GIFCon 2025: Queering the Fantastic – Paper Speaker Bios

Event registration can be found here including tickets for Workshops and the Networking Event.
The full Programme can be found here.
Keynotes and this year’s Reading List can be found here.
Workshops and Roundtable information can be found here.
The Crafting Your Queer Fantasy TBR post can be found here.
Our post on How to Join the Discord can be found here.

This document is updated as needed. All times listed are BST, British Summer Time.

Panelists in alphabetical order (by first name):

Dr. Alex Henderson

Abstract:
The Queer Trickster in Margaret Owen’s Little Thieves

As scholars such as Helena Bassil-Morozow (2012, 2015, 2017) have explored, the trickster character type—with its roots in mythology, folklore, and oral storytelling traditions—has been constantly reinvented and remixed in the context of contemporary literature and pop culture. Alongside the potential to perform queer readings and retellings of mythological tricksters such as Loki, there is a greater sense of queer resonance in the characteristics and social role of the trickster. Likewise, the themes of liminality, marginality, shape-changing, and questioning authority with a playful and rebellious sense of humour, mean that the trickster may be especially at home in work aimed at adolescent readers, particularly those of marginalised identities. As my thesis (2023) argued, the emerging space of queer young adult (YA) literature is a vibrant storytelling landscape for trickster characters and trickster tales.  
 
In this presentation I will discuss one example and explore the queer trickster characteristics of Vanja “The Penny Phantom” Schmidt, the anti-heroine of Margaret Owen’s Little Thieves fantasy trilogy (2021-2025). Vanja is a young, queer, marginal figure caught between Gods and humans, and her character arc is deeply concerned with agency and autonomy in a way quintessential to trickster tales. She uses shapeshifting magic and clever subterfuge to impersonate nobility and steal from the rich, transgressing the supposedly immutable borders of wealth and class, all while offering the reader scathing and witty critique of the power structures and entitled individuals that support this social divide. Vanja’s liminality, humour, and emergence as an (accidental) folk hero mark her as a queer teenage trickster protagonist and a fascinating example of the potential in this storytelling space.  

Bio:
Alex Henderson holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Canberra, where they completed a creative thesis on LGBTQIA+ representation in young adult genre fiction. Their scholarly work has been  published in the International Journal of Young Adult Literature, Papers: Explorations Into Children’s Literature, and the Journal of Popular Romance Studies; and their short stories have appeared in literary  magazines and anthologies, including the Aurealis Award finalist An Unexpected Party (Fremantle Press, 2023). 

Alexandra Davies

Abstract:
Are we too heteronormative?”: Mpreg and transgression in Teen Wolf fanfiction

This  paper explores the transgressive potential of mpreg (“male pregnancy”) in Teen Wolf fanfiction to challenge heteronormative gender norms. Specifically, it responds to Sophie Lewis’ call to “[decouple] gestation from the gender binary” and generate “utopian thought” about reproduction. I argue that some mpreg fanfiction already engages with these goals and is well placed to do so, as an ‘unauthorised” literature that reimagines pre-existing texts and worlds.  However, mpreg stories have also been accused of reinforcing heteronormative values and family structures. This research tests the transgressiveness or heteronormativity of the mpreg trope through a mixed methods approach. By reviewing the metadata of highly rated stories on AO3 (a popular fanfiction archive) about Teen Wolf’s most popular couple (Stiles/Derek), I have identified several seemingly heteronormative trends. These included the fandom’s preference for depicting Stiles (the more easily feminised character) as a pregnant man. However, by identifying less commonly employed tropes, I will explore gender and species taboos that complicate surface level ‘heteronromative’ readings of the characters. These include depicting Derek as a pregnant alpha werewolf, werewolf cubs and male lactation. With reference to feminist theory by Elizabeth Grosz, Barbara Creed and Iris Marion Young, I trace strategies some authors use to queer and even break down the gender binary.   

Bio:
Alexandra Davies (she/her) is a first year PhD student at the University of Strathclyde where she is researching fandom bullying and censorship. She also completed her Masters in Gender Studies at the University of Strathclyde where she explored feminist science fiction and werewolves. She wrote her thesis on heteronormativity and mpreg (male pregnancy) in Teen Wolf fanfiction, which included a deep dive into lycanthropy and feminist and psychoanalytic theory on monstrosity and reproduction. She also has a Master’s and Bachelor’s degree in Classics from the University of Bristol and retains extensive knowledge of Graeco-Roman mythology. 

Alexis Lothian

Abstract:
White Men, Otherwise? Slash Fanfiction, Race, and the Persistence of Slavefic 
 
Slash fanfiction emerged in the 1970s and 1980s as a genre of informally published romantic and erotic fiction that fantasized sexual relationships between male, largely white fictional characters, and has been an immensely influential thread within the vast and diverse universe of contemporary fanfiction. Feminist scholars have argued that slash represents an egalitarian erotics by using the unmarked bodies of men to explore women’s sexual fantasies without the constraints imposed on female bodies. Yet some slash places its erotics within contexts of intense hierarchy and domination, worldbuilding slaveholding fantasy societies in order to imagine a sexual relationship between an enslaved individual and his owner. For such fiction to be written and shared between white fans without recognition of its implicit racial content reproduces antiblackness by presuming that chattel slavery’s histories of violence and  dehumanization are available to be the backdrop of white sexual imagining. But this critique does not help us understand why “slavefic” has been so persistently popular––including among fan writers and audiences of color.  
 
I use queer of color critique to explore a popular and complex example of slavefic by a Black writer. “A Kept Boy,” begun by poisontaster in 2008, developed into a shared universe set in an alternate United States of America in which a debt-based version of slavery is legal and compulsory. The primary romance is between a white man enslaved since early childhood and a white male slave owner with abolitionist aspirations, A BDSM romance fantasy of power, complicity and consent, “A Kept Boy” offers pleasures that would play out very differently were they not manifesting on white male fictionalized bodies. It raises the question: could imaginatively enslaving the bodies of white men become a mode of reckoning with what Sharon Holland has called the erotic life of racism? 

Bio:
Alexis Lothian is Associate Professor in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at University of Maryland College Park. Her research centers on speculative fiction, digital media, and fan culture and their relationships to gender, race, and disability justice. She is the author of Old Futures: Speculative Fiction and Queer Possibility (NYU Press, 2018) and has published in Utopian Studies, American Quarterly, Feminist Studies, Transformative Works and Cultures, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Cinema Journal, and Camera Obscura, among other venues. She co-edits the Queer/Trans/Digital/Diaspora series for NYU Press. 

Amy Richmond

Abstract:
“The blood of the tree spreading over her tongue”: Drinking the Juices of Queer Power 
 
Eve and the apple; deflowering; nectar; juices: to engage with botanical symbolism is to engage with imagery of sex, of desire, of the eroticised woman. These images are seen as symbols of innocents succumbing to temptation or of wicked femininity and place the erotic woman as the desired and not in the active role of the desiring. This paper seeks to queer this status quo. Through engagement with narratives from across fantastic modes, the analysis dissects how botanical symbolism has been employed by female creators of fantasy to allow their female characters agency over their own desires. It engages in detailed close reading of the uses of repeated imagery and atypical metre, in conjunction with relevant critics, to queer readings of feminine fruit consumption as transgressive and deviant behaviour, and grant agency and power to the characters. Analysis primarily takes the form of direct textual engagement, closely reading the use of botanical symbolism in relation to the relationships of the characters connected with it. It bolsters its argument by engaging with the concept of queer radicalism and through the employment of – and, sometimes, disagreement with – relevant theorists and critics. It interrogates symbols of fruit consumption, body exchange, and erotic desire in Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market’ (1859) and Samantha Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree (2019), with reference to Hope Mirrlees’ Lud-in-the-Mist (1926). 

Bio:
Amy Richmond (she/they) is an independent researcher who holds an MA(hons) in English from the University of Aberdeen and an MLitt in Fantasy Literature from the University of Glasgow. Specialising in contemporary fantastic fiction, their research interests include spatial theory, queer theory, Young Adult fiction, and body politics. She has presented at GIFCon and Exclamat!on Conference and is on the Mapping the Impossible journal board as Social Media Officer and Copyeditor. They currently work as an Assistant Commissioning Editor for Emerald Publishing. 

Anna Bark Persson

Abstract:
Sword Lesbians: Fantastic Fantasies in Fantasy Fiction and Fandom 
 
“The root cause to all of the world’s problems,” according to men’s right activist Andrew Tate, is “that there’s not enough men who walk around […] with swords.” Around the same time as Tate became a household name in late 2022 when arrested for sex trafficking, a tweet with an attached TikTok video went viral. Posted by user @elianadivakarr, it read “SHE HAS A SWORD NOW” and showed a buff lesbian using a broadsword to split a tree trunk into wood. 
 
Nicole Coenen, a.k.a @lumberjacklesbian, is part of a wider preoccupation with swords and the queer women who wield them in online sapphic spaces. Where in the mainstream, swords are associated with traditional, reactionary, and problematic forms of male masculinities – such as Tate’s and his fans’ – queer women have appropriated the imagery of swords and knights and associated symbolism for lesbian purposes. This trend can be seen across social media platforms (like tumblr, Reddit, X, and TikTok), in fandom spaces, and in recent fantasy fiction – such as Tamsyn Muir’s The Locked Tomb (2019–), Seth Dickinson’s The Traitor Baru Cormorant (2018), and C.L. Clark’s The Unbroken (2022).  
 
In this paper, I read the sword lesbian across fantasy texts and online fandom spaces, understanding it both as a lesbian and masculine motif, drawing on Elizabeth Grosz’s (1995) concept of the lesbian-machinic and on female masculinity (Halberstam 1998; Noble 2003; Mackay 2021). I approach the sword lesbian both as a way to forge connections around queer female sexual identity and an instantiation of the wider societal preoccupation with supposedly traditional and/or toxic forms of masculinities, highlighting the need to understand how masculinity is represented and constructed online beyond male masculinities. 
 
References 
Grosz, Elizabeth. 1995. Space, Time, and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies. Routledge. 
Halberstam, Jack. 1998. Female Masculinity. Duke Univ. Press. 
Mackay, Finn. 2021. Female Masculinities and the Gender Wars: The Politics of Sex. I.B. Tauris

Bio:
Anna Bark Persson (she/her) is a postdoctoral researcher in English literature at Umeå University, Sweden. In the postdoc project “Reimagining the Red Planet: Feminist and Queer Interventions”, she explores feminist and queer Mars fiction and alternate conceptualization of the red planet and space exploration beyond the mainstream or traditional Mars SF. She holds a PhD in gender studies and wrote her thesis, Steel as the Answer? Viking Bodies, Power, and Masculinity in Anglophone Fantasy Literature 2006–2016 (2023), on Viking motifs in gritty fantasy. Her main research interests include speculative fiction, outer space, queer theory, and (queer) masculinities. 

C.T. Power

Abstract:
House of the Dragon: Making Things Perfectly Queer 
 
This paper proposes to analyse HBO’s House of the Dragon (2022-), the prequel to Game of Thrones (2011-2019), to highlight an emergent narrative positing of queerness and queer characters within a broader corpus of contemporary telefantasy adaptations. From the explicit relationship between The Wheel of Time’s (Amazon Prime Video; 2021-) Moiraine and Siuan, to the onscreen exploration of Jaskier’s sexuality in The Witcher (Netflix; 2019-), to Rhaenyra’s onscreen queerness, these telefantasy adaptations are not shying away from bringing queer characters to the fore. While none of these series is about queerness, it is inscribed into the narratives as commonplace. These series enable a diverse range of queer readings. Taking one example from the third chapter of my PhD which analyses the proliferation of queer characters in 2020s telefantasy, this paper examines the queer implications of Rhaenyra and Alicent’s narrative tension in House of the Dragon. 
 
From the outset, the series establishes the strong connection and friendship which ties these two characters together. The crux of the series lies in the destruction of their friendship which sets them apart. Reading this and their resulting feud and obsession through a queer lens however allows for a deeper understanding of the tensions between the two and sexuality within this fantasy world. Queer characters and queer readings are nothing new in telefantasy, with series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (The WB; 1997-2003) having long engagements with fans and queer studies alike. However, as this paper argues, telefantasy has entered a new queer phase, differing significantly from earlier queer antecedents within the genre. Examining this through House of the Dragon’s implicit and explicit engagements with queerness allows us to understand developments in the genre at large. 

