Where to Find Me at WorldCon 2026

Author

Andrea Blythe
August 26, 2026

Photo of a convention center, showing a large staircase against massive windows. The Seattle skyline can be seen in the background.

Last year, I attended WorldCon 2025 in Seattle.

I’m so excited to be attending WorldCon against this year, this time in LA. The event is going to have an amazing set of science fiction, fantasy, and horror programming — and I’ll be participating! Here are the panels, workshop, and reading that I’ll be participating in or leading.

If you’re attending, I hope to see you there!

My Schedule

I actually got my act together this year and will be participating in some panels, a workshop, and a reading.

Saturday, August 29

Playing in the Apocalypse – 10:30 am - 11:30 am
Speakers: Monte Lin (moderator), Janet Forbes, Tanya DePass, and Andrea Blythe

Games have explored apocalyptic settings for years. The Fallout franchise is possibly the most well-known, but there are many other games and franchises that play with this concept. Why do we love playing in the apocalypse, and how do games approach this subject matter differently?

Chapbook: The Poetry Mixtape – 12:00 pm - 1 pm
Speakers: Katherine Quevedo (moderator), Brian U. Garrison, and Andrea Blythe

Many poets are first published in a chapbook or zine. This panel discusses that option over a full book collection and explores the benefits of indie and self-publishing poetry in modern times.

Workshop: What You See is What You Write – 4:30 pm - 5:30 pm

In this writing workshop, participants will learn how the ekphrasis poetic form focuses on using words to express a relationship with visual works of art. This writing wokrshop is for all levels.

Sunday August 30

Reading – 9:20 am - 9:35 am

Andrea Blythe will read from her poetry collections, Twelve and Necessary Poisons, as well as from her in-development collection of ekphrasis poetry.

What I’ve Been Working On

My creative work has been a bit of a grab bag for the last couple of months. I have plans for adapting an old poem of mine into a point-and-click puzzle game. Since I’ll be doing this solo, the process involves learning to plan out the game, figure out puzzle design, learn to work with Godot (a game development engine), and practicing my art skills. So, I’ve been sketching more and working through a tutorial on the GDScript (the Godot coding language).

An open sketchbook, showing a watercolor illustration of a woman's face. Her eyes are closed and she has a peaceful expression on her face, like she's holding her face up to the light.

One of my practice sketches that I’m particularly proud of. A pencil sketch with water color, pen, and sharpie (for the dark black background). (The dash across her cheek is from a sketch on the previous page. I choose to work with the already marked page, because it would lower the expectation of the piece being “perfect”.)

Another thing that has been taking up a significant amount of my time has been planning out “What You See Is What You Write,” the ekphrasis poetry workshop I will be teaching at WorldCon. I sort of signed up to teach the workshop by accident, and so had to learn how to put a workshop together for the first time. I’ve done a trial to test out what I’ve come up with, and I think I have something fun.

Good Reads

“I Don't Miss Twitter, I Miss Zines,” noted Manjula Martin in describing her experience of the Santa Rosa Zine Fest:

Back at my car, I put my tiny zine bouquet in my cup holder. I slide the CD mix I bought from the Davis skater artist in the stereo and look in the rearview mirror and straighten the pink baby barrette in my hair and I think to myself, you miss this. People. Making weird art. Being enthusiastic. Nerds. Sharing stuff. Embracing. You miss easy and cheap access to the tools you need to make and put a good thing out into the world. Distribution without middlemen, and control of it. The ability to say “no charge” to someone, and the ability to keep on walking if you don’t want to look at what's being put in front of you. What a discovery, the renewed simplicity of this type of relationship with cultural labor.

C. T. Salazar’s craft essay is a lovely, meandering exploration of the nature of the poetic line in comparison to the flow of a river. It’s poetic and strange and so insightful:

If we understand the river is a line, what are its poetics? There are four elements I’m interested in articulating as a kind of craft: voice, landscape, desire, body. Watching the river I see the ecological interdependency of it all. A case can be made that every line has these four elements, but the river sees these four things as not separate at all. Voice, landscape, desire, and body are all at once able to speak to each other, sometimes one can be confused for the other. To experiment with one is to ask a question about the other, as Dan Beachy-Quick has said. I want to understand how these four things can tangle together to make a line.

Thank you for reading and spending a little of your precious time with me! If you’d like to support my work, you can subscribe for free or, if you are a generous soul, you can buy me a coffee.

I make games! You can play some for free on Itch. If you’re a game developer looking for a writer or narrative designer, please check out my portfolio.

I also write poetry! Find my books here.

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