It’s time to head back to Helsinki for the fourth episode recorded during the 75th World Science Fiction Convention, following up on Johanna Sinisalo, Chen Quifan, and Xia Jia.

This time around, you get to listen in on my lunch at Mero-Himal Nepalese Restaurant with Karin Tidbeck during the penultimate day of the con. Tidbeck writes fiction in both Swedish and English, and debuted in 2010 with the Swedish short story collection Vem är Arvid Pekon? Her English debut, the 2012 collection Jagannath, was awarded the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts William L. Crawford Fantasy Award in 2013 and was shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award. Her novel debut, Amatka, was recently released in English.

We discussed the serious nature of Live Action Role-Playing games in Nordic countries, the way pretending to be a 150-year-old vampire changed her life, how discovering Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics made her forget time and space, the most important lesson she learned from the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writing Workshop, how she uses improvisational exercises to teach beginning writers, why Amatka grew from a poetry collection into a novel, what made her say, “I’m not here to answer questions, I’m here to ask them,” and more.

Here’s how you can share spring rolls with us—

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Check out what we shared at the table as we chatted—

Naan

Deep-fried Vegetable Spring Rolls
with sweet chili sauce, mint chutney, and salad

Deep-fried Vegetable Samosa
stuffed with potatoes and peas

Khasiko Masu
Stewed lamb pieces in garlic, tomato, and curry sauce

Palag Kukhura Balti
Stewed chicken filet piece in tomato, spinach, ginger, cream, and curry sauce

If after ingesting this episode, you’re hungry for more, come back in two weeks for lunch with Amal El-Mohtar, who won both Hugo and Nebula Awards this year for her short story “Seasons of Glass and Iron.

Before you go, though, a few final thoughts.

This is the Eating the Fantastic’s 51st episode, and if you’d like there to be 50 more, 100 more, who knows, even 500 episodes more, you can help by checking out patreon.com/eatingthefantastic.

Though these episodes reach your ears for free, there are expenses associated with them, such as travel (I sometimes take cabs or Ubers getting my guests to and from cons and restaurants), bandwidth, equipment, the meals I spring for that put food in the mouths of my guests and loosen their tongues for you—and with a small recurring monthly donation, you can help subsidize those and other costs.

And who knows? Perhaps even help it grow to the point where I can afford to bring episodes to your ears more frequently. I wish I could share new episodes three times per month, or even weekly, but there’s no way I can swing it alone, so please check out patreon.com/eatingthefantastic. (If that level of commitment’s too much for you, though, don’t worry, you could instead toss a tip my way of any size via paypal.me/eating the fantastic.)

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Thanks! See you next time!