Bio:
C. T. Power is a final year PhD candidate in University College Dublin and resident scholar of the UCD Humanities Institute. Her research focuses on fantasy in television and literature, offering an inter-sectional analysis of the representation of gender, race and sexuality in the contemporary genre. Her project, Possibilities and Potentialities: Race, Gender, Sexuality and the Evolution of Transmedia Fantasy 2011-2024, combines interdisciplinary analysis of fantasy novels with their television adaptations, exploring the emergence of fantasy TV and the inter-medial impact of the genre’s new prominence in the market. They are also a keen hiker, swimmer and cinema-goer.

Caighlan Smith

Abstract:
Challenging Chronos: Re-Queering Classical Mythology in Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical 
 
In their review of the buried queer histories of video games, Bo Ruberg (2019) observes that, “video games have always been queer.” While much older than the video game medium, classical Greek mythology has likewise always been queer. Although contemporary media has predominantly straightwashed classical mythology, some adaptations have begun a “re-queering” process. For example, Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles (2011) reinvigorates Achilles’ queer relationship with his male companion, Patroclus, a plotline explored elsewhere in Troy: Fall of a City (2018) on Netflix. Summerfall Studios’ Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical (2023) is an interactive digital narrative game which embraces the queerness of Greek mythology, not only in content but in form. Through its primary game mechanics of player narrative choice and alternate endings, Stray Gods queers both the time and space in which players experience this retelling of Greek myth. Rather than forcing players into a set narrative, Stray Gods uses the video game form to challenge the typical chrononormativity of contemporary media. Elizabeth Freeman (2010) developed the concept of “chrononormativity” to discuss how the timelines our lives are expected to take are generally heteronormative, from marriage to children to the gendered and straight roles of stereotypical family life. Ruberg highlights how video games have their own form of chrononormativity, designed to feed into heteronormative and neoliberal linear expectations of the “good life.” In this presentation, I review how Stray Gods designs queer time and queer spatiality into its gameplay, which works alongside its narrative embracing of queer sexual, romantic, and gender identities, to not only reinstate the queerness of Greek mythology, but to remind us that myth itself – as a narrative form which only exists through regular change and reinterpretation – is a fluid, queer medium. 

Bio:
Caighlan Smith is a Ph.D. candidate and Vanier Scholar with the English Department of Memorial University of Newfoundland. Smith is an award-winning fiction novelist and holds a B.A. (Hons.) in English from Memorial University and an MLitt (with Distinction) in Fantasy from the University of Glasgow. Her research interests include ideology critique, intersectional feminism, popular culture, and video game hero narratives. Among other work, she has published on the hero archetype’s patriarchal messages in dystopian literature (Gramarye) and the neoliberal management mechanics of zombie apocalypse video games (Game Studies). 

Catherine Olver

Abstract:
Family (of) Trees? More-Than-Human Families in Queer Fairytales 
 
Family trees are linked to real trees by more than metaphor. Throughout history, family trees have determined who inherits and rules land and its plant, animal, and human inhabitants. Patrilineal inheritance rules have also oppressed queer individuals by enforcing gender binaries and heterosexual marriage. This paper examines how queer fairytales reimagine families and inheritance based on connections other than blood, and therefore as more-than-human. 
 
In Emma Donoghue’s “Kissing the Witch” (1997), fairy-tale heroines refuse patriarchal pressure to marry and instead live with female lovers, mostly on the margins of society in wild places. Rather than bearing heirs, they redirect their fertility into relationships with nonhumans around them, healing work as wise women (a role historically overlapping with the midwife, as Kevin Goldstein explains), and supporting younger queer individuals. The structure of Donoghue’s book reinforces this anti-patriarchal model of fertility and inheritance, as we would expect from a 1997 collection.  
 
Angel Daniel Matos cautions that many contemporary books for queer young people offer an assimilative vision of happiness. In most European cultures, being queer no longer forces individuals to the edge of society. To what extent do collections of fairytales and folktales like Pete Jordi Wood’s “Tales From Beyond the Rainbow” (2023), Rachel Plummer’s “Wain” (2019), and the Hungarian collection “A Fairytale For Everyone” (2020, edited by Boldizsár M. Nagy) continue to reject the patriarchal family tree and offer a green, as well as queer, vision of family? 
 
Goldstein, Kevin. ‘Nurtured in a Lonely Place: The Wise Woman as Type in “The Goose Girl at the Spring,” in “Trangressive Tales: Queering the Grimms,” edited by Kay Turner and Pauline Greenhill, Wayne State UP, 2012. 
Matos, Angel Daniel. “The Reparative Impulse of Queer Young Adult Literature.” Routledge, 2025. 

Bio:
Catherine Olver writes for a greener future and a proud queer present: through her poetry and fantasy writing for different age groups and through academic articles as an ecocritic with a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Find her wandering @the_wordwoods on X and Instagram, and discover more of her creative and academic work at https://catherineolver.co.uk. 

Cheryl Myfanwy Morgan

Abstract:
The Fourth Branch – Past and Future 

The Fourth Branch of The Mabinogion begins with a story in which two brothers rape a sacred virgin. As punishment they are made to spend three years living as animals: deer, wild boar and wolves. Each time they are a mated pair, and the brothers take it in turns as the female, experiencing pregnancy and childbirth. 
 
Later in the narrative, the hero Llew is cursed never to have a human bride. To get around the curse he is given a wife who is made from flowers. 
 
In 2009 Seren Books began publishing a series of novellas that are modern re-interpretations of stories from The Mabinogion. One of these, The Meat Tree, is based on the Fourth Branch. Written by Gwyneth Lewis, a former National Poet of Wales, it is a science fiction story set on a space ship in which the fantastical elements take place in an immersive virtual reality game. Lewis notes that some of the inspiration for the story came from meeting the transgender biology professor, Joan Roughgarden, who is an expert in sex and gender in the animal world. 
 
This paper will look at what we can know about attitudes towards gender in mediaeval Wales, at the time when The Mabinogion was written down, and at the way that Lewis has re-interpreted the themes for the modern world. 

Bio:
Cheryl Morgan (she/her) is a writer, editor, and publisher. She is the winner of four Hugo Awards and is the owner of Wizard’s Tower Press. Her critical work has appeared in a variety of venues including the Academia Lunare series, Fafnir, Vector, Speculative Insight and Imagining the Celtic Past in Modern Fantasy. Cheryl was a Guest of Honour at the 2012 Eurocon in Zagreb and the 2019 Finncon in Jyväskylä. She was a keynote speaker at Worlding SF at the University of Graz in 2018, and at When It Changed, at the University of Glasgow in December 2022.

Eleanor Patterson

Abstract:
Outside the Box: Form and Gender in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman 
 
Recent allegations against Neil Gaiman have perhaps shifted many people’s perceptions of his work, particularly the long-standing fan favourite series of The Sandman. Whilst I acknowledge the allegations against Gaiman and stand with the victims, I still aim to use The Sandman as an example of the way trans and non-binary characters have been portrayed in various forms of media since the series’ original release in comic book form between 1989 and 1996. Throughout this paper, I will compare and analyse the changes made to the character of Desire through the cultural and social shifts that occurred alongside the release of new adaptations and interpretations of The Sandman. Having first been released as a comic book, The Sandman was subsequently adapted into audio by Audible in 2019, and then into a television series released by Netflix in 2022, after many failed attempts to adapt the work for film. 
As their name suggestions, Desire is a character who has power over many forms of sexuality and is able to use their shifting appearance to literally embody what other people desire. Due, in part, to the amount of time that passed between adaptations there were many changes made to wording and characterisation across the series, with many of these reflecting instances where the comic was no longer considered politically correct. By considering these changes, it is possible to examine the role media type plays in representing gender, particularly as it exists outside the mainstream conception of the gender binary. 
This paper will conclude by asking how much the character of Desire is shaped by the medium used to tell the story, and whether or not The Sandman’s place as a seminal piece of the fantasy canon influences the stories it tells. 

Bio:
Eleanor Patterson (she/they) is a recent graduate of the University of Glasgow’s MLitt programme. As part of their dissertation for this course she curated a digital exhibition featuring artwork from the Hunterian Art Gallery, alongside an analysis of the illustrations of eighteenth-century educational texts. Following this, Eleanor hopes to begin a PhD at the University of Glasgow examining the role of adaptation in shaping representations of gender in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman.  

Elisa Pesce

Abstract:
Transcending Life, Death, and Magic: The Falt Lines of Identity in Aiden Thomas’s Cemetery Boys 
 
This paper presents Aiden Thomas’s Cemetery Boys (2020) as a YA urban fantasy/gothic novel centered on liminality: its protagonists, Yadriel Vélez Flores and Julian Diaz, embody the subversive blurring of several interrelated boundaries — those between the Latin American and the dominant (white) community in contemporary East Los Angeles, immigrants and born U.S. citizens, genders and sexual orientations, and the world of the living and that of the dead. Using Cemetery Boy’s magicification of the latter boundary as an entry point for my analysis of other instances of borderlines and margin(alisation) in the novel, I argue that, by falling in love with each other, Yadriel and Julian transform said borderlines into fault lines, or faults. In fact, the novel challenges a metaphorical understanding of faults as weak areas likely to cause problems or failure and portrays instead Yadriel and Julian as faults in the geological/geographical sense of the term, that is, as producers and releasers of transformative energy. Yadriel particularly (and thanks to Julian) harnesses this energy to discontinue the customs and traditions that prevent him, a transgender boy, from being understood and accepted by his family and community. My analysis combines Sharon P. Holland’s theories of social death and “raising the dead” with studies of trans geography, especially Jack Halberstam’s reading of “trans” as a politics of transitivity and Eva Hayward and Jami Weinstein’s signification of the prefix as “agitation, operation, locomotion, localization, and action” that troubles “ontologized states.” (1) 
 
(1) Sharon P. Holland, 2000, Raising the Dead: Readings of Death and (Black) Subjectivity; Jack Halberstam, 2018, Trans* A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability; Eva Hayward and Jami Weinstein, 2015, “Tranimalities in the Age of Trans* Life”. 

Bio:
Elisa Pesce (she/her) is PhD candidate in English Literature at the University of Glasgow. Her new project reorients her doctoral research on the anti-hegemonic potential of women’s maximalist novels by focusing on how YA fantasy and superhero narratives explore power dynamics and discrimination in contemporary U.S. culture and society. Elisa was Early Career Fellow of the International American Studies Association in 2023/24. She has presented her research outputs at various international conferences and in international journals such as EJAS, REDEN and RIAS. She is the co-editor of the special section on book bans of issue #35 of RSAJournal.

Elizabeth Elliott

Abstract:
Early modern Scottish fantasy: Queer embodiment and practices of social exclusion in The Gyre Carling 

Focusing in on a moment in the history of fantastic narrative, this paper examines how a poem from sixteenth-century Scotland illustrates a process of geographical storytelling that contributes to the production of gendered and raced conceptions of sexuality and public space. Imagining a mythic origin story for North Berwick Law that turns on the expulsion of an unruly ogress from the borders of Scotland, ‘The Gyre Carling’ mobilises the traditional function of monster stories, in ‘defining what Europeans viewed as civilized cultural practices and establishing antipathy towards bodies and desires at odds with a European Christian ideal’ (DeVun 2021: 40). Antisemitism and Islamophobia intersect in the poem’s depiction of monstrous femininity, its misogynistic humour at once serving to set limits on the social acceptability of women’s exercise of sexual agency, and to map out which bodies are deemed as having the right to belong, which are constructed as interlopers. Drawing on work in Black feminist geography and premodern queer studies, this paper exposes a small part of the sedimented history through which heterosexuality and heteronormativity have been produced and reified as natural, in the relatively recent past. As Katherine McKittrick argues, recognition of how cartographic stories such as ‘The Gyre Carling’ work to ‘unjustly organize human hierarchies in place and reify uneven geographies in familiar, seemingly natural ways’ opens up the possibility that ‘these rules are alterable and there exists a terrain through which different geographic stories can be and are told’ (McKittrick 2006: x).     
 
