It’s time to say farewell to this year’s Worldcon by brunching with Natalia Theodoridou, the last of four guests from Seattle following Eugenia Triantafyllou, John Picacio, and Lara Elena Donnelly.

Theodoridou’s debut novel, Sour Cherry, was released earlier this year by Tin House (in North America) and Wildfire (in the UK and the Commonwealth). He’s a five-time Nebula Awards nominee, and shared an award earlier this year in the category of game writing for A Death in Hyperspace. He won a Nebula Award for short story in 2018 for “The Birding: A Fairy Tale,” published in Strange Horizons.

He’s also the winner of Moniack Mhor’s 2022 Emerging Writer Award. Additional fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Apex, Uncanny, Psychopomp, khōréō, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and numerous others. He is also a Clarion West Graduate (class of 2018) and holds a PhD in Media & Cultural Studies from SOAS University of London.

We discussed what it felt like attending Clarion the same year he was nominated for a World Fantasy Award, how Karen Joy Fowler’s advice changed the texture of his descriptions, what he needs to know before beginning to write a short story, whether he’s as confident in the writing process as his voice seems to me on the page, why the fact readers won’t need to know anything about Bluebeard to enjoy his Bluebeard-inspired novel is a tragedy, the question to which that novel itself must stand as the only possible answer, why it’s so important for readers to be able to sit with ambiguity and uncertainty, the reason we’ve yet to see a short story collection from him, and much more.

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While watching the second episode of the documentary series Mr. Scorsese, I spotted two Joes hiding in a photograph of Martin Scorsese directing Robert De Niro during one of Taxi Driver‘s most intense scenes.

In case you can’t see them, I’ll flip over the relevant detail to make it easier for you.

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I grow a bit verklempt this time around while I rap about the Spider-Man rock album for which I made sure the band didn’t miss a note, remember watching Dave Cockrum and Len Wein create Giant-Size X-Men #1 out of thin air, pass along the surprising truths Steve Ditko’s family most wants you to know, critique the Metropolitan Opera’s production of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, choke up while praising Marie Severin’s posthumous induction into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame, walk the exhibit hall at Baltimore Comic-Con where only a single item of comics memorabilia tempted me, and more.

You can eavesdrop on all those memories via the embed below or download them at the site of your choice.

Here are some images related to some of the topics you’ll hear me touching on during the episode —

Stan Lee sells Spider-Man: Rock Reflections of a Super-Hero

My autographed copy of that album

Praising Marie Severin at the Society of Illustrators

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If you believe the meatspace calendar, this year’s Worldcon is already in the rear view mirror, but as far as this podcast is concerned, the party isn’t over yet. That’s because it’s now time for you to take a seat at the table and eavesdrop on my third meal from Seattle, following Eugenia Triantafyllou and John Picacio.

My latest guest, Lara Elena Donnelly, is the author of the Nebula, Lambda, and Locus-nominated Amberlough Dossier trilogy, which consists of the three books Amberlough, Armistice, and Amnesty. Her most recent novel is the contemporary thriller Base Notes. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in venues such as Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, Nightmare, and Uncanny.

Lara has taught in the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College, as well as the Catapult Workshop in New York. She’s a graduate of the Clarion and Alpha writers’ workshops, and has served as on-site staff at the latter. She’s also one of four co-founders at Homeward Books, which currently has a Kickstarter running to fund the company’s first title, The Witch of Prague, by J.M. Sidorova — and if you’re visiting here within the first week or so of this episode going live, there’s still time to back the project, so please check it out.

We discussed the hot tub conversation which led to the sale of her first novel, why the contradictions of her Clarion experience were liberating, the reason her relationship to the writing process means she’s primarily a novelist rather than a short story writer, her complicated emotions about the conclusion to her debut novel, why she got sick of the word “prescient,” the gnarly origins of the perfumes we love (and the reasons she needed to learn about them), why she decided to start a service advising how to write better sex scenes, the novel she wrote without gendering a character (and the fun in following which readers assume which genders), how she and Sam J. Miller were able to collaborate without killing each other, and much more.

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It’s time to return to Seattle for the second conversation I captured at Worldcon, following my soup dumpling lunch with Eugenia Triantafyllou. Now it’s time to head out for BBQ with John Picacio, one of the most acclaimed American artists in science fiction and fantasy during the past decade.

Picacio is the winner of three Hugo Awards, nine Chesley Awards, five Locus Awards, two International Horror Guild Awards, the World Fantasy Award, and the Inkpot Award. He’s created best-selling art for George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series, the Star Trek and X-Men franchises, as well as over 150 book covers. His body of work features major book illustrations for authors such as Leigh Bardugo, Rebecca Roanhorse, Michael Moorcock, Harlan Ellison, James Dashner, Brenda Cooper, Frederik Pohl, Mark Chadbourn, Sheri S. Tepper, James Tiptree, Jr., Lauren Beukes, Jeffrey Ford, Joe R. Lansdale, and many, many more.

He is the founder of the creative publishing imprint, Lone Boy, which has become the launchpad for his Loteria Grande cards, a contemporary re-imagining of the classic Mexican game of chance. He is the founder of The Mexicanx Initiative. He’s the co-author — with Leigh Bardugo — and illustrator of The Invisible Parade, which released September 2, 2025, by Little, Brown for Young Readers.

We discussed how he’d never have gotten where he is today without comics, why he initially turned down what ended up being his first science fiction book cover (and what made him change his mind), the reason he thinks of a book as a person he needs to introduce at a party, whether he pays attention to the artists who preceded him when updating the look of a book, why one of the most important skills for a cover artist is listening, the catalyst for his creator-owned, self-published projects, how his style and his skills have changed over the years, how his recent collaboration with Leigh Bardgo began, why he’d rather be a marathon runner than a sprinter, how to avoid getting caught up in the trope of the year when it comes to cover art, the reason he launched the Mexicanx Initiative, how stabilization isn’t the same as stagnation, and much more.

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It’s time to kick off a quartet of episodes recorded last month during the Seattle Worldcon, beginning with the award-winning writer Eugenia Triantafyllou.

Triantafyllou has been nominated for the British Fantasy, Hugo, Ignyte, Locus, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, and was on the Hugo Awards ballot that weekend for her novelette “Loneliness Universe,” published last year in Uncanny. Earlier this year she appeared on the Nebula Awards ballot twice, for both “Loneliness Universe” as well as “Joanna’s Bodies,” the latter of which was published in Psychopomp. 

Last year, she won the Shirley Jackson Award for her novelette “Six Versions of My Brother Found Under the Bridge” which also appeared in Uncanny. In addition to those venues, she has been published in Reactor.com, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Apex, Sunday Morning Transport, The Deadlands, and elsewhere. She’s a graduate of Clarion West Writers Workshop. 

We discussed the online prompt which caused her to write her first short story, why she ended up as a fantasy writer rather than a comic book creator, what it was like being nominated for two Nebula Awards the same year in the same category, the two types of naysayers who thought she’d never be able to write artfully in English, how she terrified Stephan Graham Jones with a tomato, why she never outlines, the reason voice is so important to her process, how a pantser handles world building, why she feels writing mysteries is easy, how her mother’s memories helped teach her storytelling, why writers shouldn’t steal ideas, but ambition,  and much more.

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