I love the Baltimore Book Festival, not only due to each year’s stellar programming, but also because I’ve managed to record some of my favorite episodes of Eating the Fantastic there, including one with Nalo Hopkinson, who was recently named as SFWA’s 37th Grand Master. I’d hoped to harvest additional conversations for you during this year’s incarnation, but alas … well … you know.

And yet, even though we live in a world where such mass gatherings are impossible, I’ve decided to pretend as if this year’s Baltimore Book Festival still went off as scheduled, and snack on some slices of pizza — albeit remotely — with a guest I’d have dined with there in person had that been allowed — the Ignatz Award-winning Alison Wilgus.

Alison Wilgus is a writer and cartoonist who’s been working in comics for more than a decade, and whose latest work is Chronin, a science fiction duology published by Tor. Their first professional gig was as a colorist and staff writer for Cartoon Network’s Codename: Kids Next Door, and since then has been published by Scholastic, Del Rey, DC, Nickelodeon Magazine, Dark Horse, and First Second Books. They’ve also written works of graphic non-fiction, including The Mars Challenge (illustrated by Wyeth Yates) and Flying Machines: How the Wright Brothers Soared (illustrated by Molly Brooks). Alison is also co-host of Graphic Novel TK, a podcast about graphic novel publishing.

We discussed how their life might have gone an entirely different way if not for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, why they describe themselves to people as “a feral nerd,” how an unsolicited pitch on a Post-it note led to selling their first script, what fanfic taught them about writing professionally in other people’s universes, the best way to interact with sensitivity readers, why they’ve retired from Hourly Comics, what would have happened with Odo and Kira if their Deep Space Nine spec script been accepted, the big surprise about the way they made their first sale to Analog, and much more.

Here’s how you can eavesdrop on our conversation —

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3) Or check it out using the embed below.

Here’s the pizza we ate as we chatted —

Alison’s Hawaiian Pizza
ham and pineapple

Scott’s Pizza
sausage, hamburger & diced red and green peppers
+ pepperoni, onion & mushrooms

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Coming up next time — assuming no bumps in the road — I’ll bring you a conversation which in a better world I would have had at this year’s Nebula Awards Conference back in May — with writer William F. Wu —— with whom I’d have attended the 1974 Clarion Writers workshop had I not been *sniff* rejected. I hope you’ll come back to hear us talk about his lengthy literary career.