Leah DeVun, The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance (Columbia University Press, 2021) 
 
Katherine McKittrick, Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle (University of Minnesota Press, 2006) 

Bio:
Elizabeth Elliott is a senior lecturer in English Literature at the University of Aberdeen. With research interests in the history of emotion, queer theory, and medievalism, her recent publications include publications include work on responses to Arthurian myth in Young Adult fiction.

Dr. Emma French

Abstract:
“They hate to see a girlboss winning”: the reinvisioning of race and sexuality within D&D’s drow elves 
 
As a site where anxieties surrounding race and feminine sexual agency overlap, the once-monstrous coding of dark elves (drow) within Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) 5th Edition illustrates prejudices of the predominantly white male authorities behind the D&D game text. However, recent D&D-inspired texts in videogames and actual play media have popularised alternative drow narratives, which counteract the racism and misogyny present within game rubrics. Many authors attempt to either revise the game-text’s demonisation of femininity, or generate sympathy and recognised personhood for drow individuals through queer romantic relationships. 
 
This paper will examine attempts to create sympathetic drow in recent D&D media, touching on Critical Role, Escape from the Bloodkeep, and Baldur’s Gate 3. It discusses the attempts made to revise and dismantle drow monstrosity, focusing around two themes: the innate and intrinsic ‘evil’ of drow, and the predatory cast placed upon the agency and sexuality of female drow, which mimics the techniques Edward Said noted of Anglocentric approaches to the Orient. This paper highlights how authors revise the themes of gender and sexuality within the drow text, often without fully dismantling the Orientalist coding underlying drow soceity.  
 
This paper therefore concludes with a brief examination of how drow and their revision within these various texts is indicative of a wider trend noted by Fan Studies scholars such as Mel Stanfill (2021), Alexis Lothian (2021), and Rukmini Pande (2018): that the supposedly utopian, progressive properties ascribed to fandom in scholarship apply to the confidence with which transformative works typically queer their original text, rather than necessarily decolonise it. As a textual artefact that spans the intersections of queerness, gender discourse, and race, drow thus serve as a useful case study for showing the strengths, weaknesses, and underlying biases of current fandom discourse – which seems to still be struggling to articulate its refiguring of race, particularly when compared to its celebration of queer identities.  

Bio:
Dr. Emma French completed her PhD at the University of Glasgow very recently (in December 2024). Her thesis focused on D&D as transformative fantasy, looking at the ways that professional D&D players revise or challenge literary fantasy convention within their play. Her work is published in the Fantastika journal, as well as Real Life in Real Time (2023) and Utopia at the Tabletop (2024). Until she tentatively leaves academic hibernation, she can typically be found at home snuggled up with her two cats, Jester and Vex.

Faarih

Abstract:
Gothic Sanguinities: Reimagining Vampiric Metaphors in the Post-AIDS Era 
 
Blood, sex, queerness—the defining trifecta of vampirism. Vampiric media holds particular significance for queer people, who tend to identify with the creature of darkness that lives at the fringes of society. Identification with the abject and the other is a means of reclaiming power in a society that stigmatises queerness and characterises it as a source of moral and social corruption. In the wake of the AIDS epidemic, the queer body was further pathologiesed as a site of physical corruption and contagion. As Sontag puts it in AIDS and its Metaphors, “AIDS is understood as a disease not only of sexual excess, but perversity” (114). Like the vampire, AIDS is seen to be invited into the body, causing an unnatural and irreversible transformation that poses a danger to other members of society. At the same time, the vampiric body is the antithesis of disease—though its uncanny nature evoke dis-ease.The vampire thus exists in a paradoxical state of eternal preservation and perpetual infection. Its body, frozen at the moment of death, represents both decay and immortality—a contradiction that mirrors the complex reality of living with chronic illness in the modern era. This duality is manifested in Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1976) and its 2022 AMC adaptation, where the vampire’s body becomes a site of both horror and transcendence. Through comparative analysis of these texts, this paper examines how vampire metaphors evolved to process the cultural trauma of the AIDS crisis, transforming Gothic tropes of contagion and corruption into metaphors for survival and resistance. By tracking the shift from coded to explicit representation of queer desire both these versions, we can understand how vampire Gothic continues to articulate intersection of queerness, disability, and immortality in contemporary culture. 

Bio:
Sandhra Sur (chosen name, Faarih) is a queer writer and academic who holds an MLitt in Fantasy from the University of Glasgow (2024). Their research focuses on intermedial interpretations of the fantastic, which influences their creative practice of combining immersive soundscapes with storytelling. They have performed their work at local queer art exhibitions and are currently working on a novel exploring the generational and national trauma of the 1970s Naxalbari Movement in India through the lens of fantasy and horror.

Frankie Bradley

Abstract:
Monstrous Love & Queer Identity 

Monster Romance, while considered taboo in mainstream circles, has become a popular concept in the fantasy romance genre, with thousands of titles available that cater to every niche interest. Monsters flood the market with minotaurs (Mail Order Minotaur by Lilith Stone, Grab the Bull by the Horns by Sam Hall), ogres (Get In My Swamp by G.M. Fairy), and faeries of every court (Dark Fey by Cynthia A. Morgan, The Fallen-Fey Chronicles by S.L. Gavyn) just to name a few. While many of these romances are presented as heteronormative—a cisgender woman involved with a masculine presenting creature—there is an element of queerness in the pursuit of that which has been othered by society. Monsters have had a long history of queer coding, an act that utilizes queer stereotypes to signal a monster or villain as being inherently evil. However, the monster romance seeks to subvert the idea of the monstrous as unattractive or repulsive by embracing it as a potential romantic and sexual partner. By comparing paranormal, or monstrous, romances such as the Modern Tales of Faerie by Holly Black, Duskwalker Brides by Opal Reyne, and Dragonbait by Vivian Vande Velde, we can see what queer stereotypes are in use when characterizing the female heroines and their monstrous counterparts, how these narratives compare to openly queer narratives, and how effective these romances are as stand ins for queer identity.  

Bio:
Frankie Bradley is a PhD researcher in the School of Arts & Humanities at Ulster University. They are currently working on projects involving decolonization in speculative fiction and exploring how identities are impacted by imperialist culture norms. With over a decade’s experience in the book industry, they have a variety of skills and are always willing to pick up new ones.

Gabriella Fryer

Abstract:
“Marvellous wound”: a medieval-queer reading of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber  
 
This essay explores the potential for a medieval-queer reading of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber. It begins by examining specific moments of fluidity between human and nonhuman/more-than-human forms in Old Norse Literature and aims to contextualize these moments as part of a pre-historical understanding of ontological existence, which we might recontextualize in the 21st c. as a form of “queerness.” 
 
The essay also establishes that even as these stories were being written down, this way of being was being pushed to the margins. The re-emergence of the “queer” figures we find in Old Norse Literature in 19th-20th c. fairytales and fantastical stories often retain and reaffirm the kinds of negative characterizations that were attached to, once upon a time, more socially and culturally acceptable ways of existing with and in the world.  
 
While Carter’s The Blood Chamber responds to the second-wave feminism of its historical moment, this essay argues that Carter’s exploration of the nonhuman/more-than-human more closely aligns with queer theory. By analyzing stories like “The Tiger’s Bride,” “The Lady of the House of Love,” and “The Company of Wolves,” the essay demonstrates how Carter’s heroines transgress societal and gender expectations and find empowerment through their monstrous transformations. These transformations are not merely symbolic; they represent a rejection of patriarchal norms and an embrace of a more fluid ontology. Furthermore, it suggests that Carter’s “queer” retellings subvert the moralizing and gendered norms of later fairytale and fantasy stories by tapping into the pre-historical roots of these figures.  
 
Ultimately, the essay proposes that a medieval-queer reading of The Bloody Chamber offers a way to transcend the limitations of human-centric perspectives, opening up possibilities for a more radical and inclusive understanding of being. 

Bio:
Gabriella Fryer earned her MA in English at the University of Maine. She studies medieval and gothic literature and writes about the intersections of ontology, ecology, and storytelling. She also enjoys writing poetry, flash fiction, and short stories inspired by fairytales and folktales. Her chapbook, Muted Red, was published by Bottlecap Press in 2023 and her creative writing can also be found in Crow & Cross Keys, 11 Willows Press, Shemom, Broadside Journal, among others. When she is not reading or writing, Gabriella enjoys cooking and spending time outside with her husband and kids.

Harry Rollison

Abstract:
“She’d be both, or none at all […] a witch and a wizard too”: Queering the Gendered Magical Binary in Terry Pratchett’s Equal Rites

This paper examines the ways in which Terry Pratchett satirises, disrupts, and queers the gendered magical binary in his 1987 novel Equal Rites.  
 
In Fantasy, magic is frequently defined and delineated by gender: wizards are men and witches are women. The distinction is so ubiquitous that, in his speech ‘Why Gandalf Never Married’, Pratchett proposes ‘In the fantasy world there is no such thing as a male witch […] There certainly isn’t such a thing as a female wizard’. This gendered magical binary is often hegemonic. As Pratchett summarises, there is a ‘very clear division between magic done by women and magic done by men’: witchcraft is ‘poor quality, third-rate, negative stuff’, while wizards are ‘cerebral, clever, powerful, and wise’.  Subsequently, witches are ancillary to wizards, narratively peripheral, and denied depth of characterisation. The magical binary thus promotes patriarchal thinking and reductive gender stereotypes. 
 
In Equal Rites, Pratchett distances witches from magic, reinscribing witchcraft as domestic work to explores ideas of womanhood. Conversely, wizards are depicted as the antithesis of their stereotype which, alongside presenting Granny Weatherwax as a male-coded witch, inverts both parties’ traditional allocations within the magical binary. This critique is most explicit through Eskarina Smith: a girl who is assigned a wizard at birth but then trains as a witch. Esk’s movement between magical professions, and subsequent insistence upon assuming both identities, destabilises and queers the magical binary. Throughout Equal Rites, Pratchett provides metafictional commentary on the hegemonic depictions of gender in the Fantasy genre, proposing author and reader agency is required to incite purposeful change. 
 
References: 
Terry Pratchett, ‘Why Gandalf Never Married’ (Novacon 15, 1985), https://ansible.uk/misc/tpspeech.html [accessed 3 April 2024].  

Bio:
Harry Rollison (he/him) is a practice-based English PhD candidate at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he also received his BA in English and MA in Creative Writing. An Epic Fantasy author—meaning he writes books that are too long—his research examines the subgenre’s systemic conservatism through the figure of the witch. 

Inês Guedes Vaz

Abstract:
Paper Title: Us Princesses Have to Stick Together: Uses and Representations of Queerness in Contemporary YA Fantasy Animation 
 
Young Adult fantasy narratives oftentimes take the shape of coming-of-age stories, depicting and exploring the experiences and struggles characteristic of adolescence. On the other hand, while animation pieces can be more commonly associated with childhood, there are countless examples of those that explore this passage from childhood onto adulthood. 
As such, in this paper I seek to explore how YA fantasy animation works feature and address specific coming-of-age struggles of today’s world, specifically by considering how queerness is used and represented in these stories, focusing on how it influences worldbuilding and characterization, and how different experiences of the LGBTQUIA+ spectrum are incorporated. 
To this end, I will be focusing on two main texts – She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (SPOP) and The Owl House (TOH) – as they can be seen as two recent examples of innovative projects that deal with queer themes and stand as stepping stones within the context of their respective studios, industry titans DreamWorks and Disney Television Animation. 
I want to look at these two works specifically for the ways in which they intertwine notions of magic, queerness and morality, and how these affect the construction of personal identity, focusing on the deconstructions and subversions they make of said matters whilst also looking at the history of queer representations within the mentioned studios, discussing issues of queer-coding in this context, as well as addressing matters of censorship. 
Hence, by looking at the different ways in which queerness informs the construction of these characters and worlds, I hope to point out how shows like SPOP and TOH help to enrich fantasy narratives for young viewers while also contributing to the normalization of queerness in mainstream media. 

