Readercon is a “conference on imaginative literature” that takes place in the Boston area each July. From Thursday evening (when everything is free) through Sunday afternoon (for a very reasonable fee if you don’t need a hotel), hundreds of readers, fans, editors, publishers, and writers converged on the Marriot hotel in Burlington, Mass. This was my first full-fledged conference. A couple years ago I attended for one day—limited by a sick cat, and another sick cat kept me home last year.

Suffice it to say I am not a conference person. I am an introvert. The idea of walking up to a stranger, no matter how much I admire their writing, is virtually impossible to consider.

One way I get around this terror is to volunteer, and so I did. Selling books at the Broad Universe table in the Bookshop. Little did I expect that to be a transformative experience!

I’ve been a member of the Broad Universe for a few years now, but had yet to participate in any activities. As a primer, the Broad Universe “is an international, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting, encouraging, honoring, and celebrating women and historically excluded and marginalized genders writing, editing and publishing in science fiction, fantasy, horror, and other speculative genres.”

That hardly describes it.

The members I met were so incredibly warm, kind, generous, and welcoming to this newbie I can hardly contain myself.

And the conference? Every hour packed with several workshops and panels, which made deciding where to go practically a Solomonic decision (the topic of slicing up babies no doubt discussed somewhere).

Some gems:

When I checked in to the hotel on Friday, the clerk gushed how happy she was that the Readercon staff had invited the hotel staff to attend the conference for free. “No one ever does that!” she said. “I’m always curious what goes on.” I didn’t see her when I checked out on Sunday, but I hope she had a chance to listen in to some of the smartest, most well-read people on the planet.

I consider myself pretty up on science things (me with my B.S. in biology—huff, huff), but was blown away, for example, as a panel of writers (a Ph.D. in biology among them) laid out some of the latest research into whale communication, slime molds, neurobiology, and microbial symbiosis—even a shout out to Dr. Lynn Margulis, one of my inspirations. Science fiction, after all, is about science—one way or another.

One fun thing the Broad Universe members do is a Rapid Fire Reading. I was too terrified to join them this year but probably will next year. Each author gets eight minutes to read aloud. And there are giveaways. The snippets are amazing, the vibe is fun, and the variety of stories have something for everyone. SF, magic, witches, artwork as well as retold fables.

As a lesbian in a predominantly straight world, I always wonder how alone I am in a crowd, but the panel “SFF and Queer Cultural Memory” filled the room with probably every letter of the quiltbag and a comforting mix of youth and us elders. David Gerrold, one of the Guests of Honor, drew raves for his lived history as a pathbreaking gay writer (a fact curiously absent from the Readercon bio of him)—he invented Star Trek’s Tribbles.

Because I’m an early riser and the events didn’t start till 10, I had lots of time to kill. So I went for walks in the neighborhood, which consisted of office parks that are empty on the weekends (or always, since some buildings seemed quite unoccupied). This gave me appropriate dystopian vibes that could be creatively useful until I discovered nature abhors a vacuum. Despite the brick and mortar, pavement and roadways, a pocket wetland held … magic.

The first morning, with the help of the Merlin birding app, I heard an eastern warbling vireo. Never heard of one, let alone heard one. Didn’t see it, but I don’t need to see birds to appreciate them. The beauty of the Merlin app is that it helps you pick out birdsong, like finding one instrument in an orchestra.

A rabbit and her wee one nibbled plants along the road edge. That’s not unusual. I have my own rabbits at home. But this baby was smaller than the ones in my yard. I never get over how cute they are despite ravaging my garden.

But the second morning…I saw the baby rabbit again. Then heard a bird calling I didn’t recognize. Merlin said it was a song sparrow. I’m familiar with its song, but not this call. It was loud and there were a lot of birds making a ruckus near the reeds at the edge of what I had discovered was a pond as well as wetland.

Next thing I know, a little weasel popped out (ha, pun intended, I guess) of the reeds. But he wasn’t afraid of me. He came toward me. Despite how small he was, that felt weird, so I backed up (I’ve heard weasels can take out a flock of chickens). It dawned on me that I’d just seen the bunny. Potential weasel breakfast? He ran around, the birds went nuts, and he disappeared back into the reeds as I rounded the bend.

Next thing I see is the baby bunny racing past me followed by the weasel charging after the bunny, and a mockingbird dive bombing the weasel. I didn’t want to interfere, so stepped back (no time to think about filming). The bunny made it across the road to an office building. The weasel, harassed by the bird, retreated into the reeds.

I’ve lived in a rural town for eight years and haven’t seen more than tracks in the snow for a weasel. But Burlington? Hard next to I-95? In a landscape with more pavement than habitat?

Don’t think for a minute this won’t find its way into a story someday.

How’s your summer going? Maybe next time I’ll report on all the things that went wrong once I got home.

More:

Readercon

Broad Universe

Cornell Lab of Ornithology Merlin app