Presentation: Grotto Nights at the Library

Notions of literature don't generally include tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons, but if there's one thing such games are good at, it's prompting creativity and generating stories. In this freewheeling discussion, three Grotto writers — who also happen to be tabletop roleplaying game players and designers — talk about the collaborative storytelling that happens in games, and how games can be used as writing prompts, as a generative practice, and even as tools of empowerment. And who knows, we may even roll some dice.

Our featured Grotto writers In May are Mark Wallace, T.K. Rex, and Doug Henderson.

Mark Wallace is a writer, editor, and instructor whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Alta Journal, The Rumpus, the LA Review of Books, and many other places. He is the author of The Second Life Herald: The Virtual Tabloid That Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse (MIT Press), and secretly designs tabletop roleplaying games in his spare time. 

T. K. Rex is a science fiction and fantasy author from the western states, whose stories have appeared in Apex Magazine, Asimov’s, Strange Horizons and roughly forty other publications, including their climate fiction collection THE WILDCRAFT DRONES, on shelves next year from Stelliform Press. They’re an alumni of the Clarion writers workshop at UCSD, co-host of the GrottoPod—the official podcast of the Writers Grotto—and every couple of weeks, they briefly become an Astral Elf barbarian named Apocalypta.

Doug Henderson is the author of the The Cleveland Heights LGBTQ Sci-Fi and Fantasy Role Playing Club, and a winner of the PEN/Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. His work has appeared in The Iowa Review, Short Édition, Michigan Quarterly Review Mixtape, and Beyond Queer Words. Originally from Cleveland, he lives in San Francisco with his husband and two children.

Connect:

Mark Wallace - Website / Bluesky 

T.K. Rex - Website

 Doug Henderson - Website

The Writers Grotto is a community of working writers and narrative artists who connect in physical and virtual space, pooling our talents to support each other, mentor and teach others, and engage the wider world. The Grotto fosters a literary culture that is generous in spirit and deeply inclusive, elevating writers of all backgrounds.

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