Bio:
Inês Vaz is a Portuguese PhD student and aspiring researcher who reconciles her personal interests with academic work, so she has an excuse to buy more books. In her PhD thesis, which is being funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, she will deal with representations of hags and crones in works of fantasy animation of the last century, focusing primarily on notions of monstrosity and Otherness in the show The Owl House (2020-2023). In previous research she has explored themes such as the monomyth, literature and other media, adaptation, animation, and children’s and YA fiction.

Isabelle Hanshue

Abstract:
Monsters Who Inspire Love: Monstrosity and the Queer Family Dynamic in Gerardo Sámano Córdova’s Novel Monstrilio 

In Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein, the creature states: “If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear, and chiefly towards you … my creator.” For the monster rejected by his creator, the only option left is to inspire fear rather than love. But what if someone chose to love their monstrous creation? Gerardo Sámano Córdova’s novel Monstrilio examines what would happen if a family chose to embrace and love their monstrous child, rather than reject and fear them like Victor Frankenstein. The love for the monstrous child transforms and hybridizes the family and its individual members, changing it from a traditional “nuclear” family structure into a nontraditional queer family dynamic. This paper will also examine the way in which the novel conceptualizes monstrosity, particularly in relation to questions of identity, queerness, transformation, and the depiction of queer desire and cannibalistic hunger. The primary theoretical approach of this paper will be centered in Posthumanism, Queer Theory, and Monster Theory; with a particular focus upon concepts of hybridity, Otherness, and anthropophagy. 

Bio:
Isabelle Hanshue (she/her) got her MLitt in Fantasy Literature from the University of Glasgow in 2023. Her main areas of academic interest are horror, the Gothic, and the Weird with a focus upon Monster Studies. She is particularly interested in depictions of vampirism, anthropophagy, and consumption and how that interconnects with concepts of monstrosity in media. She is currently working on several writing projects, both academic and creative, and juggling learning both Romanian and Japanese.

Jamie Nicholas, Esther MacCallum-Stewart, & Catherine Flick

Abstract:
‘From where I stand, you’re all legs’. Expectation, Desire and Queerness in Dragon Age: Veilguard 

As modern queerness advances, so do the expectations of the queer media audience. Queer media has traversed various tropes, such as the demonisation of queerness and the traditional “coming-out” narrative, but increasingly more queer narratives are steering away from queer-centric narratives to queer-additive narratives. The focus of these stories is less about who queer people are, and more about what they do as themselves. Games are a prime example of this, largely driven by the tastes of a queer audience that changes the onus of queer narratives. Games that focus on player choice and provide fantasy, especially roleplay games, benefit massively from an understanding of their audiences and their wants, needs, and, ultimately, expectations of queerness in modern games. Using a case study of games in the Dragon Age series and a longitudinal study of reflections collected from the Diversity Lounge at PAX East after the release of Dragon Age Inquisition, we look at expectation fulfilment of expressions of desire for queerness in games. We find that the latest in the Dragon Age series, Dragon Age: The Veilguard has largely fulfilled these expectations, though is not without its criticism. 

Bios:
Jamie Alexander Nicholas (He/They) is a lecturer in Games Development at the University of Staffordshire, focused on the development of Games Visual Effects and Production Methodologies. Their work focuses on the representation and development of queer characters and narratives within game worlds, and examines the translation of queer culture into the video game medium.  He is currently working on a PhD in Queer Representations in Game Mechanics. This focus came from a chance encounter in Fallout: New Vegas in which a bug caused his game character’s gender to accidently switch after being shot in the leg with a 38. Magnum. 

Esther MacCallum-Stewart (she/her) is a Professor of Games Studies at the University of Staffordshire, and was the Chair of Glasgow 2024, A Worldcon for Our Futures in 2024. Her work examines the ways that players tell stories in and about games, as well as representations of gender and sexuality within this. 
 
Catherine Flick (she/her) is a Professor of Ethics and Games Technology at the University of Staffordshire. Her research explores the ethical and social impacts of games, particularly where emerging technologies are involved.  

Kashish Gera

Abstract:
‘From Ships to Shifts: Exploring Queer Transformations and Reader Biases Across Fanfiction Platforms’ 
 
Fanfiction, a playground for subversive creativity, has been an important channel to challenge and reinforce cultural narratives. Countless transformative works are hosted on platforms like AO3, Wattpad, and Fanfiction.net; however, practices of “gayifying” canonically straight characters and “straightifying” canonically queer ones reveal underlying biases that shape these spaces. This paper examines the intersection of platform dynamics, fan practices, and cultural attitudes toward queerness through a dual-method approach: platform analysis and survey data collected from fanfiction readers and writers. 
This paper uses case studies from fandoms, including Arcane (Caitlyn/Vi), Harry Potter (Draco/Harry), Supernatural (Dean/Castiel), and The Untamed (Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji), to explore how fan practices may vary between different platforms. AO3 often fosters a celebratory approach to queer storytelling, where in contrast Wattpad’s design, as well as demographic trends, may have the weight of tendency towards heteronormativity. Surveys can reveal so much about the motivations of fans, therefore showing how these practices become acts of reclamation or if in contrast they reveal discomfort with overt queerness. 
This analysis reveals the ambivalence of fanfiction as both a site of queer resistance and a reflection of societal bias. In one sense, the “gayification” of straight characters offers a means of combating queer erasure, but in another, the “straightification” of queer characters highlights the persistence of tensions within fan communities. This paper interrogates these dynamics and situates fanfiction as a critical locus for negotiating queer identity and representation, revealing both its transformative potential and its limitations. 

Bio:
Kashish Gera is an undergraduate student specializing in literature, media, and cultural studies. Her research interests span fandom studies, queer representation, and digital spaces, with a focus on how fan communities engage with and reshape canonical texts. She also explores themes of freedom, resistance, and agency in 19th-century literature, particularly in poetry. Kashish is passionate about examining the intersection of identity, representation, and bias, blending literary analysis with media studies to understand how marginalized voices are represented and negotiated. Her work seeks to contribute to more inclusive, diverse, and critical discourse in both academic and creative spaces. 

Katarina Dulude

Abstract:
What if I Choose the Dream?: Exploring Fantastic Otherworlds in Queer Neo-Victorian Texts 

In her work, Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion, Rosemary Jackson posits that fantasy’s function as a genre is to tell of desire and, if that desire is a threat to the prevailing social order, to subsequently expel it. This paper aims to both demonstrate and subvert Jackson’s theory while exploring the role of fantastic otherworlds in queer neo-Victorian and Victorian texts. It contrasts one of the earliest modern fantasy novels, William Morris’s The Wood Beyond the World (1893), with two neo-Victorian fantasies: The Gemma Doyle Trilogy (Libba Bray, 2003-2007) and Peter Darling (Austin Chant, 2021). Using researcher Frog’s definition of otherworlds as “a fantastic location where the possibilities of imagination are reality” (Frog, 2021), this paper investigates the existence of literary otherworlds as heterotopic spaces where characters who enter them can explore their queerness freely, without the constraints of repressive societal norms from the ‘real worlds’ whence they came. 
Utilizing psychoanalytic and queer theory, as well as the work of Jackson and neo-Victorian scholars Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn, this paper thoroughly examines the roles of fantastic otherworlds in Victorian and neo-Victorian literature. Though Jackson’s theory generally holds true for Victorian fantasy, I argue that it does not for neo-Victorian fantasy. Instead, I assert that neo-Victorian otherworlds instead function as a heterotopia where “play” as described by D.W. Winnicott occurs, allowing for the exploration of repressed parts of the self. Rather than expel these repressed parts, fantastic otherworlds enable characters to reintegrate them into their self-conception, as Winnicott describes. Fantasy worlds providing an alternative world for queer people to explore our true selves without the constraints of a potentially less than welcoming ‘real world’ occurs outside of neo-Victorian fantasy (table-top-roleplaying games are another obvious example that have received much academic attention in recent years) and merits further study. 

Bio:
Katarina Dulude recently graduated with an MLitt in Fantasy Literature from the University of Glasgow. Her research interests include queer and feminist studies, fantastic otherworlds, and psychoanalytic theory. She previously completed a B.A. in Literature and Political Science at Rhode Island College. She has three publications, including her undergraduate thesis “Mad Men, Troubled Mothers, and Scarred Children: Representations of Parent-Child Trauma in Mad Men” and two others in Johns Hopkins University’s Macksey Journal. She enjoys creative writing, acting and photography, adores cats, speaks three languages, and has an undying obsession with She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. 

Laura Ciriza Martín

Abstract:
Just because something has always been done…”: Gender, Sexuality, and Binaries in Samantha Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree

The present paper aims to analyze the representation of gender and sexuality in Samantha Shannon’s “The Priory of the Orange Tree”. More specifically, I intend to examine how Shannon’s worldbuilding—through its diverse societies, power structures, and interpersonal relationships—challenges traditional gender norms and heteronormativity. The novel offers a complex exploration of gender that disrupts the binaries often prevalent in the fantasy genre. Indeed, I shall argue that Shannon critiques rigid gender roles by centering matriarchal governance in the Queendom of Inys, where power is held by women, and by integrating queer relationships as central to the narrative. In this way, the novel emphasizes inclusivity, promoting a broader understanding of identity and desire. By focusing on these elements, Shannon subverts conventional fantasy tropes that typically reinforce patriarchal and heteronormative structures where male dominance and heterosexuality are normalized. In contrast, “The Priory of the Orange Tree” presents a world in which women occupy significant leadership roles, both in politics and warfare, and where queer relationships are not only normalized but vital to the progression of the narrative. Through this innovative worldbuilding, Shannon offers a powerful critique of traditional gender norms. Furthermore, drawing on contemporary feminist and queer theory, I will demonstrate that Shannon’s world is not merely a setting for storytelling but an intentional framework for exploring the fluidity of identity and sexuality. These themes are not just incidental but are positioned as essential for the reimagining of social and political power structures within the fantasy genre. By challenging the dominant heteronormative paradigms, “The Priory of the Orange Tree” offers a radical rethinking of how identity, sexuality, and power can be represented in both fantasy novels and fiction in general, highlighting the potential for change and the celebration of diversity in both fictional and real-world contexts.

Bio:
Laura Ciriza Martín is currently pursuing a PhD in Comparative Literature and Literary Studies at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), which explores the Gothic conventions present in George R. R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire”. Prior to her doctoral studies, she earned a Bachelor’s Degree in English Studies, with a minor in English Literature (2020) and a Master’s Degree in Comparative Literature and Literary Studies (2023) from the same institution. In 2017, Laura was named as the winner of the VIII Concurso Internacional Universitario de Microrrelatos “Félix Menchacatorre” in the English category. 

Laura García Soria

Abstract:
‘Boy Island’: Trans Creationism and a New Materialist Approach to Gender 
 
Leo Fox is an artist and cartoonist. From his expanding catalogue of art and poetry, his most famous piece is ‘Boy Island’, a comic series periodically published online and later compiled in a comic book, about a fantastic world where the war between the forces of chaos and order tore the world apart and divided it into two islands, Boy Island and Girl Island, inventing thus the concept of gender. This comic, through both its narrative and art style, narrativizes the struggle between essentialism and queerness, the difficult transition from normativity to the fluidity of gender, and provides a useful new visual and lyrical language that responds to the New Materialist turn of the last decades.  
New Materialisms emerged primarily from feminist theory, which argued for a return to matter and a regard for the imbrication of the discursive and the material. In this paper, I will analyse the ways in which Leo Fox’s ‘Boy Island’ explores sex and gender through its landscape and world-building, effectively constructing a new materialist approach to queerness in which gender constructs the material reality of the fantasy world. I will demonstrate how ‘Boy Island’ represents a lyrical representation of New Materialist feminist and queer theories, and how its fantastic setting allows the reader to understand, navigate and embrace queerness. 

