Eastercon 2025

This year’s Eastercon took us back to Belfast and the site of the 2019 Eurocon. I’ve come to love Belfast as a city, so I was keen to go, even though the post-Brexit bureaucracy surrounding getting goods in and out of Northern Ireland made having a dealer’s table impossible.

For the Eastercon we had space in the convention centre attached to the Hilton. I’m not sure if this is new, but it is certainly excellent space. We didn’t use all of it, so it could have handled a much bigger event. Getting around is a bit of a challenge, but once you got your bearings it was easy enough. The only weird thing was that to get from the hotel to the convention centre you had to walk along a passageway that was airwalled off from the biggest programming room. Quite why the builders did that is a mystery to me.

Something that is new is Belfast Grand Central Station. The old Victoria station is in the process of being torn down and replaced by a shiny, new modern facility just to the north-west. It is very impressive. There is still a lot of work to be done, but it is already sporting a sign claiming that it is Belfast’s premier shopping destination despite the fact that the only shop it has right now is an M&S food hall. Doubtless more will come.

One thing that concerned me about the event was getting food. Belfast has a reputation of being a rather religious city, and regardless of their sectarian beliefs no committed Christian is going to be working over Easter. I needn’t have worried. Belfast is a tourist destination these days. The lovely St. George’s Market was only open on Saturday, but there were plenty of places open through the weekend. The M&S in Grand Central Station seemed to be open any time I passed through.

I didn’t attend a lot of programming, but I was very pleased to get to meet Emily Tesh and chat to her about The Female Man, a book which manages to be fiercely feminist and appallingly TERFy by turns. I’m looking forward to reading Farah Mendlesohn’s new book, Considering The Female Man, which is due out from Luna Press Publishing in the summer.

On the subject of feminism, the shouty feminist panel that Juliet McKenna and I were on got put in the main hall. The room was less than half full, but I think that is because there were not that many people at the convention. Some of the other panel rooms filled up and had to turn people away. We had a good rant anyway, but it is rather depressing to keep having to say the same things decade after decade and see nothing much change.

The Dealers’ Room was fairly sparse, primarily due to the aforementioned bureaucracy. A few people from the UK smuggled books in via suitcases and car boots, but the main book dealer was a shop from Cork. They had a pre-release copy of the new Emma Newman novel, which I was very pleased about. They did not have anything by Everina Maxwell, which was sad because she was getting praised highly on several panels. Must catch up with her work.

Some kind folks (who might not want to be named due to the aforementioned book smuggling) volunteered to put the few copies of Fight Like A Girl 2 I had with me on their table. They all sold. We didn’t win the BSFA Award, but the Punks for Palestine anthology did, and I cannot complain about that.

The art show was much more full of stuff from the rest of the UK. Goodness only knows why. Much of it was for sale, after all. There was some lovely Fangorn art on show.

Overall I think the weekend went very well, despite numbers being somewhat down on an English or Scottish Eastercon. I’m delighted that Northern Ireland has got to host the convention at last, and it now seems even more egregious that Wales has never done so. Facilities are, of course, a major issue. I’ve looked at hotels in Swansea and there is nowhere I would even try to host something like BristolCon. Sigh.