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The daily schedules have been released for DisCon III’s Guest of Honor Nancy Kress; Fan Guest of Honor Ben Yalow; and Special Guests Sheree Renée Thomas, Malka Older, and Andrea Hairston. Following each of their names is a day-by-day list of the events they will be attending.

DisCon III is the third World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) that has been held in Washington DC, USA. Worldcon is the annual gathering of science fiction and fantasy fans, writers, artists, musicians, and other creators from across the globe. DisCon III will be at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC, on December 15-19, 2021. Covid policy is here. Virtual events can be found at www.DisCon3.org 

The schedules appear after the break.

NANCY KRESS

Nancy Kress is the author of thirty-three books, including twenty-six novels, four collections of short stories, and three books on writing. Her work has won six Nebulas, two Hugos, a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and has been translated into two dozen languages, including Klingon. In addition to writing, Kress often teaches at various venues around the country and abroad, including a visiting lectureship at the University of Leipzig, a 2017 writing class in Beijing, and the annual intensive workshop Taos Toolbox, which she teaches every summer with Walter Jon Williams.

Wednesday, December 15

• 4:00 pm         Opening Ceremonies (Regency)
• 7:00 pm.         Reading (Diplomat) 

Thursday, December 16

• 10:00 am        Changing Genes (Blue Room)
• 11:30 am         But I Don’t Want to Be a Hero (Blue Room)
• 1:00 pm           Autographing session
• 4:00 pm           Nancy Kress in Conversation (pre-recorded Palladian Ballroom)
• 5:00 pm           Public Hugo Reception (Ambassador Ballroom) 

Friday, December 17

• 10:00 am          Kaffeeklatsch (Suite 325)
• 1:00 pm            The Softer Side of SF (Blue Room)
• 4:00 pm            Gary K. Wolfe Interviews Nancy Kress (Blue Room)

Saturday, December 18

• 10:00 am          Nuts and Bolts of Chapters (Blue Room)
• 2:30 pm            Writing Believable Children (Thomas-Virtual)
• 8:00 pm            Hugo Award Ceremony (Regency Ballroom)

Sunday, December 19

• 1:00  pm                Closing Ceremonies (Regency)

BEN YALOW

Ben Yalow’s very first convention he attended as a fan was Lunacon in 1971, followed later that year by his first Worldcon, Noreascon. Ben first started staffing conventions at the very first Star Trek convention in January 1972, followed by the Worldcon in 1973, Torcon 2. He has attended roughly eight hundred cons and staffed over three hundred. Discon 3 will be the 50th anniversary of his first Worldcon, and he hasn’t missed any in between. Ben’s contributions to con-running are numerous, and still on-going. Wanting to have a place where convention runners can come together to learn and teach one another, Ben co-founded SMOFcon, the annual convention that focuses exclusively on convention running. He has attended them all (including the one not held). He has been a Worldcon Division Head, co-Division Head, or Assistant Division Head for sixteen different Worldcons (on three continents), on the Chairman’s staff for a half-dozen others, and Comptroller for two more. He has chaired Lunacon (1978) and Boskone (1994), co-chaired one SMOFcon (1984) and was co-Vice Chair at the 1994 SMOFcon (and, with the Chair being a stuffed animal, the Vice-Chair job was a lot more involved than normal). He ran programming for Westercon in the same year he was Assistant Programme Head for Eastercon (2000) when they were about as far apart as they could possibly be (Hawaii and Glasgow).

In non-convention fanac, he is a member of NESFA (having once been President), FACT, LASFS, and SCIFI. He has been a Lunarian, a Fanoclast, and a member of OSFCI and FANAC. He has written a regular column for a fanzine (Jane’s Fighting SMOFs) and edited four books for NESFA Press, two of which have gotten nominated for the Hugo Award (“entirely the credit of the author, Dave Langford, not mine—I’ve just been really fortunate in that that he let me edit them”).

Wednesday, December 15

• 4:00 pm          Opening Ceremonies (Regency)
• 7:00 pm           A Closer Look at the Business Meeting Agenda (Blue Room)

Thursday, December 16

• 1:00 pm            Adding Your Fannish Skills to Your Resume (Palladian Ballroom)
• 4:00 pm            Kaffeeklatsch (Suite 325)
• 5:00 pm            Public Hugo Reception (Ambassador Ballroom)
• 5:30 pm            Talking About the Big Heart Award (Blue Room)

Friday, December 17

• 2:30 pm             Everything You Need to Know to Bid for Worldcon (Palladian Ballroom)

Saturday, December 18

• 2:30 pm            Interview with Geri Sullivan (Blue Room)
• 8:00 pm            Hugo Award Ceremony (Regency Ballroom) 

Sunday, December 19

• 1:00                 Closing Ceremonies (Regency)

