Ascendio 2012

Do you want a brand new book, by an awesome Ascendio author, all fancy and signed? We’re doing a new book giveaway! Aimee Carter is a bona fide HP fan-turned published author, who will be at Ascendio as part of The Quill Track.

Sequel to Aimee’s debut YA, The Goddess Test, Goddess Interrupted is yet another fun play on Greek mythology, with a YA spin. In honor of today, Aimee’s Book Release Day, we’re giving away TWO SIGNED COPIES! Enter starting today, March 27 until midnight on Sunday, April 1st (EST).

Entering is easy! Just use the Rafflecopter entry below — you can comment on this post, like us on Facebook, tweet about the contest, follow HPEF, Aimee & Harlequin Teen on Twitter — the more entry methods you do, the more chances you have to win! The winners will be chosen at random by Rafflecopter next week.

Enter for your chance to win a signed copy of Goddess Interrupted!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Want to know more about the book? Check out the awesome book trailer!

Would you like to share your memories our cons – including Nimbus – 2003, Portus or Infinitus – in an upcoming newsletter, on the Ascendio website, or at Ascendio? Send up to 200 words-per-HPEF-con to us at pr@hp2012.org or compress them into a tweet to @HPEF, and we’ll share them in the lead-up to this summer, and at the con in July. To kick us off, longtime attendee Valerie Frankel, author of  Henry Potty and the Pet Rock and Katniss the Cattail: An Unauthorized Guide to Names and Symbols in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, shared this memory:

I love that Harry Potter cons aren’t insular. So many costumers, fanfic writers, and artists branch out and create beautiful things for Firefly, Game of Thrones, and other fandoms. In fact, at my last Potter con, I led the Harry Potter + Buffy panel, packed with cheering fans who’d made incredibly brilliant connections between the two series. This summer I’m going back, this time to speak about The Hunger Games, and I’m not at all surprised the talk was accepted. The truth is, fans who are enthusiastic enough readers to dive so deeply into Harry have enough love for lots of series. And that’s where the real magic lies…

In case you missed it this weekend, here’s what’s new from Ascendio:

We announced the theme and speakers for our Saturday Keynote Luncheon: Generation Potter: Fifteen Years Later. We’re thrilled to welcome Ben Schrank (President of Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin (USA)) and doctoral student  Neta Kligler-Vilenchik, and welcome back Connie Neal, author of Harry Potter’s Book of Virtues and Catherine Tosenberger, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Winnipeg.

We shared a sneak preview of one of our Hunger Games & Harry Potter programming sessions - and here’s another! Valerie Frankel will be speaking on how Minerva’s Not the Only Roman Goddess Around:
Naming and Symbolism in The Hunger Games. 

We also shared an update about the Craft Faire – anyone who signs up and submits a summary of their products by April 15 will be included in our event program, as well as on the website!

We’ve also started gathering memories from those who’ve attended HPEF events like Infinitus, Portus and Nimbus – 2003. Click here to learn how to share yours.

What’s still to come in the March to Ascendio? Stay tuned to this website, as well as our Facebook page and Twitter to find out! (And if anyone is able to help us set up and update our HPEF Pinterest account, we’d really appreciate it; email pr@hp2012.org if you can volunteer!

We are pleased to announce the details of the Ascendio keynote! Join us Saturday, July 14 from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. for an engaging panel discussion, accompanied by a delicious lunch.

Harry Potter has not merely influenced a generation, but fundamentally changed it. In our keynote panel GENERATION POTTER: FIFTEEN YEARS LATER, we will examine and discuss the worldwide phenomenon of Harry Potter and it’s impact on public discourse. How have Harry Potter fans changed publishing, academia, religion, activism? How is “generation Potter” — those who experienced Harry Potter as children and are now media-savvy, Millennial adults — shaping culture? Join panelists Neta Kligler-Vilenchik, Connie Neal, Ben Schrank and Catherine Tosenberger for an engaging discussion from four diverse perspectives.

Tickets for our keynote are $80, in addition to any level of Ascendio registration (other than Merlin’s Circle, with which it is included). To purchase a keynote ticket, jump to our registration portal!

