Fawx & Stallion is so excited to be attending TAFCON 2026 this Sunday! Lauren will be there with business cards, flyers, stickers, and shirts - if you're attending, pop by our booth and say hello!
TAFCON is in ONE WEEK! Ah!!! You can join the fun online with a digital ticket! Use code PODCAST for $5 off!
With a digital ticket, you can watch all 10 sessions on the main stage LIVE! Hit Keep Reading to find out more about them!
The State of Audio Fiction
Where is the world of audio fiction today? From networks to funding to our current favorites to trends in content, your three TAFCON founders sit down to reflect on audio fiction today – and how we got to where we are now. Let's kick off our first TAFCON by talking all about this medium we're joined here to celebrate and learn more about!
Audio Fiction You Can Play With
In a kaleidoscopic journey through his twelve years in audio fiction, Gabriel Urbina (Wolf 359, The Harbingers, Audible’s Gasolina and Hit Singles, and more) guides us through his evolving perception of what makes satisfying audio fiction and what proves so endlessly fascinating about this medium. Using examples from his own work as well as work that has inspired him, Gabriel tries to nail down what is at the core of a great audio fiction moment.
Nuance and Niche in Voice Acting
Voice acting is one of the most important aspects of any audio drama – but it’s also one of the least discussed in terms of art, craft, and community! Learn from this panel of seasoned audio drama voice actors about what they do what they do. How does voice acting differ across medium, genre, and style? How do voice actors make the choices they make, and how does that add to the art of script in front of them? What is the role of voice actors in the audio drama community? How do we lobby to give them all an EGOT right now? Let's dig into the why and the how of voice acting.
Marketing Smarketing
Across all different art forms, marketing is seen as a dreaded chore. In podcasting, though, it can be a lot more like making friends and hanging out than buying a billboard. In this panel, we'll talk about what effective marketing for a podcast looks like in 2026 at every level of production: from indie all the way to big budget IP work. Great marketing can happen on a budget of $0 and hardly any time, as long as you have strong fundamentals and the know-how we're excited to share here.
Where Actual Play and Scripted Fiction Meet
What can actual play learn from audio fiction, what can audio fiction learn from actual play, and what's actually the difference between these two? These two forms of podcasting overlap, but there's much more knowledge to be shared between them than there could be – and sharing more could help us all from writing to sound design to marketing. Learn about the connections between a good actual play GM and a good audio fiction director, how players and voice actors can learn immediately applicable skills from each other, and how a little bit of random chance can help any script.
Adapting Audio Drama
A good story can exist in multiple forms, across all kinds of media – but how do you actually translate something from the page to audio, or audio to screen? Learn from folks who have done exactly this to find out what changes they had to make and how they made them. It’s time to kill your darlings that only work in their original form, but meet some beautiful new audio darlings along the way.
Solo-Producing an Audio Drama
Don’t have the budget, connections, or energy to cast an entire audio drama? You literally don’t have to. Solo produced audio dramas made by one person from start to finish are a fundamental backbone of audio dramas throughout podcasting history. But how do you manage all of that alone? From editing yourself to setting deadlines to keeping yourself sane, this panel will help you launch a podcast with the only resource you’ll always have at the ready: yourself.
Community in Audio Fiction
Community in audio fiction gets a lot of talk, but who are we really talking about, and how do we find our people? In this panel, we break down who the “audio fiction community” is, as well as how to find a community for your show. Community can mean a lot more than listeners or fans. It can mean the people who keep you afloat when things get tough, a trusted group to bounce around ideas – or the always-necessary salt circle so you don’t post your way to professional hell.
Crowdfunding Crash Course
Crowdfunding is hard! It’s overwhelming! Not sure where to begin? We got you. Brad Colbroock and Tal Minear tell you everything they know about the state of audio drama crowdfunding. You’ll learn how to make a good crowdfunding campaign (which includes what you should never ever do), different ways to promote it, and how to avoid burnout while funding. We’re fitting as much as we can into this crash course!
How to Make Art When the World is Burning
So things outside are . . . kinda bad! As artists, how do we keep creating when we have less time, less energy, less money, and maybe less hope? Learn from Atypical Artist’s Lauren Shippen (The Bright Sessions, Two Thousand and Late, Breaker Whiskey, and more) about how to channel your rage into writing. Maybe it means writing about the future you want to live in. Maybe it means taking time to actually rest. Maybe it means writing about a demon possessing you to cause mayhem because capitalism really, really sucks.
I've put together a playlist of audio dramas where at least one creator will be at TAFCON 2026, either in person or virtually.
