it’s taken a few weeks to catch my breath, but last month I presented on my first panel at the International Gothic Association Conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I had alot to learn about presenting at a conference of this size, starting with the call for papers, followed by the funding process, travel and presentation itself. The IGA conference is a long-standing event, alternating each year between North America and Europe. Next year, the conference takes place in York. but this year’s event was at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, giving me an excuse to finally see Canada’s east coast, something that us western residents rarely get to do.

Call for papers

The call for papers process is something that was relatively new to me. For this conference, I teamed up with my writing comrade, Sam Le Butt, who I did my master’s degree with, and together we put together joint abstract on global gothic storytelling. Both of us were slammed with work when the call for papers was announced, and so over a series of voice notes on WhatsApp, I jumbled together a coherent abstract and hit send. I had also cobbled together an individual abstract without a significant amount of thought, and when the results came in – our joint panel was accepted, while my hastily crafted individual proposal was not. The acceptance now meant we had the task of putting together our papers and presentations, as well as getting our funding in order.

My presentation was based somewhat on a previous paper I had delivered, but truth be told, I was still getting used to this concept of presenting research and figuring out what I was actually talking about. This time around, I focused on the ecogothic elements in Louise Penny’s novel A Better Man, and I felt that the gothic lens suited the analysis of the paper. Still, I have alot to learn in this regard.

Funding

The University of Edinburgh does offer some conference funding, and I secured £500 through the university plus another £150 from the IGA student bursary fund. Obviously this is not enough to cover all the costs of the trip, so the remaining balance gets claimed on my taxes each year. It’s important to keep every single receipt for these professional events because I tally up the total so I know how much to claim at the end of the year. This is extra work for self-funded students because typically there is an extra pool of money for funded students to attend conferences that comes from their funding body.

Navigating the conference

I landed the day before the conference, and had convinced my husband to come along on our companion WestJet fare since – when else would we see Nova Scotia? We decided to add on a trip to Prince Edward Island, where Ryan met up with a former work colleague and we subsisted on lobster everyday. He was also our driver to and from the conference, which was lucky, since the organizer kept removing features of the conference such as shuttle service to/from the university. If anything, I learned alot about ‘what not to do’ when organizing a conference such as: making false promises to attendees.

The program had been announced but, given the surprisingly high cost to attend (something that was announced fairly late), many people dropped out and thus the schedule shifted quite a bit. Sam and I were originally slated for Thursday, but got bumped to the final day. This was unfortunate in some sense because alot of people leave early, but good in another sense because we had more time to promote our panel and network with people. Sam and I also had moderating duties, and each moderated a panel – mine was interesting because only one panellist showed up, so we had a lengthy Q&A talk and it turned out well. I attended several panel talks, and some where arguably better than others. If one panel wasn’t my jam, I sometimes ducked out of the room to join another.

The lunch breaks took place in the large cafeteria, and that was an opportunity to network and meet attendees, as well as prep for panels. The two keynotes were great, but overall the days were very long and my introverted body was starting to crash out in terms of energy. We did make it to Peggy’s Cove one evening, and again, consumed plenty of lobster and mussels – as one does.

Getting the most out of the experience

What I liked about this conference was the many concurrent presentations and the wide variety of topics. The people, overall, were easy to talk to and Sam was able to wrangle up alot of participants for a themed collection she wants to do on eco horror. I was a bit out of my depth because largely the researchers from this area were in English Lit backgrounds, and not creative writing, and sometimes i found criticisms confusing because I’m more into production than criticism. This meant that some of my analysis was a bit old fashioned, or perhaps not “in vogue” in terms of what everyone else was doing. But it did solidify why I work more in creative practice and making art, than critiquing art – if that makes sense.

Our panel talk was pretty packed likely owing to Sam who was presenting on the hot topic of the conference, fungal horror. I did get a chance to connect with Cynthia Sugars, someone who I cite alot in my own research, and that was very helpful because it makes the name on the citation actually seem like it’s connected to a real person. Sam and I did a great job tag-teaming our panel, and our third panelist – who was quite nervous – managed to get their slide deck done despite needing a bit more rehearsal time.

After the talk, we all had lunch – and even Ryan joined in for the the mix-match combination of nachos, grilled cheese sandwiches, and something else. I think one day was a perogie lasagne which you could tell the university was just clearing out their old frozen food section. I had to explain the oddity to Sam because perogie lasagne is not a real thing Canadians eat…. it was some franken-food from the kitchen staff at MSV.

Following up

Following the conference, there were alot of follow-up emails sent. I connected with Dara from the Irish Journal of Gothic Horror and sent off a review of a play, A Mirror, (albeit two weeks late). Publishers made a great point that reviews are a great way to get some academic experience, so I thought I would jump on the opportunity while people still recognized my name and face. Sam is busy working on her edited collection, and she’s just sent off the call for submissions in hopes of putting something together for next year. Overall, it was a really interesting – if not exhausting – experience and fingers crossed I get a chance to attend next year.

My first panel talk at the International Gothic Association Conference / Double spaced by Lexie Angelo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0