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2016 Helsinki Books Talks

The Solmukohta Books 2016 – Kaisa Kangas and Jukka Särkijärvi

Editors Kaisa Kangas and Jukka Särkijärvi present the two 2016 Solmukohta (Knutepunkt) books: Larp Realia, and Larp Politics (both available as free pdf downloads).

Jukka highlights the varied content of Larp Realia – ranging from an article about a larp buit around actual fistfighting to the first food recipe in the long history of the Knute-books!

Kaisa talks about the new volume – subtitled “Systems, Theory and Gender in Action” – on the political dimension of larp. Among the topics are themes like refugees, fascism, experiences of larping as gay or trans, larp as labour, viewing larps with political science tools, and so on. A big section of the book is about political larps (including educational larps) from a range of countries. To the editor’s surprise, no articles about internal larp community politics were submitted. This is probably a sign of health!

Read the books

Kaisa Kangas is a Finnish larp designer who has been playing and making larps for 20 years. She is the fiction lead for the Palestinian-Finnish political larp Halat hisar (State of Siege) that will be run again in June 2016. She is also involved with designing and running educational larps for University of Arts Helsinki. Her other works include Ghost Express (2001-2002, together with Dare Talvitie), a pioneer of pervasive larp. She holds a Ph.D. in mathematics and a BA in Japanese Studies.

Jukka Särkijärvi is a writer, editor, translator, game designer, conrunner and Pathfinder Society Venture-Captain Emeritus from Espoo, Finland. He is currently working on his master’s thesis in English language and literature at the University of Tampere. His previous work include translations of the Stalker and Whispering Road role-playing games, game design on Vihan lapset, a great deal of role-playing game journalism for a variety of publications both on- and offline, and Roolipelikirja, a nonfiction book about role-playing games.

“What’s a Woman’s Role? Female Characters In Larps”. Lecture by Kaisa Kangas at the Ropecon 2015 convention