It’s called new pulp – stories by modern writers who recreate the style of fiction that appeared in the pulp magazines of yore. Back then, the authors who labored for the rough paper industry liked to call themselves scribes, word-slingers, penny-a-worders, and, perhaps the most favored term of all, fictioneers. Join PulpFest as we celebrate today’s fictioneers — the authors writing the new pulp fiction.
If you’re a writer who has been inspired by the work of yarn-spinners such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Raymond Chandler, Walt Coburn, Carroll John Daly, Lester Dent, Frederick Faust, Walter B. Gibson, Edmond Hamilton, Robert E. Howard, H. Bedford-Jones, Henry Kuttner, H. P. Lovecraft, Norvell Page, Clark Ashton Smith, Jack Williamson, and countless others who churned out commercial fiction for the pulp market, PulpFest is looking for you!
Every year since 2009, we’ve featured readings by some of the best writers of today’s pulp fiction. Jason Scott Aiken, Jim Beard, Christopher Paul Carey, Win Scott Eckert, Ron Fortier, William Patrick Maynard, Will Murray, Duane Spurlock, and many others have read excerpts from their work, showcasing a wide range of exciting new fiction. Afterward, they’ve talked with their audiences, answering questions, fielding comments, discussing works-in-progress, and selling their books. Both our writers and their audiences have loved these events.
We call these fifty-minute (or less) sessions our “New Fictioneers” readings and we’re hoping to have some great ones at PulpFest 2016. As we have for the last seven years, PulpFest is seeking writers for its New Fictioneers program, scheduled for Friday, July 22nd, and Saturday, July 23rd. If you’re a writer of contemporary genre fiction who would like to participate in our 2016 festivities, please send an email to PulpFest committee member Chuck Welch at chuck@pulpfest.com. Chuck is looking for at least four writers to present their work at our 2016 convention. Tell him the kind of stuff you write, where you’ve been published, when you’d be available for a reading, and anything else that would help you to become one of our celebrated New Fictioneers.
In order to give the convention time to prepare its marketing of the 2016 New Fictioneers, all reader applications for PulpFest 2016 must be submitted by May 1, 2016. Space is limited — only a select number of readers will be chosen for the 2016 convention. If you’re writing contemporary genre fiction — detective, fantasy, pulp hero, science fiction, western, and so on — Chuck Welch is looking forward to hearing from you.
Otto Binder, Manly Wade Wellman, Julius Schwartz, Jack Williamson, L. Sprague de Camp, Dr. John Clark, Frank Belknap Long, Mort Weisinger, Edmond Hamilton, and Otis Adelbert Kline — fictioneers all — gathered for the photograph above outside the offices of Standard Magazines in July 1937. It’s one of over two dozen photographs of pulp writers featured in E. Hoffman Price’s BOOK OF THE DEAD — FRIENDS OF YESTERYEAR: FICTIONEERS AND OTHERS, published by Arkham House Publishers in 2001.
