Out in the real world, Balticon is around six weeks in the rearview mirror, but here at Eating the Fantastic, it’s not yet time to check out of the hotel and head for home. You’ve had a chance to take a seat at the table with Alex Jennings and Elwin Cotman from that Baltimore event, but we still have one more meal to go — because now it’s time for an Italian lunch with Sally Wiener Grotta.

Grotta’s latest two books are Of Being Woman, a collection of feminist science fiction stories, and Daughters of Eve, a discussion workbook which uses tales of biblical matriarchs to explore the modern world. Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies and magazines such as the North Atlantic Review, DreamForge, Across the Universe: Tales of Alternative Beatles, and others.

Her previous books include Digital Imaging for Visual Artists (co-authored with Daniel Grotta), and the novels Jo Joe, which was a Jewish Book Council Network book, and The Winter Boy, which was a Locus Magazine Recommended Read. Sally is also co-curator of the Galactic Philadelphia Salon reading series. Plus she’s also an award-winning journalist and photographer who has traveled on assignment to all seven continents.

We discussed when we first met (and can’t quite figure out whether it was a third or a quarter of a century ago), how her first storytelling impulse began because she’d fall asleep while being read stories as a child, the importance of the question “what if?,” why she often finds horror difficult to read, the early experience which allowed her to have such a good relationship with editors, the story she wrote in Ursula K. Le Guin’s writing workshop which caused that Grand Master to say “what a darling monster,” when we should submit to editorial suggestions and when we should run screaming, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at Sabatino’s Italian restaurant —

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And here’s what loosened our tongues at Sabatino’s Italian restaurant (in addition to the garlic bread seen in the photo above) —

Our Pasta

Sally’s Shrimp Caciatorri

Scott’s Veal Parmigiana

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Coming up next — the first of my Stokercon conversations, this one with writer Ai Jiang 48 hours before she won a Bram Stoker Award and a little more than a week before she won a Nebula award.

Thanks for listening!