There Will Be Fan Fiction

Love it or hate it, fan fiction has become one of the most popular literary forms of the 21st century. Hordes of scribblers of wildly varying talent regularly post hundreds of thousands of unauthorized expansions of various fandoms to sites like AO3 or FanFiction.net. Some fanfic writers even get published after doing a search-and-replace of proper nouns and we all suffer for it (*cough*Fifty Shades*cough*). So of course local literary kingpins Jesse Bradley of There Will Be Words and John King of “The Drunken Odyssey” have teamed up to, uh, celebrate the genre. Five local writers – including Teege Braune, Genevieve Anna Tyrrell and Stephanie Rizzo – present original works in a medium that celebrates unoriginality. The writers are being tight-lipped about what fandoms they’ll be tackling, but our made-up wishlist has John King covering Twilight, Braune on Star Wars and Rizzo reading an X-Men/Lord of the Rings crossover with plenty of slashy scenes between Magneto and Gandalf. – Thaddeus McCollum