05.25.05
Czech monsters and creatures
Lenka’s presentation was about various monsters and creatures of myth in Czech culture. Many were very interesting, but her presentation was a bit disorganized because the dorm computer hiccuped and lost her outline. Fortunately she knew most of them from memory because she’s got a book coming out next year on the subject.
Lenka is an up-and-coming fantasy author, so this subject is dear to her. She also is an avid player of Vampire, waking up at 2a.m. Japan time to play with her friends in Europe. She’s not very confident with her English, so she doesn’t have much work published in English yet. Currently she’s working with a Japanese producer on a manga deal (I think). But this is besides the point.
Many of the creatures I had never heard of, and many had hard to pronounce or spell names. I vaguely remember some mention of the White Lady, and apparently Golems originated in Czech. She also talked about Veela, but she hasn’t read Harry Potter yet, only seen the movies, so she didn’t know Veela featured in the fourth book.
It was very interesting, despite the disorganization. Once again, pictures were difficult because of the darkness, but at least this time I wasn’t late, so I got a good seat.
Oh, and food poisoning from lunch, which sucked.