The Outer Dark Report
The Outer Dark Symposium on the Greater Weird was held online August 14-16, 2020 for 232 registered attendees, organized by Anya Martin, co-producer of The Outer Dark podcast hosted by This Is Horror.
Scheduled programming featured 12 reading sessions with Mike Allen, Gregory Norman Bossert, Gabriela Damián Miravete, and others. Panels included “From Yellow Wallpaper to Spectral Hues: Color in Weird Fiction” with Daniel Braum, Craig Laurance Gidney, Brian Hauser, Gwendolyn Kiste, Hysop Mulero, and Liv Rainey-Smith; “Art of The Weird: How Do You Illustrate Something that Defies Description?” with Jeanne D’Angelo, Michael Bukowski, Chris Gavaler, Nick Gucker, Lynne Hansen, Matthew Jaffe, and Eric Schaller; and “Weird World-Building: Strange Cities, ‘Other’ Countries, and Cobbly Universes” with Natania Barron, Jesse Bullington, Seb Doubinsky, LM Davis, Jeffrey Ford, and Sarah Read. Other events included a State of The Weird Roundtable with J.S. Breukelaar, Chesya Burke, Julie C. Day, Larissa Glasser, Orrin Grey, and Tonya Liburd; film screenings, and more.
Creators and sponsors shared products via a Promo Zone in Discord and Facebook, plus a program block for sponsors to place ad graphics or short videos.
The Symposium was financed through Indiegogo and 25 sponsors, including This Is Horror, Dekalb Entertainment Commission, Nightscape Press, Tor Nightfire, and Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing. Martin said, “We do not have a firm date and location yet for 2021…. We do plan to host a one-day virtual educators’ symposium [in January or February] centered around a Teaching Diversity in Weird Fiction and Speculative Literature….” Readings and panels can be heard at <http://www.thisishorror.co.uk/category/the-outer-dark/>.
–Arley Sorg
This report and more like it in the October 2020 issue of Locus.
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