Bio:
Laura García is a PhD candidate in English Studies. She graduated in English Studies in 2020 at the University of Zaragoza, after which she obtained a Master’s degree in Literary Studies at the Complutense University of Madrid and a second Master’s in Teaching English as a Foreign Language at the University of La Rioja. Her interests are ecocriticism, trauma studies, posthumanism and science fiction, and her research focuses on the role of the planet Earth in the human imaginary and its reflection on fiction, as well as representations of the natural environment in different media. 

Madeline Wahl

Abstract:
“I think we ought to live happily ever after”: Chosen Family and Family Representation in Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones 
 
Chosen families, as defined in the SAGE Encyclopedia of Marriage, Family, and Couples Counseling, “are nonbiological kinship bonds, whether legally recognized or not, deliberately chosen for the purpose of mutual support and love.” In Diana Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle, protagonist Sophie is spelled to appear older than she is. She seeks help from the wizard Howl to fix the spell and go back to normal. In Sophie’s exploration of Howl and his home, the reader is also exploring expectations of home life. Providing a modern historical context of family, this paper will look into how each of the four main inhabitants of Howl’s castle—Sophie, Howl, Michael, and Calcifer—represent a chosen family by occupying the liminal space of having multiple roles in the household as opposed to the rigid structure of the nuclear family.  
 
To add context to this argument, I look at how representations of different types of family in children’s literature affects children’s perceptions of family and general acceptance of those in different family structures from themselves. Throughout this essay, by using queer theory and modern definitions of family structure, I will show how Sophie, Howl, Michael, and Calcifer represent a chosen family. Even though family structures are a vastly changing social construct, presenting a chosen family in Howl’s Moving Castle offers young readers the chance to identify and empathize with characters in families either similar or different to their own. The family unit is an ever-evolving social construct, and this has major implications in the perceptions of the characters in the story and the children reading the text. 

Bio:
Madeline Wahl (she/her) recently completed her MLitt in Fantasy Literature at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. Previously, she has held editorial positions at Reader’s Digest, HuffPost, and Golf Channel. She was a speaker at the Australian Speak Easy Association’s online 2020 conference and has written about stuttering for The Stuttering Foundation. She has presented papers critically analyzing characters who stutter at Glasgow International Fantasy Conversations (GIFCon) 2023 and 2024. She is working on her YA Fantasy featuring stuttering spellcasters and a pro bono children’s nonfiction picture book with The Stuttering Foundation showcasing celebrities who stutter. 

Makayla Wigder

Abstract:
“Is My Hair Out?”: The Queer-Coding of Hercules’ Hades 
 
Disney’s film Hercules (1997) is a reception of Greek myth featuring Hades, the god of the underworld, as the villain. Hades is a prominent and problematic figure in mythology as the kidnapper of Persephone, yet he is rarely portrayed as a villain by classical myth. However, Hercules’ Hades is not the Hades of ancient myth; rather, the film’s portrayal of the god presents a caricature of a queer man through “queer-coding.” The implicit queerness is portrayed through queer characteristics to demonstrate stigma and is used to examine the complex social commentary inherent in sexuality. Directors Ron Clements and John Musker, intentionally or not, use queer-coding to subtly identify Hades as the villain and reinforce a narrative endorsing heterosexual love.  
 
This paper will explore how queer characterization isolates Hades from the heterosexual majority of characters in the film. More importantly, the exploration of Hades’ distinction as “different” or queer compared to the featured heterosexual couples provides impetus for analyzing themes of villainy, monsters, and outsidership. The directors contradict existing myths, as classical myths frequently feature queer characters that are not outsiders and villainizes heterosexual figures, such as Hera in the original Heracles myth. This change demonstrates the imposition of modern prejudices on antiquitous figures. Therefore, Clements and Musker actively queering mythology to represent villainy is significant because it explores how modern representation does not always provide a positive or authentic queer experience. Examining the links between sexuality, coding, and vilification using Hades in Hercules is an exercise in “queering the fantastic” because the examination interrogates creators and how they use queer-coding to push forward sub-narratives and agendas. In children’s media, how and who is seen as a villain matters. 
 
Hercules. Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, Walt Disney Pictures, 1997. 

Bio:
Makayla Wigder (she/her) is a recent honors graduate of Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts and is currently a part of the 2025 Fantasy MLitt class at the University of Glasgow. Makayla is also thrilled to be an editor for the brand-new Elsewhere literary journal at the University of Glasgow. Some of her special academic interests include witchcraft literature, book-to-film adaptation, and the expansion and franchisement of literature and myth into new media and stories.

Martine Gjermundsen Ræstad

Abstract:
One With the Silent People: Queerness and Fairy Fruit in Hope Mirrlees’ Lud-in-the-Mist 
 
This paper considers Hope Mirrlees’ Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) as a 1920s retrospective on the late Victorian cultural and literary landscape, particularly its rejection of what Mirrlees terms “Fairy”. In this reading, Fairy becomes a collective term for perspectives and behaviours that countered the dominant dogma, as well as a potential representation of the fantastic in literature itself, being a medium of expression used by many who could not tell their stories openly.  
 
A characteristic of this novel is the complex role of fairy-things in society, which has a notable social and political role in its history, affected by changing class dynamics. Mirrlees describes an emerging middle class (the “men of revolution”) usurping a decadent and fairy-indulgent upper class, beginning an era of industrialisation and legal reform. The word fairy and all associations become socially taboo and legally non-existent, though the continued presence of fairy fruit in Lud-in-the-Mist is an open secret, present in the underground as “a loathsome and filthy vice” to consume (15). This history has clear parallels to 19th century Britain as described in works such as Charles Upchurch’s Before Wilde: Sex Between Men in Britain’s Age of Reform (2010) which covers how attitudes around same-sex relations changed in this period (circa 1780-1850), showing remarkably similar class dynamics as Dorimare. 
 
In this presentation, I will first cover parallels between the history of Dorimare and 19th century Britain, making a foundation for how and why the novel can be read as a commentary on this period. I will then examine the nature of ‘Fairy’ in Mirrlees’ novel and how it is presented to understand what real-life concepts or populations it may represent, evaluating its potential role as a euphemism for queerness and associated concepts. 

Bio:
Martine Gjermundsen Ræstad attained her BA in English Literature and Language from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in 2019 and an MLitt with Distinction in Fantasy Literature from the University of Glasgow in 2020. She has since continued working as an independent researcher, presenting at GIFCon on two previous occasions (2021, 2024) and contributing to the first volume of Mapping the Impossible in 2022. Today, her work is featured in critical anthologies such as “Star Trek: Essays Exploring the Final Frontier” (2023, Vernon Press) and “Theology, Religion, and Dungeons & Dragons” (2025, Lexington Fortress). 

María de la O Ruiz Rodríguez (Mariola)

Abstract:
The Vampire Revolution: Gothic, Queerness, and Subversion in V. E. Schwab’s First Kill (2022)

This paper examines the queer gaze in V. E. Schwab’s First Kill (2022), contextualizing it within the evolution of lesbian vampire narratives in Anglophone Gothic literature and media. Tracing the lineage from Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) to Schwab’s contemporary adaptation, it explores the intersection of queerness, gender performance, and family structures. The research investigates how First Kill subverts traditional Gothic binaries, offering an interesting portrayal of adolescent queerness and identity struggles. 
Central to the analysis is Schwab’s innovative narrative approach, which shifts from conventional “coming-out” arcs to fully integrating LGBTQ+ characters into broader, multidimensional storylines. The paper highlights how First Kill redefines the vampire romance genre by centering two young women—Juliette, a vampire, and Calliope, a monster hunter—whose forbidden love becomes a metaphor for resisting systemic familial and social norms. By doing so, the series interrogates entrenched heteropatriarchal legacies while normalizing queer relationships in a supernatural context. 
The study also explores the evolution of the lesbian vampire trope, from its voyeuristic origins catering to male heteronormative audiences to empowering queer narratives that celebrate diverse identities. Special attention is given to First Kill’s depiction of intimacy, crafted through a female-authored and directed lens, which eschews objectification for authentic representation. 
By situating First Kill within the broader trajectory of queer Gothic literature and media, this research argues that Schwab’s work is not merely a narrative of transgression but a reclamation of identity and agency. Ultimately, First Kill demonstrates the transformative potential of queer narratives to challenge traditional storytelling frameworks, redefining visibility, inclusivity, and the representation of adolescent queerness in popular media. 

Bio:
María de la O Ruiz Rodríguez (she/her), Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Córdoba, has been an assistant professor in the Department of English and German Philology since 2021. She holds a Bachelor’s in English Philology and two Master’s degrees in English for Professional Qualification and Secondary Education. Her research explores gender, Queer theory, Gothic literature, and feminist criticism, with publications on virtual mobility and gamification in English teaching. Active in teaching innovation, she teaches courses on cultural studies and supervises theses. She has completed academic stays at institutions in the UK, Ireland, and Greece, enhancing her international teaching and research expertise. 

Meg Horridge

Abstract:
‘Stepping Out of Time: Towards a Queer Utopia’ 

What might a queer utopia look like? SFF, and in particular utopian fiction, presents the opportunity to imagine worlds in which queer people are not oppressed but liberated, where dysphoria becomes euphoria, and where the full extent of queer lives can be enjoyed and explored. 
Adopting José Esteban Muñoz’s approach to utopia through “queer futurity”, with queerness itself being a methodology of resistance against the “here and now”, I will explore in this paper the different ways queer utopias can be constructed, and how writers imagine better worlds and lives for queer characters, and in doing so, mount an effective critique of the present.  
Through an analysis of works from Julian K. Jarboe and Monique Wittig, I outline one way of accessing queer utopia: by presenting queerness itself as a means of partial escape from the present, a utopian license to access other worlds or other ways of inhabiting our world. Both the necessity of this escape for queer characters and the possibilities opened up by stepping out of what Muñoz dubs “straight time” create a compelling argument against the present, as well as providing sources of hope for another way of being for queer readers—not only in an imagined SF future, but in present-day queer communities and queer relationships. In keeping with Muñoz, I propose that queerness itself is utopian, something “not yet”, and as such, it can be liberatory in a queerphobic present. 

Bio:
Meg Horridge is a non-binary writer undertaking a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing at Lancaster University. As part of their research, they are working on a collection of essays and short stories that aim to utilise utopian fiction as a means of writing against Mark Fisher’s notion of capitalist realism, the sense that ‘there is no alternative’ to the capitalist present. 

Mercury Natis

Abstract:
Against Correct and Sober Taste: Tolkien and Sontag on Faërie and Camp 
 
Upon first glance, it might seem that there are no two more disparate thinkers than J.R.R. Tolkien and Susan Sontag. Tolkien, an Oxford medievalist and devout Catholic, is often considered to be a conservative thinker with a pre-modern sensibility. Susan Sontag, on the other hand, was a queer Jewish American critical theorist with an interest in radical left-wing politics and post-modern art mechanisation. Yet, when comparing their theoretical works, Tolkien and Sontag understood art and culture in surprisingly similar ways. By comparing Tolkien’s theoretical essays “On Fairy Stories” (and to a lesser extent “The Monsters and the Critics”) to Sontag’s “Notes on Camp”, we can see just how similarly these two thinkers were representing methodologies in art making and art appreciation. In “Notes on Camp”, Sontag applied an art-historical critical lens to a social art-making and art-appreciation methodology that predated her, and which underpinned queer culture prior to the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 70s. In “On Fairy Stories”, Tolkien considers much the same thing, in regards to Fantasy and the Fantastic. It is through this comparison that we can see the clear and present similarities between Tolkien’s understanding of fairy stories and Faërie and Sontag’s understanding of Camp. As such, it is through this comparison that we can begin to understand how Faërie and Camp are theoretical twins, as two different modes of describing the same human impulse towards queer delight in the face of “correct and sober taste”.  

Bio:
Mercury Natis is in their first year of their interdisciplinary PhD in English Literature and History at the University of Glasgow, researching the queer historical contexts in which Tolkien lived, and how these influenced his works. They hold a previous MA in Museum Education and a BA in Art History, with coursework in Tolkien Studies and Imaginative Literature with Signum University. Their primary focus is on queer ambiguity in the fantastic prior to the 1960s identity politics boom, with a special interest in camp aesthetics and performativity.  

