ACCSFF '19 June 7-8, 2019	Program History Home
	ACCSFF covered nearly two full days in 2019. There were seven sessions, none of them concurrent; there were 15 papers, while two presenters canceled. We held two sessions each on science fiction, fantasy, and the work of Margaret Atwood, as well as one on other media. Other than Atwood, presenters spoke on William Gibson, Cory Doctorow, Drew Hayden Taylor, Guy Gavriel Kay, Charles de Lint, Peter Watts, Nalo Hopkinson, and more. The Keynote Address Speakers were novelist and short story writer Kelly Robson and author and scholar Jean-Louis Trudel. Robson spoke Friday evening about the role of the fantastic in her life and work, and Trudel offered an overview of French-Canadian fantastic literature, providing us with insights into early works and the remarkable growth of the field after the Quiet Revolution in 1960. As the conference program shows, we began at 12:30 on Friday afternoon with opening remarks from the Head of the branch's special collections, Sephora Henderson, as well as the Chair, Allan Weiss. This was followed by the first of the science fiction sessions, including Cat Ashton's consideration of present-day and near-future works by Gibson and Doctorow, David Cheater's look at Indigenous SF through the fiction of Drew Hayden taylor, and Meghan Riley's discussion of how speculative fiction can be used to teach gender and intersectional issues. The first Atwood session followed soon afterward, featuring Monica Sousa and internationally renowned Atwood scholar Eleonora Rao. The afternoon sessions ended with papers on authors like Kay and de Lint by Mark Buchanan, Jarrett Viczko, and Matthew Rettino. After supper, we were treated to Kelly Robson's lively Author Keynote Address. Jean-Louis Trudel's Scholar Keynote Address opened Saturday's activities, as he introduced attendees to francophone authors and works most had never known anything about. The second Atwood session followed a short break, and Ruby Niemann and Lisa Macklem discussed Atwood's post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction respectively. The second Canadian science fiction session came after lunch; Terese Mason Pierre told us about Ben Berman Ghan's new novel, What We See in the Smoke, and Clare Wall spoke on Peter Watts's biological posthumanism. The second session on fantasy featured Natalie Ingram's paper on the mythological roots of Nalo Hopkinson's The Salt Roads. The final session included Sheryl N. Hamilton's discussion of the television series Y: The Last Man and Dominick M. Grace's paper on Seth's Clyde Fans. Once again, the conference could not have taken place without the support of the Toronto Public Library and help from librarian Annette Mocek, social media volunteer Clare Wall, refreshments volunteer David Cheater, other library staff, and those who worked at the registration, like Barbara Kwaniewski. Thank you, all!