Memorial Day weekend, we drove east to WisCon, Madison’s one-and-only feminist science fiction and fantasy convention. WisCon is my favorite con: great programming for fans and academics and writers, a strong and very real sense of community, and lots of old friends. And there was cheese! (More about that later.)

WisCon 35 was really the most perfect convention imaginable. Unlike last year, when I was freaking out over presenting an academic paper on Neil Gaiman’s Dream Hunters (and worrying a little about my June wedding), this year at WisCon I did nothing but have fun.

We began with a room with a view:

Then we hunted down the cheese, finding a fabulous shoppe on the Capitol Square called Fromagination. They had a Dunbarton Blue (an amazingly crisp blue-veined cheddar) and a spectacularly mellow and clean Camembert. My friend Mike began to worry about my sanity, since every time I ran into him, I mentioned cheese.

Mike is co-authoring a book on children’s fantasy with Farah Mendlesohn, and we were able to get a copy of Farah’s previous book, Rhetorics of Fantasy. In the dealer’s room, we also picked up Cat Valente’s bestselling new novel The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her own Making.

When I wasn’t eating cheese, I was meeting writers and attending panels on Magic Realism, Dark Matter, and more. Especially fun: a panel on Indigenous Fantasy with Andrea Hairston and Theodora Goss.

And there were parties! Sunday night is the night to dress up at WisCon, so I wore my red Mary Janes, a black velvet broomstick skirt, and an iridescent oil-slick green vintage satin jacket that I bought at Armstrong’s when I was teaching in Edinburgh. It has a saucy peplum in the back and improbably huge leg-of-mutton sleeves.

On Monday morning, we hunted down more cheese, stopping at Ella’s Deli to see the robots on the way out of town.