Keynote Speaker Bios

Neta Kligler-Vilenchik is a Doctoral student working with Professor Henry Jenkins on the Media Activism and Participatory Politics (MAPP) project at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. As part of the MAPP project, she is looking at connections between fan communities and youth civic engagement, focusing on members of the Harry Potter Alliance, Imagine Better, and the Nerdfighters. Neta has published work on the Harry Potter Alliance and Invisible Children in the Journal of Transformative Works & Cultures, and is currently working on her Doctoral thesis on alternative citizenship models and their potential for youth civic engagement. She holds an M.A. in Communication from the University of Haifa, Israel.

Connie Neal (www.hogwartsdefender.com) was the first Christian author to publicly challenge negative attacks against Harry Potter by some in the Christian community, defending Harry in the media and enduring the resultant backlash. She is author of What’s a Christian to do with Harry Potter? (2000); The Gospel according to Harry Potter: The Spiritual Journey of the World’s Greatest Seeker (2002, 2008); Wizards, Wardrobes, and Wookiees: Navigating Good and Evil in Harry Potter, Narnia, & Star Wars (2007) along with many other books and Bible projects. Neal’s books, in many languages, are widely cited in other books, doctoral dissertations, scholarly journals, magazines (including Newsweek & Christianity Today), and media worldwide. Her Harry Potter-related books are used in university courses from Pepperdine to Yale. Her latest release is Harry Potter’s Book of Virtues.

Ben Schrank is President and Publisher of Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin (USA). Razorbill’s books include Jay Asher’s #1 New York Times bestselling Thirteen Reasons Why, Richelle Mead’s #1 bestselling Vampire Academy and Bloodlines series, Beth Revis’ New York Times bestselling Across The Universe series, the New York Times Bestseller Marcel the Shell with Shoes on by Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer Camp and the multiple star review winning and entirely revolutionary image-driven novel Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral. Ben Schrank’s novel, Love is a Canoe, will be published by Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar Straus and Giroux in early 2013. For more about Razorbill, go to www.razorbillbooks.com and for more about Ben Schrank, go to www.benschrank.com

Catherine Tosenberger is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Winnipeg, where she is attached to the Centre for Research in Young People’s Texts and Cultures. Her Ph.D. thesis was on Harry Potter fanfiction on the Internet. She has published on queer Potter fanfiction, Supernatural fanfiction, and fairy tales; her research interests include folk narratives, erotica and pornography, and children’s and adolescent culture and media.

Image courtesy Wizarding Life

The Hunger Games comes out this week in the US and around the world, and the books have already been a game changer in the world of YA writing and publishing.

At Ascendio, Hunger Games fans can attend a meet-up – and we may be able to show the film as well – and there’s going to be an amazing panel as part of our Quill Track (included with all registrations):

 Katniss, Bella, and Hermione: Finding the Balance Between Asskicking Prowess and Emotional Realism in the Girls of YA Fiction

Panelists: Veronica Roth, Lindsay Ribar, Beth Revis, Aimee Carter, Michelle Hodkin, Mark Oshiro
Summary: You’ve got Katniss, the champion fighter whose hard life has left her with little room for romantic emotions; and you’ve got Bella, who lives for love but trips over her own shadow and needs supernatural boys to save her.  With literary role models like Hermione in the mix – Hermione, known for both her sensitivity and her asskicking skills – why are there still so many high-profile heroines who tend toward one extreme or the other?  This panel will discuss the benefits and drawbacks of extreme portrayals of these various female protagonists, and what kind of heroines we want next from the YA market.

Ascendio will host our third Craft Faire as an opportunity for amateur crafters, artists, writers, or musicians to display and sell their products to other attendees on Friday afternoon.  Craft Fair sellers must have annual income from sale of such wares that is under $5000. Craft Fair sellers agree not to sell wares elsewhere at the Symposium, but may discuss/hand out printed material throughout Ascendio, and further agree to sell only works that do not infringe on third parties’ intellectual property rights.

There’s a sign-up fee of $25, which only applies to people wishing to display and sell, not to attendees wishing to shop! Fansites, groups and individuals can all participate, and anyone with a Friday, Full or Merlin’s Circle registration can add it to their registration within the registration system.

Anyone who signs up by April 15, and gets us a 50 word summary (plus a url and etsy/tumblr/twitter usernames) by April 20, will have their info included in the Ascendio Program, and on the website.

At Infinitus, we had over 30 creative fandomers participate in the Craft Faire, and hundreds of shoppers enjoyed the browsing and buying experience! Won’t you participate this year?