Flame Con 2026!

On Sunday, I went to Flame Con! An annual convention in New York City, Flame Con is run by Geeks OUT, a nonprofit “dedicated to making the fan community more fun, inclusive and safe for geeks who are queer.”

With the focus on LGBTQ+ creators and fans, the fandoms range from anime to videogames, to podcasts, to ttrpgs, to a huge comics contingent, and prose books as well. I look forward to going every year. Each year of the con, Sunday is Youth Day, when anyone under 21 years old gets in free. This year I brought along my own kid and a friend of hers, and we all had a terrific time.

TRANScend performs at Flame Con 2026

After checking in and doing a quick orientation lap with the adolescents (where is the Quiet Lounge? Where are the bathrooms? What is the plan if you get separated?) I was thrilled to attend a performance by TRANScend, New York City’s trans and gender-nonconforming choir.

They performed a wide range of music, including a choral piece set to a Walt Whitman poem, a Casino pop song in Mandarin, the video game classic “Still Alive” from Portal, and closed with “The Parting Glass.” I was excited to see them in person because I have been following them on social media for a long time, and I hadn’t realized their members also arranged some of the pieces and played instruments for others. They are multitalented.

As usual, my interest is mostly in books, so after that performance I was paying attention to the library presence, the book signings, and the panel “Queering the Hero,” with luminaries from the superhero comics world.

The delightful Queer Liberation Library presence at FlameCon 2026

The whole con is housed in one midtown hotel for a weekend, which gives it both a manageable size and a location convenient for many subway lines.

It is always interesting to me to see the adjustments in focus and layout from year to year, and this year Flame Con’s new venue occasioned some differences from the past few years at the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel.

The Marriot Marquis this year felt spacious and easy to navigate. The registration floor had the panel rooms, the Quiet Lounge and the Gaymer Lounge. One floor up was the extensive Exhibitor Hall, and above that was a balcony that looked down on the Exhibitor Hall, where the book signings and most of the Community Partners, like libraries, had their tables. I was thrilled to see The Brooklyn Library, the Queens Library and the Queer Liberation Library (a free digital library that anyone who can provide a US mailing address can join) all had tables, and the little free con library was stocked and robust.

I got books signed by Casey McQuiston and Micaiah Johnson, including an advance reader copy of Micaiah Johnson’s upcoming book, The Unhaunting!

The “Queering the Hero” panel at Flame Con 2026

And then it was time for “Queering the Hero,” with (from left) Josh Cornillon, Jadzia Axelrod, Erica Henderson, Al Ewing, Phil Jimenez, and moderated by Connor Goldsmith. The conversation ranged from the participants’ positive experiences working with DC, to changing connotations for the term “queer,” to a queer sensibility pervasive in work with queer creators, whether or not that work included characters who were out on page or screen.

One of the strongest threads of this discussion was that now that it is much more possible to have canonically queer superheroes, a queer sensibility also needs to permeate those heroes’ stories. Both Phil Jimenez and Erica Henderson spoke lovingly of “mess.”

The Exhibitor Hall at Flame Con 2026

Finally, I braved the Exhibitor Hall, which was well lit and had wide enough aisles for comfort. It was still overwhelming to me personally, because I am a lightweight. I decompressed after in the Quiet Lounge (a space contributed by Calmer Con NYC, which I am delighted to learn about!) before the adolescents and I subwayed home.

Flame Con is a joyful experience. The volunteers, the attendees, the exhibitors, the presenters all seem thrilled to be there. The new venue is an upgrade, and I am already looking forward to next year.

My haul from Flame Con 2026