Kopikon II Presenters: Jessie Peterson
Kopikon II is about three months away, so I'm presenting each speaker in the order they’ll be presenting on October 10th at the University of Edinburgh. This year our headliner is none other than Jessie Peterson.
Jessie's been conlanging her whole life, and now makes a living as a professional conlanger. Working with me she's created languages for Freeform's Motherland: Fort Salem, Peacock's Vampire Academy, Pixar's Elemental, Legendary's Dune, and, premiering today, the Kryptonian language Suh Ankripton in Warner Bros.' Suerpman!
Additionally, Jessie has always been invested in putting together resources for conlangers. She created the Conlang Year project, to help conlangers build a language by doing a small piece of work each day; the massive Conlang-Venture .pdf, which is a choose-your-own-adventure that guides you through naturalistic conlanging; and the conlang GramBank spreadsheet, to help conlangers share their work more effectively. This year, though, she's come out with her biggest and best resource to date.
Coming out this October, Cambridge University is publishing Jessie's brand new conlang textbook How to Create a Language: The Conlang Guide:
If you ever wanted to read a book that went into more depth than The Art of Language Invention and with greater clarity, this is that book. Weighing in at nearly 500 pages, you can pre-order the book now, or wait until Kopikon when we'll have copies on hand for sale!
Jessie will be closing things up at Kopikon II at 4:10 p.m. at the University of Edinburgh (George Square), October 10th, 2025. To register, go here. The full schedule is listed below:
1:00 p.m. Opening remarks by David & Jessie
1:10 p.m. Keras Saryan
1:50 p.m. Jake Penny
2:30 p.m. Biblaridion
3:10 p.m. Intermission (20 minutes)
3:30 p.m. David Peterson
4:10 p.m. Jessie Peterson
4:50 p.m. Closing remarks by David & Jessie
We hope to see you at Kopikon II! It will be a day to remember. <3