20 May 2002

Coming Home To Madison
by Diane Silver, Editor

The first time I attended Wiscon I was scared. A friend who had been bugging me to go couldn't come herself, and my only other attending acquaintances were two women I met on a listserv. I had enough web experience to know that online friendships can fizzle fast when you meet face to face. To top it off, I was rooming with a woman I'd never met.

I'm not naturally a social creature. Strangers make me nervous. When I dropped my suitcase off in my room (No roommate yet) and wandered down to registration to pick up the con material, my stomach hurt. I stood at registration surrounded by people who were talking enthusiastically to each other and ignoring me, and focused on the friendliest looking woman staffing the table. She was small and slender and had a welcoming grin and sparkling eyes. She greeted me as if she already knew me. As she searched for my registration packet, I read her name tag. It said: Mary Doria Russell — the guest of honor. My first thought was, "Oh my!" My second was: "This isn't your normal con!"

That was at 3 p.m. By 7 that evening, I knew I'd come home. I'd never been in Madison before, never set foot inside the Concourse Hotel, hadn't met one of these women and men face to face, yet after a few short hours I knew I never wanted to leave. Among Wiscon participants, it's a common experience — this sudden rightness and sense that a place you've never been is native soil.

For some, the excitement comes from the many panels about their favorite books or TV shows, the wild gatherings on the infamous Party Floor or the hilarious Tiptree Auction. For me, it came from the fact that Wiscon is a great convention for a writer. My sense of myself as a writer was nourished by a myriad of panels that focused on the particular difficulties faced by women writers. A writer's respite offered critiques and camaraderie, and the Living Room sessions, amid coffee and chocolate, were so casual they down the barrier between pro and aspiring newcomer.

Wiscon is also a place where things happen. Panels occur, of course and lots of talk, but one of the amazing things about this annual gathering in Madison is that talk turns into action, and that action almost always helps writers. The Tiptree Award was born at Wiscon out of a joke and a comment in Guest of Honor Pat Murphy's speech that year. Immediately after she mentioned it, volunteers were recruited, bake sales were planned, and the rest, of course, is history. Broad Universe was sparked by the World Domination panel in 2000 where we enthusiastically plotted schemes for women writers to take over the world.

All of this, and in particular, the strong affection writers tend to have for Wiscon prompted me to do this special issue of The Broadsheet. I wanted to know what it was about Wiscon that makes things happen. How does it nurture writers? What wisdom does Wiscon offer for us writerly folk?

We'll attempt to answer those questions in a variety of ways. To explore Wiscon's history, we offer the GOH speech of one of Wiscon's founding mothers, Jeanne Gomoll. To sample some of the wisdom available to writers at Wiscon, we've posted Elisabeth Vonarburg's GOH speech, What Is A Writer? She has added a post-September 11 note on the difficult question of what the writer's life means in a world filled with violence. Laurie J. Marks, Amy Axt Hanson, and Cheryl Morgan offer commentaries on what it's like to be in the Concourse during the Wiscon whirlwind.

By the time I wheeled my suitcase out of the Concourse that first year, my life had changed. My stranger roommate had become a friend, and my two Internet acquaintances had become real-life buddies. I had attended one session because I liked the presenter's last book, and a post-session conversation turned into a deep friendship and a mutual support system for both of us. I left Wiscon with my long-dormant passion for writing. Not bad for a four-day trip to Wisconsin.