Uncategorized – 4th Street Fantasy Convention

ICE & Your Safety While at 4th Street 2026

We are keeping a close eye on the ICE presence in Minneapolis and are committed to prioritizing the safety of all our attendees.

As of June 17th, 2026, most activity (including protests) is located in St Paul. We will communicate any additional information if needed should the situation change.

4th Street is also implementing a new policy in the event that immigration enforcement agents come to the hotel:

We are working with the DoubleTree to ensure public and private areas are safe.
4th Street Fantasy is committed to activities and procedures to prepare for a safe convention.
During the convention, we will post signage outside the designated 4th Street spaces identifying that they are non-public areas.
We will have copies of on-site procedures below and Know Your Rights cards available at the registration desk.

Our priority is to keep people safe. Please review the Immigration Enforcement safety policy, and don’t hesitate to contact us via email, Discord, social media, or onsite.

2025 Registration & Hotel Block

We’re officially back!

4th Street Fantasy will return for an in-person convention at the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel Minneapolis on June 13-15, 2025. We’re planning another full slate of excellent programming this year.

Registration is open – book your membership now!

Our usual block of hotel rooms are available at the Doubletree — book your rooms here!

We can’t wait to see you!

4th Street Fantasy, June 13-15 2025 | Minneapolis, MN

2024 Registration & Hotel

It’s official! 4th Street Fantasy will hold an in-person convention at the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel Minneapolis (our usual locale!) on June 14-16, 2024. We are planning a full slate of in-person programming, as well as a workshop/seminar on Friday, June 14th.

Registration is now open – book your membership now!

We have several tiers available again this year, starting with Associate Membership, which gets you access to the 4th Street Discord and the famed 4th Street booklist.

We have our usual block of rooms available at the 4th Street rate at the Doubletree by Hilton. Make sure you reserve your rooms early!

TTRPG Fundraiser ’23/’24

Last year, we ran two one-shots based on 4th Street panel discussions & frequently referenced tropes that raised more than a thousand dollars to help the Con continue this year. This year’s game offerings are starting with a blockbuster – a Goblin Emperor one-shot with special guest star Katherine Addison!

Games are run over Discord, with a $5 suggested donation if you wish to be in the audience, & a $75+ suggested donation for players (while we will welcome players who donate at every level, as a fundraiser, player slots may go to higher donors first).

Both first-time & experienced players are welcome, & your DM, Matt Doyle, has long experience of running accessible & accommodating games for players with a variety of disabilities, so please don’t consider either gaming experience, system familiarity, or accommodation needs an obstacle to joining us for a game.

If you’re interested in playing or watching, sign up and tell us your availability by filling out this survey. We also have a donor who is willing to fund a seat for a marginalized person who couldn’t otherwise afford to play!

The Road From Vedaiso

Set in the world of Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor, this one-shot brings together Couriers, Guards, Maza, & Witnesses in the very small town of Vedaiso on the road south from the Evressai Steppes, where the Imperial Repository stores the furnishings and accouterments the traveling imperial household might need to make nearby estates suitable for the Emperor to reside in. When, shortly after the coronation of Edrehasivar VII, the Repository is the victim of a shocking robbery, the local Adremaza turns to local resources to recover the stolen goods quickly, before the matter becomes an embarrassment.

Proposed Panels are Here!

The proposed panel list is up! Come see what we’ve got, from “Getting By on Vibes” to “Organizing People: Fantasy Bureaucracy as a Tool for Change” and “A Potion for Whatever Ails You: Healing in Fantasy”. We’ll also have a deep conversation with beloved 4th Street authors Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer to celebrate the 35th anniversary of their seminal epistolary fantasy of manners, Sorcery and Cecilia. If you haven’t gotten your membership yet, do so – you don’t want to miss this!

More TTRPG Oneshots Coming Up!

Hello fantasy fans! Fourth Street Fantasy Convention is doing an off-season fundraiser in which Matt Doyle will be gamemastering five chosen donors & a Special Author Guest in a one-shot adventure for Pathfinder (first edition). If you’re interested in joining a game, please answer the following questions below. No familiarity with D&D or Pathfinder rules is needed.

The one-shot will be run over Discord, once on April 30th & once on May 28th, 1PM to 5 or 6 PM CST. Pre-generated characters will be provided. For players, we’re asking for a donation of $75, although we encourage people to sign up even if that’s too high an ask – if sign-ups are short, you’ll still have a chance to play. Discord livestream of the game watchable for a $5-10 donation.

Each session will feature one authorial guest – for April 30th, we’ll be joined by Scott Lynch, and for May 28th, [TO BE ANNOUNCED]. Learn the details of the adventure and sign up now on this form.