SHEREE RENÉE THOMAS

Sheree Renée Thomas is an award-winning fiction writer, poet, and editor. Her work is inspired by myth and folklore, music, natural science, and the genius of the Mississippi Delta. Nine Bar Blues: Stories from an Ancient Future (Third Man Books, May 2020), her fiction collection, was honored as 2021 Finalist for the Ignyte, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards. She is also the author of two multigenre/hybrid collections, Sleeping Under the Tree of Life (Aqueduct Press, July 2016), longlisted for the 2016 Otherwise Award and honored with a Publishers Weekly Starred Review and Shotgun Lullabies (Aqueduct January 2011). She edited the World Fantasy-winning groundbreaking black speculative fiction anthologies, Dark Matter (Grand Central, 2000 and 2004), and is the first to introduce W.E.B. Du Bois’s science fiction short stories.  Her work is widely anthologized and appears in The Big Book of Modern Fantasy, edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer (Vintage, 2020). She is the Associate Editor of the historic Black arts literary journal, Obsidian: Literature & the Arts in the African Diaspora, founded in 1975 and is the Editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, founded in 1949. She also writes book reviews for Asimov’s. She was recently honored as a 2020 World Fantasy Award Finalist in the Special Award – Professional category for contributions to the genre and is the Co-Host of the 2021 Hugo Awards Ceremony at DisCon III in Washington, DC with Andrea Hairston. Sheree is the Guest of Honor of Wiscon 45 and a Guest of Honor of StokerCon 2022. She is a Marvel writer and contributor to the anthology, Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda edited by Jesse J. Holland (Titan, March 2021) and collaborated with Janelle Monáe on the artist’s forthcoming fiction collection, The Memory Librarian and Other Stories from Dirty Computer (Harper Voyager, April 2022). Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, a new anthology she co-edited with Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and Zelda Knight is forthcoming from Tordotcom Publishing in 2022. A former New Yorker, she lives in her hometown, Memphis, Tennessee near a mighty river and a pyramid.

Wednesday, December 15

• 4:00 pm                Opening Ceremonies (Regency)
• 7:00 pm                 Kaffeeklatsch (Suite 325)
• 8:30 pm                 Author Reading (with Andrea Hairston and Pan Morigan) (Diplomat Ballroom)

Thursday, December 16

• 11:00 pm              Autographing at the SFWA Table (Dealers Room)
• 1:00 pm                Honoring Charles Saunders’ Sword and Soul (Congressional Virtual)
• 2:30 pm                Ask an Editor (Blue Room)
• 4:00 pm                Black Speculative Fiction (Thomas Virtual)
• 5:00 pm                Public Hugo Reception (Ambassador Ballroom)
• 5:30 pm                 2021 Nommo Awards Ceremony (Congressional Virtual)

Friday, December 17

• 11:30 pm               Creating New Mythology (Blue Room)
• 2:30 pm                Sheree Renée Thomas and Danian Darrell Jerry (Blue Room)
• 4:00 pm                Envisioning Black Futures (Thomas-Virtual)
• 8:30 pm                The Work of Nalo Hopkinson (Blue Room)

Saturday, December 18

• 10:00 am              Culture of the Unconquered (Empire Ballroom)
• 11:00 am              Hugo Rehearsal (Regency Ballroom)
• 8:00 pm               Hugo Award Ceremony (Regency Ballroom)

Sunday, December 19

• 1:00                 Closing Ceremonies (Regency) 

MALKA OLDER

Malka Older is a writer, aid worker, and sociologist. Her science-fiction political thriller Infomocracy was named one of the best books of 2016 by Kirkus, Book Riot, and the Washington Post, and shortlisted for the 2019 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award. With the sequels Null States (2017) and State Tectonics (2018), she completed the Centenal Cycle trilogy, a finalist for the Hugo Best Series Award of 2018. She is also the creator of the serial Ninth Step Station, currently running on Serial Box, and her short story collection And Other Disasters was published in November 2019. Named Senior Fellow for Technology and Risk at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs for 2015, she has more than a decade of field experience in humanitarian aid and development. Her doctoral work on the sociology of organizations at Sciences Po Paris explores the dynamics of post-disaster improvisation in governments.

Thursday, December 16

• 1:00 pm                 Logistics of Off-World Disasters (Harris-Virtual)
• 2:30 pm                 Urban Planning in the Space Age (Older-Virtual)

Friday, December 17

• 4:00 pm                Unusual Political Structures in Speculative Fiction (Kress-Virtual)
• 5:30 pm                Reading (Harris-Virtual)

Saturday, December 18

• 2:30 pm                 Nicholas Whyte Interviews Malka Older (Congressional Virtual)

ANDREA HAIRSTON

Andrea Hairston is a novelist, playwright, and scholar. Her novels: Master of Poisons, on the Kirkus Review’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2020; Will Do Magic For Small Change, a New York Times Editor’s pick and finalist for the Mythopoeic, Lambda, and Otherwise Awards; Mindscape, shortlisted for the Phillip K. Dick and Otherwise Awards and winner of the Carl Brandon Award. Lonely Stardust is a collection of essays and plays. Her play, Thunderbird at the Next World Theatre, appears in Geek Theater. A novelette, “Saltwater Railroad,” was published by Lightspeed Magazine. “Dumb House,” a short story, appears in New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color edited by Nisi Shawl.

Andrea received the International Association of the Fantastic in the Arts Distinguished Scholarship Award in 2011 and has gotten grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. . “Seven Generations Algorithm,” a short story is in Trouble the Waters: Tales from the Deep Blue edited by Sheree Renée Thomas, Pan Morigan, and Troy L. Wiggins. Redwood and Wildfire, winner of the Otherwise and Carl Brandon Awards, will be out February 1, 2022, from Tordotcom.

In her spare time, Andrea is the Louise Wolff Kahn 1931 Professor of Theatre and Africana Studies at Smith College and the Artistic Director of Chrysalis Theatre.

Wednesday, December 15

• 8:30 pm.         Author Reading, Thomas, Hairston, Morigan 5(Diplomat Ballroom)

Saturday, December 18

• 11:00 am              Hugo Rehearsal (Regency Ballroom)
• 8:00 pm               Hugo Award Ceremony (Regency Ballroom)