On Thursday, July 25 NISI SHAWL reads from her work from 6:30-7:45 p.m. Nisi Shawl is co-author (With Cynthia Ward) of Writing the Other: A Practical Guide (2005); the story collection Filter House (2008); the utopian alternative history novel Everfair (2012); over 70 stories in such markets as Analog, Asimov’s SF, Tor.com, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy (Nalo Hopkinson and Uppender Miha, co-eds),  and dozens of articles, essays, and reviews, including regular writings about books for the Seattle Times. She lives in the Seattle area.

Speculations is a coproduction of DreamHaven and SF MINNESOTA, a multicultural organization that also sponsors a mid-summer speculative fiction convention, DIVERSICON, the 27th edition of which will be held at the Best Western Plus—Como Park, St Paul, on July 26-28, 2019, with Guest of Honor NISI SHAWL and Special Guest BEN HUSET.

On Wednesday, August 7 at 6:30 CAROLE ASHMORE and HANK LEDERER
read from their work. Carole writes, “I’m a retired computer programmer who’s
been reading SF since age 12. I like the hard stuff over fantasy. Did some
writing 15 years ago as part of Lyda Morehouse’s writing group at The Loft.
Most of my stuff has a feminist bent. These days I contribute religiously to
Eric’s Flash Fiction contest held at Diversicon.”

Hank writes, “Retired from a Control Data marketing support group in
1992. Like technology, computers & Albert Einstein; whom I worship. In 1989
signed up to be cryogenically frozen. I’ve written many SF style essays
for the MN Futurists. Favorite SF stories: Sturgeon’s “Microcosmic God”
and Clarke’s RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA.”

Speculations is a co-production of DreamHaven Books and SF MINNESOTA, a
multicultural, multimedia speculative fiction organization that also
sponsors DIVERSICON, a mid-summer convention, the 28th edition of which
will be held August 7-9, 2020, with Guest of Honor TBA and Special Guest
Abra Staffin-Wiebe.

DreamHaven Books, in association with the dark fantasy convention, Arcana, is proud to present S.T. Joshi in a talk about his work and interest in “The Dark Fantastic”.

S. T. Joshi is an author, editor and one of the foremost authorities on H.P. Lovecraft and other authors of Weird Fiction.  From Mr. Joshi’s website  – “S. T. Joshi (b. 1958) is a leading authority on H. P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken, and other writers, mostly in the realms of supernatural and fantasy fiction. He has edited corrected editions of the works of Lovecraft, several annotated editions of Bierce and Mencken, and has written such critical studies as The Weird Tale (1990) and The Modern Weird Tale (2001). His award-winning biography, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (1996), has already become a collector’s item. An expanded and updated version, I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft, was published in 2 volumes in 2010. But critical, biographical, and editorial work on weird fiction is only one aspect of Joshi’s multifaceted output. A prominent atheist, Joshi has published the anthology Atheism: A Reader (2000) and the anti-religious polemic, God’s Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong (2003). He has also compiled an important anthology on race relations, Documents of American Prejudice (1999).

Joshi has compiled bibliographies of H. P. Lovecraft (1981; revised 2009), Lord Dunsany (1993), Ramsey Campbell (1995), Ambrose Bierce (1999), Gore Vidal (2007), and H. L. Mencken (2009). He has edited Supernatural Literature of the World: An Encyclopedia (2005), Icons of Horror and the Supernatural (2006), and Icons of Unbelief (2008). His recent monographs include The Angry Right (2006), Junk Fiction: America’s Obsession with Bestsellers (2009), and The Unbelievers: The Evolution of Modern Atheism (2011). He has also published two works of detective fiction and has written a supernatural novel centering around H. P. Lovecraft, The Assaults of Chaos.”

Todd Thyberg runs Angel Bomb, a design and letterpress shop in NE Minneapolis. He makes letterpress books that are in the collections of over thirty universities and museums nationwide and will be at Dreamhaven to discuss his fourth and most ambitious book project to date. His latest book, The Miskatonic Papers, is an ode to H. P. Lovecraft and his Cthulhu mythos and limited to only 200 copies. He’ll be talking about the experiential nature of this book, the written language he created for it, his inspiration from Lovecraft and why he wove the historic Tunguska Event of 1908 into his fictional story.