Nathaniel Harrington

Abstract:
“Fully male and hold-bred”: Sexuality, class, and the construction of gender in Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern 
 
Abstract: In this paper, I consider the relationships between gender, sexuality, and social class in Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series. Focusing on the character of Jaxom in The White Dragon (1978), with reference to other books in the series, I examine, on the one hand, the social division between the titular dragonriders and the “commoners” whose labor supports them and, on the other hand, the relationships between status and sexuality among dragonriders, a large majority of whom are (what we would consider) queer men. Jaxom is usefully positioned between categories, as a “commoner” who has nonetheless come to be bonded with a dragon and so is caught between competing models of gender and sexuality. 
 
I argue that McCaffrey’s construction of Pernese society creates a system where, despite both in-world homophobia and homophobia present in the narration, (certain kinds of) queer masculinity and sex between men may nonetheless be not only desirable but even preferable to (certain kinds of) heterosexual masculinity, insofar as they are tied to class status. I suggest that Jaxom’s anxieties about and desires with regards to both his own sexuality and his dragon’s highlight the ways gender and sexuality are closely entangled with social class (among other social structures), raising questions not only about the construction of these categories within the series but also within our primary world. 

Bio:
Nathaniel Harrington is an independent scholar who received his Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Toronto. His current research focuses on the use of speculative fiction by writers from marginalized language communities (Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Welsh, and Anishinaabemowin) and on the history and construction of the “Celtic fantasy” subgenre. His other interests include the work of Miguel de Unamuno, Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern, and meeting new cats. 

Dr. Nike Sulway

Abstract:
“To meet once more as aliens”: exploring the relevance of fantastic literature for queer studies  
 
This paper begins by challenging Jay Prosser’s claim that texts featuring ‘fantastical’ gender transitions are irrelevant to trans studies. Prosser’s argument is part of a pushback against 1990s queer theory’s emphasis on gender fluidity and instability: an approach that embraced the fantastic passionately as Prosser dismisses it. 
What’s at stake in these debates—especially for those of us who understand the power and relevance of fantastic fiction—are two questions: 
1. How do we decide which texts are ‘relevant’ to queer studies? 
2. How can we read fantastic texts in conjunction with the real? 
This paper argues, first, for the relevance of fantastic literature to contemporary queer and trans studies, challenging the notion that only realistic portrayals of queer experiences are valuable to the field.  
Next, the paper models ways of reading fantastic texts in conjunction with the real, using Woolf’s Orlando and Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness as examples. In demonstrating the effectiveness of these readings, I make a claim for the fantastic that echoes Stone’s positioning of transsexuals: ‘not as a problematic “third gender”, but rather as a genre—a set of embodied texts whose potential for productive disruption of structured sexualities and spectra of desires has yet to be explored’ (Stone p. 231). 
This paper advocates for the inclusion of diverse literary genres as objects of study for queer and trans studies. In doing so, it offers an example of how we can position fantastic texts as offering a spectra of desires, genders, and sexualities, that have yet to be explored. And how, then, we can venture out to re-discover ourselves and each other, or, as Le Guin writes in The Left Hand of Darkness, ‘to meet [each other] once more as aliens’. 

Bio:
Dr Nike Sulway (she/they) is a Senior Lecturer in Creative and Critical Writing at University of Southern Queensland. Her research focuses on diversity and inclusivity in creative writing practice, with a strong focus on speculative fiction narratives, including fairy tales, speculative fiction, and the weird. She is an award-winning writer of novels, short stories, and poetry, including Winter’s tale, Dying in the first person, What the sky knows, Rupetta, The true green of hope, and The bone flute, and is co-editor of the literary journal The Orange & Bee (with Carina Bissett). 

Orla Davey

Abstract:
‘Reweave the Threads of Fate’: Femslash Fantasy and Queering the Classical Myth Canon 

The End Crowns All by Bea Fitzgerald (2024) is a fantasy novel that reimagines an asexual, sapphic relationship between Cassandra and Helen of Troy from Homer’s The Iliad. In Fitzgerald’s adaptation, Cassandra initially consents to lose her virginity for the power of prophecy, but withdraws this consent upon identifying as asexual – consequently, she is cursed by the god Apollo to never have her prophecies believed. Helen and Cassandra work together to transform this curse into new powers that can ‘reweave the threads of fate’ and prevent the Trojan War. This paper explores how Fitzgerald’s novel combines mythopoesis, the adaptation of ancient myths for contemporary contexts, with femslash fanfiction practices to queer the classical canon of Ancient Greek myth. Femslash (sapphic) fanfiction is created and archived online by queer and female communities, reappropriating stories from mainstream media to represent their own identities. Writers of femslash fanfiction reject formally documented heteronormative narratives by creating alternative, transformative possibilities for queer representation. Likewise, The End Crowns All is a femslash reappropriation of The Iliad through which dominant social discourses surrounding compulsory sexuality and consent are deconstructed. Helen and Cassandra’s queer relationship enables Cassandra’s curse to be reappropriated against their patriarchal culture, as they weaponise her prophecies against a predetermined future. Therefore, this mythopoeic amalgamation of fantasy and femslash fanfiction transformations also engages with queer temporality, redefining Cassandra’s prophetic power as a resistance against heteronormative, linear understandings of time. Yet as mythic transformations of femslash fanfiction begin to merge into mainstream fantasy publishing, questions arise surrounding ownership of queer narratives and the future of online queer archival communities. This paper illuminates fantasy literature’s facilitation of femslash practices to queer the classical myth canon, whilst addressing wider implications for non-professional fanfic writer communities.

Bio:
Orla Davey (she/her) holds a Distinction in MLitt English Literature from the University of Glasgow and a First Class Honours in MA English and Creative Writing from the University of Dundee. She received the Best Presentation Award at the Dundee Humanities Symposium for her research on gender representation in modern myth retellings. Her own reworkings of myth have been published by Creative Dundee and performed at the Dundee Women’s Festival. She won Article of the Year as a Staff Writer for The Magdalen Magazine. Her current research explores fantastical transformations in feminist receptions of ancient Greco-Roman myth.  

Paula Rivera Donoso

Abstract:
“The queer/crip fantasy journey in ‘Las flores crecerán sobre mi cuerpo’, by TopoPanda” 
 
“Las flores crecerán sobre mi cuerpo” [“And Flowers Shall Grow Over My Body”] (Invertido Ediciones, 2023) is a short fantasy novel written by Chilean non-binary author TopoPanda (pen name of Nataschia Navarro Macker). It focuses on the struggles of Lus, a preadolescent girl who is unable to join her female friends, Salamdra and Jui, in the journey that the fairies offer them. Lus suffers from chronic pain and progressive paralysis, but also from the sorrow that comes from seeing her friends fulfilling their heroic destinies, as told “by the books”, without her. However, Lus finds partial solace in her own yearnings and introspective journeys within herself and the act of resignifying the double nature of her desire: the call to adventure and her blooming love for Salamdra. 
 
First, considering Robert McRuer’s crip theory (2006) and Ria Cheyne’s reading of disability in fantasy (2019), this paper aims to explore how fantasy provides an alternative redemption for Lus. 
 
Second, this paper aims to propose how this type of fantasy story presents, following Brian Attebery’s political ideas in fantasy (2022), an aesthetic path to approach this genre in Latin America, where fantasy itself can be conceived as a crip/queer literature. 

Bio:
Paula Rivera Donoso (Viña del Mar, Chile, 1987. She/her). She holds a Master in Literature from Universidad de Chile and a Diploma in Children and Young Adult Literature from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She is a Chilean Fantasy author and independent researcher who has published three short story collections and a book of seven literary essays on her personal, intellectual, and artistic journey with fantasy literature: La añoranza feérica [Yearnings for Faërie] (Imaginistas, 2024). Her current interests encompass Hispano-American Fantasy works and their phylogenetic relationship with English-speaking canonical Fantasy Literature. She is currently enrolled in the doctoral programme Doctorado en Literatura con mención en Literatura Chilena e Hispanoamericana by the Universidad de Chile.

Rebecca Gault

Abstract:
Dystopic Queer Futures in Seth Dickinson’s Masquerade Series 

In speculative fiction, queer theory often seems to posit an interest in challenging social norms, changing values, and breaking down institutions – linking it nearly inextricably with utopianism.  
 
However, as the cultural trend of utopianism grew stagnant and increasingly abstract in the wake of socio-political changes of the 90s, queerness became detached from this notion of the ideal utopia. Instead, queer texts turned their gaze to the dystopian. We see this trend towards the dystopic occuring in speculative fiction, allowing a space for our own world to be defamiliarised and thus reflected back at us.  
 
In Seth Dickinson’s Masquerade series – currently comprised of The Traitor, The Monster, and The Tyrant – queerness becomes signifier for a decaying future. The lead character, Baru Cormorant, is a lesbian raised in the poisonous den of an imperialist colonizer and so, begins to internalise these values. Baru is a key example of Edelman’s theory of the death drive.  
 
By examining the Masquerade series in conjunction with Edelman’s theories of queer futurity and the death drive, along with theories of utopias from Foucault and Muñoz, this paper seeks to elucidate exactly what makes the future Baru strives for one that is inherently queer in nature due to her desire to tear down an imperialist nation – regardless of the deadly cost it might have for anyone surrounding her. 

Bio:
Rebecca Gault is an early-career academic from Glasgow, Scotland. She has a MA in English Literature and an MLitt in Fantasy Literature from the University of Glasgow. Their research interests include monstrosity, LGBTQ+ studies, and modes of fantasy. With previous research on the sexual politics of monstrosity, she is an up-and-coming researcher and writer in fields of the fantastic. She is the co-host of Out To Get You, a queer horror podcast (@OutToGetYouPod on Instagram) featuring guests such as Gretchen Felker-Martin. She is also a performer in TTRPG Actual Play spaces. Rebecca can be found on BlueSky at @phoenixforce. 

Rebecca Jones (R.L. Jones)

Abstract:
Queer Communities as Utopias of Potentiality in the Graphic Novels

The graphic novel works by Kay O’Neill (they/them) present a diverse range of ethnicities and hybridities through the anthropomorphised animal and fantasy races that populate their fictional worlds. Additionally, they depict a range of physical abilities, identities, and orientations across their works. O’Neill’s whimsical tales deal with brokenness, grief, loss, and finding one’s place and purpose in and through the support of queer communities. Throughout their series, O’Neill presents worlds where individuals are not empowered through violence or power, but their own strength of character, their kindness, acceptance of others, ability to accept themselves, and the encouragement and acceptance of others. Their series repeatedly shows how inclusive communities can be possible through their presentation of deaf, genderqueer, homosexual, and disabled individuals all existing in provincial and urban fantasy spaces. These spaces embrace rather than ostracise, presenting potentialities: worlds with loss and pain, but also support and healing. Applying José Esteban Muñoz’s definition of a queer utopia, this article argues that O’Neill’s graphic novels Princess Princess Ever After (2016, PPEF), The Tea Dragon Society trilogy (2017-2021, TDS), and Aquicorn Cove (2018, AC) present different ways queer community spaces are utopias-in-progress that shape individuals’ ability to recover, accept themselves, and find purpose, presenting “blueprints of a world not quite here”  to inspire readers and present a “realm of educated hope” (Muñoz 97; 3). 

Bio:
Dr R. Jones studied the representation of female-presenting artificial intelligences and gynoids in American and British live-action science fiction films for the past 6 years with her book Female Robots and AI in Science Fiction Cinema: The Fabular Femininity of Gynoids to be published by Palgrave in late 2025. She completed her Masters on the intertextual adaptation of Shakespeare within science fantasy novels and films. She has published on graphic novels, video games, Shakespeare adaptations, and Game of Thrones. She currently lectures at the University of Maryland-College Park. 

