Welcome!

We have been on an exciting journey to get to this point and we are really hoping you are going to join us for this next stage.

It all started in 2018, having just run UK Fantasycon for the second time, I turned to Allen Stroud and said “How would you feel about running World Fantasy Convention?”, this was followed by conversations with Jo Fletcher (World Fantasy Board Co-Chair) who gave us loads of great advice.

A year later Anna Smith Spark and myself are on our way to Los Angeles to attend World Fantasy Convention 2019 and meet with the rest of the Board and start trying to convince them to trust us with their convention. I had never been to the US or to WFC, so it was new experiences all round.

I found everyone so friendly, in fact my British sensibilities were a bit overwhelmed by the friendly Americans!

Anna introduced me to Bill Lawhorn, who had Co-Chaired the previous WFC, so I was keen to pick his brain about everything. Anna asked if there were any programme items I wanted to see and I said I had seen L.E. Modesit Jr was giving a reading and on a panel and that I intended to stalk his items until I met him. We carried on chatting when Bill excused him self for a second and called someone over, he then turned to me and introduced Lee Modesit. I immediately said “I absolutely love your books”, Lee assured me that was the absolutely correct way to greet all authors.

LA was amazing, I met so many new people, the WFC Board were so welcoming and supportive, we went to La Brea Tar Pits, which was brilliant.

I can’t thank Anna enough for coming with me, I definitely could not have done it without her.

Since then I have volunteered remotely for other World Fantasy Conventions and persuaded some other people to join my organising team. Thank you to the chairs who let me in their teams.

Last year, Farah Mendlesohn, Edward James and myself headed out to New Orleans. Farah had planned a series of dinner engagements for the whole week and it was lovely to meet such a mix of people and eat in so many amazing places. New Orleans was beautiful, I need to learn more about the architecture as they were so many lovely buildings. I also had some time to do some family tree research as some of my ancestors were there in the 1800’s. Oh and that little thing of putting forward our formal bid to host WFC 2025. Thankfully the Board agreed that we could run it and welcomed me on board as a non-voting member of the World Fantasy Board.

We have had some ups and downs since then, losing our original venue was a big problem, but everyone has been so supportive and hopefully it will all come together in the end. The British Fantasy Society AGM voted to combine WFC with British Fantasycon and we hope this is a big British party and we want to invite you all, from round the world, to enjoy it with us.

Going forward, we have two years to put the event together, we have so many plans and we hope you will be a part of it.

Prices will go up, so do book early and join us for this adventure.

Thank you to everyone

Karen Fishwick

Chair of WFC 2025