D&D Dec. 11th with Elizabeth Bear

The players are set and the GM is topping off their bag of dirty tricks for the first live game on December 11, 1pm-6pm Central, featuring Elizabeth Bear! If you want to watch this game, tickets are $5 and you can sign up here. The game will be broadcast on the 4th Street Discord and we welcome everyone who wants to watch, so tell your friends!

Want to play? Spots still open!

We’ve got a few spots left for players for the three remaining games. If you’re interested, fill out this survey and let us know your interests and availability. We expect them to fill up fast, so don’t delay!

Live D&D Fundraising Events

We all know that playing Dungeons & Dragons is fun. But you know what’s even more fun? Watching some of your favorite writers play D&D! And what’s better than that? Doing this in a way that supports 4th Street, everybody’s favorite small, single-track speculative fiction convention.

We’ve made it through the last few difficult years, but we want to be able to invest in safety, diversity, and longevity. So we are planning some entertaining ways to raise funds! Our first project will be streaming live games of Dungeons & Dragons featuring players like Scott Lynch, Elizabeth Bear, Arkady Martine, and CL Polk. Watch these masters of craft use their storytelling skills to weave together an epic adventure, or, perhaps, hilariously fail to do so.

If you want to watch this event, or if you’d like to join in the game, click here to fill out our survey. Games will take place on weekend days in December and January – exact times to be determined based on audience and player feedback. Sign-ups will be open until December 1st or until all available sessions are full. Don’t miss out!

We need your help!

Greetings, 4^th Street Fantasy Community!

This is a friendly reminder that our hotel room block closes tomorrow (May 27^th), which is important for two reasons:

It’s the best room rate you are going to get!
If the con doesn’t fill the room block (we’re about twenty room-nights away currently, which means that every single person who gets a room for the weekend makes a huge difference to the continued existence of the convention), the hotel gets to charge us a bunch of extra fees that would be a serious fiscal hardship for the con. Due to contractual obligations and the pandemic, this is a make-or-break year for us financially.

WE NEED YOUR HELP.

Perhaps it would be better to say “we need our help,” because of course this is a community. A community that we would very much like to see preserved for the future.

We’re not going to lie: we understand that after the last two and a half years, everybody might be feeling leery of making commitments. However, your support right now makes all the difference for the continued existence of the convention.

So if you are thinking of coming, now would be a great time to reserve your room and get your membership sorted.

If you can’t make it this year but want us to still be around when you can, or you just want to support the best tiny fantasy convention on the block, you can donate here. 4^th Street Fantasy is a registered 501(c)3. All donations are tax-deductible.

Even five dollars makes a difference!

SUPPORTING MEMBERSHIPS

This year we are also offering a supporting membership option for people who cannot come to the con. This low-cost remote option will give you access to the 4^th Street Member Discord for socializing, and where as many panels as possible will be liveblogged. We will also have sheets available at the convention where attendees can leave written greetings for supporting members: these greetings will be mailed to each supporting member after the con.

CONVENTION REGISTRATION HERE!

HOTEL REGISTRATION HERE!

This year we have the usual wonderful single-track program of intensive creative-focused content (how’s that for a string of buzzwords?) You can see the draft panel schedule HERE.

SEMINAR/WORKSHOP

We will also be offering a Seminar/Workshop hosted by C.L. Polk, Arkady Martine, Elizabeth Bear, and Scott Lynch that offers an unparalleled opportunity for writers seeking professional development.

The theme of this year’s Seminar and Workshop is ‘Writing as Practice’ – writing as habit, as experiment, as training, as something that a writer continuously approaches. Our panel of award-winning, best-selling, and internationally-published authors will help you conceptualize the ‘practice’ of writing, building (or abandoning) habits, integrating writing into the complex and demanding pressures of being in the world (dayjobs, health issues, a global pandemic…) and how to get back on the horse, even if the horse has run off to pastures unknown.

Register for the Seminar/Workshop here!

In addition, we will be hosting assorted informal social events focused on crafting, art, gustatory pleasures, and music.

The area around 4^th Street Fantasy has many fine restaurants that offer sidewalk dining, as well as a convenient supermarket if you prefer to eat in your room. The convention is extremely serious about COVID safety, and you can find our COVID policy here.

Donate here!

REGISTER HERE!

We hope we see you in Minneapolis this year!

4th Street Fantasy Online Has Ended!

Thank you so much to our members, volunteers, and friends! It was a great convention and conversation. If you missed out, you can still see all of the panels on YouTube for the time being, and as we get transcripts finished, those will be linked as well on the 2021 programming page. We will also be posting our list of recommended media, taken from the panels and conversations around them, in the next week, so keep an eye out.

Next year in Minneapolis!