Reese Reynolds

Abstract:
“Coming Full Circle: Cozy Gaming and Capitalist Narrativity“

The allure of realistic fantasy in many farming simulator games highlights the intense dissatisfaction man has with modern life: but does this fantasy actually provide a sufficient escape from the depression of capitalist society? By understanding the relationship between fantasy and reality as queer, with potential to critique humanity, we can better understand the important narratives that these games employ to explore dissatisfaction with modernity. Analyzing and comparing the themes, narratives, and characters from some of the most popular games of this genre–such as Stardew Valley and Fields of Mistria–allows space for the dynamic (and often nihilist) relationship between society and fantasy to be explored. While Stardew Valley inadvertently explores the inadequacy of mimesis in communicating its primary themes, Fields of Mistria utilizes “high” fantasy to necessitate discussions of social order and human nature. This comparison, illustrating the fraught relationship between fantasy and reality, will be punctuated by an exploration of how horror also contributes to this exploration of narrative power. To this end, an analysis of A Plague Tale: Innocence will provide readers with a case study in successfully disconnecting the consumer from reality, while failing to truly criticize the real world. These comparisons point to the successes and failures of the farming simulator genre, asking consumers to interrogate seemingly simple narratives more deeply. By addressing the relationship humanity has to the modern world, and the desire to shape our lives with queerness (diverging from the road most traveled) farming simulator games question why we are drawn to certain narratives over others, and the power those stories wield in understanding our world. 

Bio:
Reese is a Master’s of Fantasy Literature candidate at the University of Glasgow, and a recent honors graduate from Lake Forest College. Her passions stem from an artistic childhood in the Chicago suburbs and culminated most recently in her Bachelor’s thesis on queerness in The Lord of the Rings. Reese’s research specializes in gender, sexuality, and queer studies, and how these topics inform our readings of fiction. She has taught a wide range of students, from preschool children to university-age peers. Reese’s ultimate goal is to become a professor of literature, instilling the importance of critical thinking into her students.

Rheanna Mathews

Abstract:
Queer Temporality and Disenfranchised Grief in Tasha Suri’s The Jasmine Throne 

This paper explores how Tasha Suri’s The Jasmine Throne challenges heteronormative and colonial discourses, and effectively queers the genre of fantasy, by using aspects of queer temporality and disenfranchised grief in a storyworld reminiscent of the colonial and cultural histories of the Indian subcontinent. By embedding the sapphic protagonists, Malini and Priya, in a postcolonial framework, Suri’s text embodies complex questions of colonialism, race, gender and sexuality. By drawing from her own postcolonial and queer identity, not only does Suri decentre fantasy from its Anglophone roots, she also creates alternative histories of palimpsestic queer South Asian identities. Moreover, Suri explores the ways in which queer desire can unearth and address hidden histories of trauma, silenced grief, and cultural and queer erasure. The novel further interrogates accepted notions of kinship by destabilising blood ties and disrupting dynastic succession patterns, effected by queer resistance to normative structures and also by placing her protagonists outside the hetero-reproductive matrix. The Jasmine Throne addresses contemporary concerns regarding queer kinship and grievability, exposing structural attempts at queer erasure while reclaiming queer histories and contributing to the creation of a queer archive.
 
Keywords: queer temporality, disenfranchised grief, queer kinship, South Asian fantasy 

Bio:
Rheanna Mathews is a UGC Senior Research Fellow at Christ University, Bangalore (India). She has published a book chapter, “Populism and Fantasy Fiction,” in the Springer Nature Encyclopedia of New Populism and Responses in the 21st Century. Her areas of interest include fantasy studies, queer fantasy, postcolonial fantasy, and children’s literature. 

Robin Anne Reid

Abstract:
 An Incomplete Academic Fellowship: Excluding Queer Feminist Women from Tolkien Studies 
 
How academics recreate, reinterpret, and validate queer approaches to fantasy intersects with my  project on the exclusion of queer women and non-binary people (whether characters, theorists, fans, pr academics), a topic complicated by t multiple definitions of Queerness (Doty).  
 
Early perceptions of Tolkien excluding female characters has been challenged, if not demolished, by Croft’s and Donovan’s 2015 Perilous and Fair, but it has not been followed by additional books on the topic. Queer scholarship on Tolkien primarily focuses on Tolkien’s and Jackson’s male characters (Craig, Vaccaro, Yandell; Battis, Chance, Cuntz-Leng, Kaufman). In the first bibliographic essay on Queer Tolkien scholarship, Yvette Kisor identifies only two categories of “queer”—‘homosexuality’ and ‘alterity’—avoiding other terms common in contemporary queer communities and theories. Jane Chance’s 2016 monograph, Tolkien, Self and Other: “This Queer Creature,” devotes eight of nine chapters to male characters and to defending Tolkien. 
 
This presentation considers the current “morass of feminist/gender/queer” Tolkien scholarship and imagines what acknowledging queer women and non-binary people of all ethnicities as part of an academic Fellowship might look like. I draw from fan studies (Kroner, McCormack, Reid, Sturgiss, Viars and Coker) and medieval feminist queer scholars who identified the tendency to focus on “gay male history and queer male sexualities” and to sideline “women and femininity” over ten years ago (Watt 452). In 2010, Diane Watt identified a model created by medieval feminist queer scholars who viewed “heterosexuality and homosexuality not merely as linguistic anachronisms but as categories intrinsically unable to serve the complex array of self-perceptions, legal definitions, and visual and literary representations of medieval sexualities” (17). I will start to map how queer women and non-binary people make “Tolkien” their own despite systemic marginalization in academia (Reid; Healy, Savonick and Davidson). 

Bio:
Robin Anne Reid is a retired academic who is enjoying life as an independent scholar. Her current projects include two anthologies under contract with McFarland. The first is co-edited with Christopher Vaccaro and Stephen Yandell, “There are many paths to tread”: Queer Approaches to Tolkien’s Middle-earth, and the second is Race, Racisms, and Racists: Essays on J. R. R. Tolkien’s Legendarium, Adaptations, and Readers. Her next projects seem likely to become the first feminist monograph about Tolkien studies, then the first atheist monograph on atheist, agnostic, and animist readers of Tolkien although she hopes not. 

Saige Severin

Abstract:
The Erotic as Magic: Fantasy and Lasting Political Action

In her essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” Audre Lorde explains that “The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane,” a “power which arises from our deepest and nonrational knowledge” (Lorde 57). She defines the erotic as a fundamentally queer source of creative and affective power that is necessary in the fight for equality and the creation of a whole and healthy society. Far from our sexualized understanding of the term today, Lorde’s erotic is best understood as an internal force for change. Fantasy, especially queer fantasy, can also be a force for change. Though theorists disagree on the details of how fantasy functions or is defined, there is loose consensus that fantasy is valuable as a form of literature in part because of its capacity to depict and engage with realities that do not (yet) exist. Jackson argues that “fantastic literature points to or suggests the basis upon which cultural order rests, for it opens up…that which is outside dominant value systems” (Jackson 2). When social and political systems become entrenched in damaging and seemingly unchangeable conventions, “fantasies provide some of our most powerful means of individually and collectively projecting alternatives to those conventions” (Sangster 67). In this essay, I use Lorde’s construction of the erotic to examine what happens within two fantasy texts that aim to project such alternatives, with varying degrees of success: William Morris’s The Wood Beyond the World (1894) and Hope Mirrlees’s Lud-in-the-Mist (1926). While both texts utilize fantasy as a mode through which to imagine alternative societies, I argue that Mirrlees succeeds where Morris fails to represent true political change because her construction of the fantastic centers on the erotic/queerness as power while his denies it.  

Bio:
Saige Severin (any/all) is a postgraduate student in the MLitt: Fantasy program at the University of Glasgow. They are interested in how what we choose to call “fantasy” impacts what (and who) is desired or seen as desirable, and how queer fantasy can help expand those boundaries. Their own fantastic works of art can be found @igneum_art on Instagram.  

Sarah Courtis

Abstract:
Write my way out (of the closet): challenging the compulsory heterosexual narrative of fantasy musicals 
 
Musical theatre has long been considered a ‘safe space’ for the queer community, extolling phrases such as ‘there’s a place for us’ and encouraging patrons to ‘let your freak flag fly’. Similarly, fantasy as a genre appears to engage with strange new worlds where love is love and the evils of the mundane world can be vanquished with the help of the fellowship of found family. However, the merging of these two concepts into the fantasy musical genre shows a compulsory heterosexuality which challenges these assumptions of safety and community. In this paper I will take a Queer reading of individual songs in the fantasy musical oeuvre to consider how close to the surface queerness truly is, and how a shifted perspective can create an anthem which writes itself out of the closet. Shows such as The Lord of the Rings: a musical tale conform to the perceived straightness of the original text, however, like the books, have been embraced by Queer audiences, particularly through the song ‘Now and For Always’. Shrek: the musical performs queerness through the fairytale characters, particularly in the song ‘Freak Flag’. Wicked is considered by Stacy Wolf as a quintessential queer musical, despite appearing to conform to heterosexual storylines; the inherent queerness culminating in ‘For Good’. Positive queer representations of sexuality and gender in fantasy musicals still has a long path to tread, but perhaps the metaphorical walls are beginning to be chipped away and the doors to the closet are beginning to open. 

Bio:
Sarah Courtis, PhD, FHEA, (Murdoch University, Western Australia) is a Lecturer of University Preparation Pathways, teaches at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) and is a member of the Australian Music Theatre Roundtable. Her research focus is the lyric in musical theatre and most recently she has been investigating the intersection of lyrics with race theory, disability studies and Queer theory. Dr Courtis works professionally as a lyricist and actor, including with the comedy award winning company Bogan Shakespeare. 

Silvia E. Storti

Abstract:
Queering villainy: disruptive storytelling in contemporary fairy-tale narratives 
 
As the output of fairy-tale narratives in contemporary media has grown, so has the portrayal of villainy evolved and adapted within. Defamiliarisation, which can allow for a previously silenced character to gain a voice of their own, is one of the revisionist strategies employed by contemporary artists to question and challenge the traditional villains of fairy tales. Although an overall shift towards well-rounded characters that audiences can identify with has certainly influenced the change in perspective as regards to the good/evil dichotomy in all kinds of media, what separates contemporary heroes from their villains are very slight shadings of right and wrong, instead of a clear-cut division of the roles. Yet villainy still resonates as the domain of the Other, often a minority tagged as not fitting in within the norms of the more dominant social group in recognisable “us vs them” scenarios. The villain is the ultimate Other from the hero and from the audience, and to look at how villainy has been portrayed is to look at how Others have been represented. My aim is to explore how the queering of villainy in postmodern and contemporary fairy-tale narratives can work to reclaim these narratives for marginalised identities. I draw on well-known examples of such disruptive storytelling from the post-Carter generation, Emma Donoghue’s “Kissing the Witch” and Malinda Lo’s “Ash” for instance, as well as more recent works, such as Ha Seong-Nan’s “Bluebeard’s First Wife” and Deirdre Sullivan’s “Tangleweed and Brine”. Without detracting from past and ongoing empowerment of heroes and heroines, I want to query queer representations of villains as transformative storytelling, and what the implications of inclusivity or exclusivity signal for the narratives we tell. 

Bio:
Dr Silvia E. Storti (she/her/hers) is an early career researcher with a PhD in English Literature from Kingston University London. Her primary research focuses on the portrayal of villainy in fairy-tale narratives and adaptations. Part of that research is published in “Interdisciplinary Essays on Cannibalism” (2021), edited by Dr Giulia Champion. Currently reworking her thesis for publication, her wider research interests include interdisciplinary and environmental humanities; cross-discipline aspects of folklore and fairy-tale studies; gender and sexuality in fairy tales. She is a member of the Angela Carter Society, the Folklore Society, and of the Disney Culture and Society Research Network. 

