beta reader at cons, either in a formalized workshop setting or through informal conversations. At Azkatraz, Pokeystar was introduced to C by a mutual friend, and once they were home from the trip – and had caught up on their sleep – they started working together regularly.

If you’ve been a beta reader, or used a beta reader, why not propose a programming session about an aspect of beta reading, host a workshop to teach others how to be a good beta, or organize a meet-up of beta readers? Our meet-up request form is here, and information about submitting a programming proposal for a round-table or workshop can be found here.

You may’ve seen our tweets and Facebook posts this weekend as many of the Ascendio Senior Staff visited the Portofino Bay Resort and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter for our site visit and planning meeting. The space is gorgeous, and the event is going to be amazing! But we can’t do it without our volunteers – they’re the ones who make HPEF events work, and who make the moments we share memorable.

That’s why Emeline, our Volunteer Coordinator, wants to hear from YOU. If you’re interested in helping out with Ascendio, there are many opportunities both as we get ready for our amazing event and on-site, at the event itself.

Click here or scroll down to fill out the Volunteer Form and be placed in our Database; someone from either the Volunteer Desk or the specific committee you’re interested in will contact you within two weeks or so.

Ascendio is run entirely by volunteers. From the board and senior staff to the on-site volunteers, HPEF events wouldn’t be what they are without help and commitment from its attendees. By volunteering, you can help shape Ascendio, meet fellow fans before the symposium, and gain an insider’s viewpoint to event planning.

We are, specifically, looking for an iPhone/Android App creator, a Craft Faire coordinator, a Vidshow Chair, and volunteers to serve in many roles, from programming session prefects to security, from the Registration Desk to the Common Room. We aren’t asking for specific date/time commitments on-site but if you’re able to plan to spend two or three or more hours helping at the event, or are interested in helping with PR, graphic arts, or something else during the planning stages, fill out the form and let us know!

Thanks in advance for your help and support!

We’ve updated our Formal Programming Information Page with a PDF of our Call for Proposals, which you can also find here; you can also view the Call for Proposals in Googledocs.

We aim to promote scholarly analysis of the books, to provide forums for debate and discussion among fans of those works, to provide professional development opportunities for teachers, librarians and academic scholars, and to support writers, artists, creative performers and inventive thinkers who’ve been inspired by the Harry Potter series.

Past events have featured panels, presentations and discussions as varied as numerology, alchemy, geography, linguistics, shipping debates, character analysis, queer theory, writing wrock songs, creating a podcast, comparisons between the Potter series and other YA novels, “The Influence of Pure-Blood Women”, Justice and Law, The Next Generation, “Draw Your Own Snape”, “Dumbledore Was Never Free”, and writing, art, crafting and costuming workshops.

Our conference theme this year, Taking Flight, echoes the many breathtaking heights and perilous flights throughout the Harry Potter series: we recall Fawkes’s mournful exodus from Hogwarts after the death of Dumbledore; Harry’s sheer joy on his wild dive to catch Neville’s Remembrall; the thrills of Quidditch both on the page and on sporting fields around the world; Harry, Ron and Hermione’s escape from Gringotts on the back of a dragon; and the three “flights” that shaped the life of Sirius Black, among many other gravity-defying moments.

In addition to submissions related to this year’s theme, proposals are sought for presentations, papers, moderated panels, and workshops on any topic relating to the Harry Potter universe and/or the fan community. Special evening sessions will be scheduled for adult programming, and we encourage proposals for a wide range of adult content. We will consider all submissions, but preference will be given to those papers and topics that were not previously presented to HPEF attendees.

We welcome programming of all shapes and sizes, including:

• panels, roundtable discussions, papers, & presentations
• workshops, including but not limited to crafts, fanart & writing techniques
• fan-created media, including WizardRock, vidding and more
• explorations of book-canon, movie-canon and Pottermore
• discussions of fanfiction and shipping (both het & slash pairings)
• the real-world implications of Harry Potter, and fan culture

Today is Teachers’ Day in some parts of the world – other countries celebrate it tomorrow, or in the spring, but since those dates are after the close of submissions to our Call for Proposals, we’re marking Teachers’ Day today in two ways:

1. We’re sending a shout-out and a hearty “Thank you!” to the educators who’ve been a part of HPEF since our first event, Nimbus – 2003, where Ebony, one of our programming chairs, used her experience in the classroom to craft HPEF’s formal programming submission process. Our current president, Bekkio, is also a teacher in Southern California, and in the ten years of HPEF’s operation, all of our event teams and presenters have included educators from the primary school to the graduate school level.

2. We’re encouraging educators to submit programming proposals grounded in their own classrooms. Whether it’s a proposal that’s inspired by a subject you’ve taught in the classroom, or where you can inform other teachers about how you used the Potter series in the classroom, there’s a wide range of topics that you can propose! At past events, educators have presented on the following:

• Together We Will Build and Teach: Using Social Media in the Classroom
• Potter Prevents: Harry Potter as Bullying Prevention
• Growing Up Potter and the Effects on the Classroom
• Creative Writing with Harry
• Teaching & Learning with Harry Potter

What topics and discussions will fly in your programming session? Remember, you can submit programming proposals until February 1, 2012, so you don’t have to get your Time-Turner out just yet…