Information on the work in progress can be found at Angel Bomb and Instagram

On Wednesday, September 25 at 6:30 TYLER TORK reads from his work.
Tyler writes, “Techie guy by day, crime fighter by night. But when crime is slow,
as it often is in his quiet hometown of Plymouth, Minnesota, Tyler puts
away the mask, cape, and ocelot, and finds a corner to scribble in. The
victim of a dark destiny, he whirls through life with a set of shaky
assumptions and a mug of rapidly-cooling java. Bewildered, scattered,
querulous (some say curmudgeonly), he nonetheless attempts to entertain
and inform. Someday, his alien masters will return for him. He blogs at
tylertork.com. His works include Doctor Dead, an adventure in a San
Francisco that never was, One-Hour Author Website, and soon, The Deep
End, a metaphysical steampunk intrigue and the first of many forthcoming from
his new publisher, Oghma Creative Media.

Speculations is a co-production of DreamHaven Books and SF MINNESOTA, a
multicultural, multimedia speculative fiction organization that also
sponsors DIVERSICON, a mid-summer convention, the 28th edition of which
will be held August 7-9, 2020, with Guest of Honor TBA and Special Guest
Abra Staffin-Wiebe.

On Wednesday, October 9 at 6:30 CATHERINE LUNDOFF reads from her work. This
reading will be the first release reading for her new short fiction collection,
Unfinished Business: Tales of the Dark Fantastic. Catherine Lundoff is an
award-winning writer, editor and publisher from Minneapolis where she lives with
her wife, bookbinder Jana Pullman, and the cats who own them. She is the author
of over 100 published short stories and essays, which have appeared or are
forthcoming in such venues as Fireside Fiction, Nightmare Magazine, American
Monsters 2, the LHM Podcast, World of Darkness: Ghosthunters, Tales of the
Unanticipated Magazine, My Wandering Uterus: Tales of Traveling While Female,
Respectable Horror, The Cainite Conspiracies: A Vampire the Masquerade V20
Anthology and SF Signal. Her books include Silver Moon, Out of This World:
Queer Speculative Fiction Stories and Unfinished Business: Tales of the Dark
Fantastic and as editor, the fantastical pirate fiction anthology, Scourge of
the Seas of Time (and Space). In addition, she is the publisher at Queen of
Swords Press, a genre fiction publisher specializing in fiction from out of this world.
Websites: www.catherinelundoff.net and www.queenofswordspress.com

Speculations is a co-production of DreamHaven Books and SF MINNESOTA, a
multicultural, multimedia speculative fiction organization that also
sponsors DIVERSICON, a mid-summer convention, the 28th edition of which
will be held August 7-9, 2020, with Guest of Honor TBA and Special Guest
Abra Staffin-Wiebe.

Gregory Maguire, author of many stories including Wicked, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister and most recently, Hiddensee, will be at DreamHaven on Thursday, October 17th from 6:30 – 7:45.

DreamHaven is hosting him in conjunction with Gaylaxicon 2019, held October 18-20 at the Doubletree Minneapolis Park Place. www.gaylaxicon.org

On Wednesday, November 13 JASON D. WITTMAN will read from his work. Jason D. Wittman lives and works in Minnesota.  He’s had fiction published on SciFi.com, The Best of Baen’s Universe, and recently in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine and in Bruce Bethke’s Stupefying Stories, as well as a game, Tile Chess, published by Steve Jackson Games.  He can recite Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” from memory.

Speculations is a co-production of DreamHaven Books and SF MINNESOTA, a multicultural organization that also sponsors a midsummer speculative fiction organization, DIVERSICON the 28th edition of which will be held August 7-9, 2020, with Guest of Honor MICHAEL MERRIAM and Special Guest ABRA STAFFIN-WIEBE.

On Wednesday, December 11, from 6:30-7:45 p.m., Speculations presents its sixth annual ROUND ROBIN READINGS. Interested writers are encouraged to bring up to three five-minute pieces to read. We’ll continue until 7:30 or we run out of pieces, whichever comes first. Then we’ll go hang out at a bistro.

Speculations is a coproduction of DreamHaven and SF MINNESOTA, a multicultural organization that also sponsors a mid-summer speculative fiction convention, DIVERSICON, the 28th edition of which will be held August 7-9, 2020, with Guest of Honor MICHAEL MERRIAM and Special Guest ABRA STAFFIN-WIEBE.

Local author Naomi Kritzer will be in the store Sunday, December 15th to read from her work and sign copies of her latest novel, Catfishing on CatNet, and her 2017 collection of stories, Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories. The title story of the collection won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 2016, and was the basis for the world in which her latest novel is set.

Copies of both books will be available for purchase.