Stephanie Rincon Ramos

Abstract:
Reimagining Resistance: Postcolonial and Environmental Visions in She-Ra and The Owl House 
 
Fantasies of transformation and resistance within animated media often serve as a mirror to the postcolonial anxieties and ecological crises of the Anthropocene (De Cristofaro 2021), reflecting and reshaping the collective imaginary. Animated series such as She-Ra and the Princesses of Power and The Owl House go beyond simplistic portrayals of conflict and resolution, instead envisioning hopeful and imaginative alternatives for a postcolonial world. This paper explores these two series through the dual lenses of postcoloniality and environmentalism, arguing that their narratives challenge dominant colonial paradigms while fostering visions of relational and sustainable futures. By engaging with themes of displacement, hybridity, and ecological interdependence, both series critique legacies of exploitation and hierarchical domination, imagining societies rooted in cooperation, mutual care, and environmental harmony. Unlike traditional narratives that perpetuate the inevitability of catastrophic collaps,e these stories frame change as a generative process, where restoration and coexistence replace conquest and subjugation. Drawing on postcolonial theory and environmental humanities (Punter 2000; Giuliani 2020; Stibbe 2024), this paper contends that the futures envisioned in She-Ra and The Owl House empower viewers to rethink more-than-human relationships, offering creative pathways to navigate the intertwined crises of colonialism and environmental degradation. Ultimately, these series exemplify the transformative potential of storytelling to foster more equitable and ecologically attuned imaginaries. 
 
Cristofaro, Diletta De. 2021. “Patterns of Repetition: Colonialism, Capitalism and Climate Breakdown in Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Fiction.” Parallax 27 (1): 12–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2021.1976462. 
Giuliani, Gaia. 2020. Monsters, Catastrophes and the Anthropocene: A Postcolonial Critique. New York: Routledge.  
Punter, David. 2000. Postcolonial Imaginings: Fictions of a New World Order. Edinburgh: Edimburgh University Press.  
Stibbe, Arran. 2024. Econarrative: Ethics Ecology and the Search for New Narratives to Live By. London: Bloomsbury Academic.  

Bio:
Stephanie Rincon is a second-year PhD student at the University of the Balearic Islands. She is the recipient of the FPU CAIB 2023 grant and a member of the research project “Cinema and Environment 2: Ways of seeing beyond the Anthropocene” led by Dr. Katarzyna Paszkiewicz and funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.   
Her current research is situated at the intersection of studies of popular culture, critical posthumanism, affect theory and queer theory. She is interested in examining how recent children’s animated series represent the more-than-human world, oftentimes challenging the binaries that typically underlie anthropocentric narratives.

Stephen Welsh

Abstract:
Playing with queerness in Monsterhearts 2 and Thirsty Sword Lesbians  
 
Queer tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) enable the reclamation of fantastic narratives by people in the margins. They offer a safe space for individual exploration of queerness and facilitate the building of both queer and inclusive communities.  
 
Monsterhearts 2 by Avery Alder and Thirsty Sword Lesbians by April Kit Walsh achieve this in contrasting ways. In Monsterhearts 2 players discover and explore their characters’ identities and sexual orientations through play. Thirsty Sword Lesbians assumes queerness, inverting the heteronormative assumptions of most TTRPGs. Both games utilise mechanics which center the chaos and uncertainty of relationships and desire within the players’ experiences and interactions.  
 
They also reconstruct heterosexist fantasy tropes, placing queerness at the forefront of their narratives. Monsterhearts 2 uses a high school setting where players take on the roles of teenage monsters such as vampires and werewolves. Thirsty Sword Lesbians includes twelve settings inspired by fantasy texts. The mechanics, theming and text of both games create a space where heteronormative power structures can be deconstructed, and queerness can be explored.  
 
The ‘possibility space’ created in the playing of games has much in common with the potentiality of queerness and queer theory1. This further resonates with fantasy’s ability to subvert cultural norms, cross boundaries and broaden horizons. Queer fantasy games such as Monsterhearts 2 and Thirsty Sword Lesbians offer a space to explore queer identities and experiences. They also model and create both queer communities and diverse communities which embrace LGBTQ+ members.    
 
1 Todd Harper, Nicholas Taylor and Meghan Blythe Adams, ‘Queer Game Studies: Young But Not New’ in Queerness in Play, ed. by Todd Harper, Nicholas Taylor and Meghan Blythe Adams, Palgrave Games in Context (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). pp.1—13,  p.4, doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90542-6  

Bio:
Stephen Welsh (he/him) is currently enrolled in the English Literature: Fantasy MLitt programme at the University of Glasgow. He studies part-time whilst working as a Lecturer in Communication and English at Edinburgh College, where he is trying to introduce more fantasy literature into the curriculum. When not studying or teaching he writes fantasy literature and designs games. He is currently co-writing a sourcebook of Scottish folklore for tabletop roleplaying games, to be published by Dragon Cult Games later this year. He lives in Edinburgh with his fiancé Rachel and their cats, Sasha and Jinkx (named after their favourite drag queens).  

Tam Moules

Abstract:
Armour, Body Parts, and Queer Masculinity in Arthurian Retellings 
 
Written by David Rudkin, the 1991 television adaptation of Gawain and the Green Knight is held together by a symbolic thread linking armour with a looming spectre of hegemonic masculinity, as well as becoming synecdoche for the body parts which it covers. The scene of Gawain’s departure from Camelot has him hold his helmet up and kiss it, in a piece of visual symbolism which parallels the Green Knight’s severed head as well as foreshadowing the kissing game later in the story. Later we see Gawain’s suit of armour, hung from a rafter while he sleeps, startling him awake as it looms over him, the spectre of chivalry made (man)ifest. 
We also see a different version, perhaps the inverse, of this symbolism in David Lowery’s recent film version- his Gawain wears little armour beyond a chain-mail coat, and his sense of masculinity reads likewise as being more fluid, while still being an external burden on him. This version also transfers a lot of this same symbolism into the crown Gawain eventually wears, rather than his armour. 
Wearing armour is the most obvious visual aspect of the gendered performance of knighthood, and is thus very useful in visual adaptations of the story, but this correspondence shows up in literature as well. Nicola Griffith’s 2022 novella Spear examines this through several characters, but especially through its protagonist who, being physically invulnerable to most harm, uses armour primarily as a tool through which to perform masculinity. 
This paper aims to examine body part and armour symbolism in these Gawain retellings, especially how they relate to the story’s queer undertones, as well as taking a look at how the symbolism spreads into the wider Arthurian corpus. 

Bio:
Tam Moules has an MLitt in Fantasy Literature from the University of Glasgow and a BA (Hons) in English Literature from Anglia Ruskin University. Their research is currently focused on queerness in Arthuriana, and outside of academia their creative practice is currently focused on photography. 

Taylor Driggers

Abstract:
‘All people are glyphs’: Queer Kinship and the Politics of Reading in Laurie J. Marks’s Elemental Logic and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Annals of the Western Shore 
 
Queer fantasy literature is often popularly understood as fantasy that mimetically represents distinct LGBTQ+ identity categories from the primary world, usually coinciding with direct market appeal to identifiable subgroups within LGBTQ+ cultures. Yet the increased threat of censorship, erasure, and violence faced in recent years by queer literature and those who produce and disseminate it suggests that this market-driven approach to queer visibility in the genre has severely limited utility in practice. In this paper, I argue that Laurie J. Marks’s Elemental Logic series (2002–2019) and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Annals of the Western Shore (2004–2007) model reading practices that not only foreground the necessity of hiddenness and transformative reading for survival, but also create possibilities for kinship, intimacy, and solidarity beyond those afforded by representational politics. In these two series – one of which features visibly queer sexual pairings and one of which does not – characters inhabit transformative relationships to literature in which their own needs and desires become inextricably bound up with those of others. 
Following Jennifer V. Evans (2023), I suggest that reading for kinship rather than for visibility also allows us to contend with the less quantifiable queer traces in the fantasy genre’s histories. Drawing on archival research funded by the Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellowship at the University of Oregon, I apply insights from Le Guin’s and Marks’s respective fictions to consider the correspondence between Le Guin and James Tiptree, Jr. as a poignant example of kinship in the archive. Reframing queerness in fantasy in this way points to a multitude of ways to thrive outside of or slantwise to the representational gaze. 

Bio:
Taylor Driggers holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Glasgow. He is an independent scholar currently researching how fantasy characters model reading and archiving practices that can inform queer history-making and kinship-building in our world. Taylor is the recipient of a 2024 Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellowship, and his debut monograph, Queering Faith in Fantasy Literature (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), was a finalist for the 2023 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies. 

Zvonimir Prtenjača

Abstract:
Destabilizing Homonormativity: Wiccan from Marvel Comics’ Young Avengers and The Children’s Crusade to Disney+’s Agatha All Along 
 
Many queer superheroes occupy the pages of Marvel Comics, yet their sexual and/or gender identities are not always represented without problems on the latter’s panels. These texts’ popular film and TV adaptations usually transfer such problematic depictions onto the screens uncritically, further exaggerating them to their viewers. However, some creators have recently sought to destabilize the heteronormative ideology driving and sustaining the production of such portrayals, while simultaneously attempting to deliver an engaging fantastical audiovisual narrative. Jac Schaeffer’s Agatha All Along, the 2024 Disney+ series which folds several elements of Allan Heinberg’s best-selling comic book runs Young Avengers (2005–2006) and Avengers: The Children’s Crusade (2010–2012) into its storyline, is one such work. While Heinberg’s primary texts openly trace the evolution of the reality warping spellcaster Billy Kaplan/Wiccan’s budding same-sex relationship with the super strong shapeshifter Teddy Altman/Hulkling, they also “perpetuate the homonormative” conceptualizations of their gender identities, especially as they “consistently conflate femininity” with Wiccan’s “homosexual signification and perpetuate fears of the gay man as destructive, predatory, and contaminating” (De Dauw 116). The “changes” Schaeffer makes “at the level of manifesting signs” in Agatha All Along, though, “go further to deconstruct” this “deep narrative structure” drawn to the surface through what Kamilla Elliot has called “the genetic concept of adaptation” (150–151). The TV series, this paper will argue, ultimately reworks the stereotypical depictions of Wiccan’s gender by portraying him as an empathetic and non-confrontational male witch whose journey of self-discovery can be empowering for the viewers mirrored in the young gay superhero. 
 
References 
De Dauw, Esther. Hot Pants and Spandex Suits: Gender Representation in American Superhero Comic Books. Rutgers UP, 2021. 
Elliott, Kamilla. Rethinking the Novel/Film Debate. Cambridge UP, 2003. 

Bio:
Zvonimir Prtenjača (he/him/his) is a PhD candidate and a teaching assistant with the Department of English at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, the Republic of Croatia), where he researches theories, politics, and practices of representation and difference in American popular culture. If not teaching English in his elementary school or writing his doctoral dissertation, he is consuming excessive amounts of caffeinated beverages after lifting weights, watching and reading the newly released or published superhero and dark fantasy film/TV show/comic book, or annoying his fiancée by building yet another LEGO Marvel set. 

Şevval Tufan

Abstract:
Queering the Weird: Rethinking Ecology and Nonhuman Entanglements in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy (2014)

A sub-branch of science fiction and fantasy, weird fiction disrupts anthropocentric and heteronormative binaries by emphasizing fluidity of identity, hybridity, and the intermingling of human and non-human beings. New Weird fiction writer Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy embodies this approach and envisions queer settlement, embodiment, and coexistence in ways that challenge binary ideologies. Within the trilogy, Area X stands as an enigmatic and ever-changing ecological anomaly that serves as a pristine space where strict boundaries and dualisma dissolve, and bodies transform beyond recognition. Through the lens of queer ecology, which critiques normative ecological and social structures, this presentation will explore how VanderMeer’s work deconstructs hierarchical structures and reimagines ecological relations through disturbing narratives of mutation, contamination, and coexistence. It will be also analyzed how the genre’s emphasis on the unknowable and uncanny mirrors the destabilization of identity and environment. By examining and analyzing Southern Reach Trilogy within broader debates on environmental ethics, queer embodiment, and posthumanist thought, this paper will argue that VanderMeer’s trilogy not only contributes to contemporary queer fiction, but also offers a critical framework for queer ecologies. 

Bio:
Şevval Tufan earned her Bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature with a minor in English Translation and Interpreting from Hacettepe University in 2022. In the same year, she started her master’s degree in American Culture and Literature at Hacettepe University. She is in the process of writing her thesis entitled “Revisiting the Human/Nature Binary: Weird Ecology, Body Horror and Ecophobia in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy (2014).” Between 2020 and 2023, she attended the Children’s Literature summer school at Trinity College Dublin. She is currently working as an instructor. Her areas of interest include science fiction, ecofeminism, animal studies and video game studies.