Filking is the folk music of science-fiction and fantasy fandom. You'll find filking in Conference Room 3 at least, we hope you'll find it there, but you won't find it unless you come looking for it. And we'd like to have you find it, because it's a lot of fun.

Much of the filking activity occurs late in the evening, starting at 10 PM or so, when the filkers arrive for the Open Filk, but you'll find filking elsewhere in our program as well.

Our featured filker this year is Erica Neely, who you'll catch in concert during the course of the con. (Check your lovely pocket program for time and place.) Erica just successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis in Philosophy down at the University of Illinois, which explains how she understands all the pain and misery that she writes about in her songs. She originally found filk when she was attending college in England by asking a friend what his plans were for the weekend little did she know that he was attending his first filk convention! (Or that she would be sucked in...) A year later she attended Obliter-8 (in 1996) and discovered that all of these vastly impressive people with albums out were really quite nice and friendly. She considers one of her greatest accomplishments as having thoroughly hooked her Mom on filk. Best known for writing serious songs, Erica does try to have at least one or two songs where nobody dies in every set.

We're hoping to schedule a few more surprises along with panels of interest to folks interested in filking, so make sure to leaf through the schedule and see what you find.

You can also find some of our favorite filkers hanging out in the Internet Cafe. See the schedule posted there.

February 10-13, 2005
Arlington Heights, IL

James P. Hogan- Author GoH
Shaenon K. Garrity - Artist GoH
John Morse - Fan GoH

Site by
P&D Design