Did I intend for it to be 34.5 hours long? No. Will I be shuffling it on my road trip to Colorado? Yes. Will you also be shuffling it in the coming weeks? I hope so.
There are going to be a lot of creators at TAFCON and I think it'd be nice to know a little about their shows if you meet any of them (like at the New Creator Meetup or Producer Networking or Wandering Around and Making Friends).
There's a couple of shows here I'm excited to introduce Alexander and Edie to and plenty more I haven't listened to that I'm hoping come up in my shuffle.
The playlist lives on Spotify but here's the exported list for all you non-Spotify people.
6:30 MST - How to Make Art When the World is Burning - Lauren Shippen
The State of Audio Fiction
Where is the world of audio fiction today? From networks to funding to our current favorites to trends in content, your three TAFCON founders sit down to reflect on audio fiction today – and how we got to where we are now. Let's kick off our first TAFCON by talking all about this medium we're joined here to celebrate and learn more about!
Audio Fiction You Can Play With
In a kaleidoscopic journey through his twelve years in audio fiction, Gabriel Urbina (Wolf 359, The Harbingers, Audible’s Gasolina and Hit Singles, and more) guides us through his evolving perception of what makes satisfying audio fiction and what proves so endlessly fascinating about this medium. Using examples from his own work as well as work that has inspired him, Gabriel tries to nail down what is at the core of a great audio fiction moment.
Nuance and Niche in Voice Acting
Voice acting is one of the most important aspects of any audio drama – but it’s also one of the least discussed in terms of art, craft, and community! Learn from this panel of seasoned audio drama voice actors about what they do what they do. How does voice acting differ across medium, genre, and style? How do voice actors make the choices they make, and how does that add to the art of script in front of them? What is the role of voice actors in the audio drama community? How do we lobby to give them all an EGOT right now? Let's dig into the why and the how of voice acting.
Marketing Smarketing
Across all different art forms, marketing is seen as a dreaded chore. In podcasting, though, it can be a lot more like making friends and hanging out than buying a billboard. In this panel, we'll talk about what effective marketing for a podcast looks like in 2026 at every level of production: from indie all the way to big budget IP work. Great marketing can happen on a budget of $0 and hardly any time, as long as you have strong fundamentals and the know-how we're excited to share here.
Where Actual Play and Scripted Fiction Meet
What can actual play learn from audio fiction, what can audio fiction learn from actual play, and what's actually the difference between these two? These two forms of podcasting overlap, but there's much more knowledge to be shared between them than there could be – and sharing more could help us all from writing to sound design to marketing. Learn about the connections between a good actual play GM and a good audio fiction director, how players and voice actors can learn immediately applicable skills from each other, and how a little bit of random chance can help any script.
Adapting Audio Drama
A good story can exist in multiple forms, across all kinds of media – but how do you actually translate something from the page to audio, or audio to screen? Learn from folks who have done exactly this to find out what changes they had to make and how they made them. It’s time to kill your darlings that only work in their original form, but meet some beautiful new audio darlings along the way.
Solo-Producing an Audio Drama
Don’t have the budget, connections, or energy to cast an entire audio drama? You literally don’t have to. Solo produced audio dramas made by one person from start to finish are a fundamental backbone of audio dramas throughout podcasting history. But how do you manage all of that alone? From editing yourself to setting deadlines to keeping yourself sane, this panel will help you launch a podcast with the only resource you’ll always have at the ready: yourself.
Community in Audio Fiction
Community in audio fiction gets a lot of talk, but who are we really talking about, and how do we find our people? In this panel, we break down who the “audio fiction community” is, as well as how to find a community for your show. Community can mean a lot more than listeners or fans. It can mean the people who keep you afloat when things get tough, a trusted group to bounce around ideas – or the always-necessary salt circle so you don’t post your way to professional hell.
Crowdfunding Crash Course
Crowdfunding is hard! It’s overwhelming! Not sure where to begin? We got you. Brad Colbroock and Tal Minear tell you everything they know about the state of audio drama crowdfunding. You’ll learn how to make a good crowdfunding campaign (which includes what you should never ever do), different ways to promote it, and how to avoid burnout while funding. We’re fitting as much as we can into this crash course!
How to Make Art When the World is Burning
So things outside are . . . kinda bad! As artists, how do we keep creating when we have less time, less energy, less money, and maybe less hope? Learn from Atypical Artist’s Lauren Shippen (The Bright Sessions, Two Thousand and Late, Breaker Whiskey, and more) about how to channel your rage into writing. Maybe it means writing about the future you want to live in. Maybe it means taking time to actually rest. Maybe it means writing about a demon possessing you to cause mayhem because capitalism really, really sucks.
