This month:

• A Siren’s Voyage
• We Asked Sirens
• Books

We are now fewer than two months from Sirens 2021! If you’re planning on joining us in Denver, we have guidance galore to help you plan your trip and prepare for an amazing, mind-expanding, soul-refreshing retreat. And if you can’t join us this year, we’ve got plenty of reading suggestions and online content to keep you engaged with and vitalized by the weird, wild, wonderful world of speculative fiction and the female and nonbinary people who love it.

A Siren’s Voyage

Our detailed guide to the Sirens adventure continues! In Part 2: Getting Here, we share details about our hotel, the Hilton Inverness. (Did you know it has a pool and a spa?) We also provide some tips on how to travel to Denver by plane, train, or automobile, as well as information on the Sirens Shuttle, a more affordable option for making it from the airport to the hotel.

Part 3: What to Bring spotlights that crucial pre-conference activity: packing! We give advice on handling the desert plains climate, the unpredictable October weather, and bringing an extra bag for all those books and auction items that will be begging to come home with you.

We Asked Sirens

Never been to Sirens and wondering what to expect? Attended many times but wondering how others experience the conference? Well, we conducted some informal surveys, and you can see the results in our We Asked Sirens series. We hope these posts will help you get psyched up for the unique energy you can only find at Sirens!

Books

Book Recommendations and Reviews:

• There’s still time to join us for August’s Book Club, Sunday, August 29 at noon MT (2:00 p.m. ET). We’ll be discussing Violet Kupersmith’s The Frangipani Hotel. If you’d like to join the conversation, email us at (help AT sirensconference.org) to be added to our list.
• Looking for a “hopepunk tale of the apocalypse” to get you through the world’s current and ongoing crises? Jazz Sexton reviews Catherynne M. Valente’s latest novel, The Past is Red-and even recommends some musical accompaniment to go along with it! “Long-time fans and newcomers will find Valente at her best, relishing in elaborate sentences packed with imagery that sort of make you want to visit Garbagetown despite it being the result of decadence and apathy.”
• The fifth installment of this year’s Reading Challenge feature series focuses on the theme of “Saving Yourself.” We know that all Sirens have the capacity to be their own heroes—but a little inspiration from our fictional counterparts never hurts!
• Continuing our Books and Breakfast series, this month we’re spotlighting our three young adult selections: Melissa Bashardoust’s Girls Made of Snow and Glass, Dia Reeves’s Slice of Cherry, and Rory Power’s Wilder Girls.
• This month’s Read with Amy feature explores Hannah Abigail Clarke’s YA contemporary fantasy The Scapegracers and its tagline: Party Hard; Hex Harder. Amy is delighted to find a “mean girls” fantasy book that defies the patriarchy rather than reinforcing tired tropes. “Clarke couldn’t care less about some patriarchal notion of girls needing to relinquish their power in order to achieve an unnecessary redemption… This work is about characters to the exclusion of almost anything else and you’ll love these girls so much, admire them, respect them, that you’ll be back to pick up those dropped threads anyway.”
• Still need a few more stories to keep you busy on a Labor Day weekend retreat or on a back-to-school or back-to-work commute? Be sure to look at our roundup of August’s new releases from female and nonbinary authors!

As summer winds down, we hope that you, yours, and our whole Sirens community are safe, well, and well-stocked with reading material!

This newsletter is brought to you by:

Questions? Concerns? Please email general queries to (help at sirensconference.org) and questions about programming to (programming at sirensconference.org).