New Gunn Center Director

With the stepping down of Chris McKitterick from the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction after 30 years of service, Giselle Anatol will be taking over as director of the Center. Homed at the University of Kansas, it currently holds the annual Campbell conference and traditionally hosts the Sturgeon and Campbell Awards ceremonies.

Anatol is an English Professor at the University and interim director of graduate studies. She takes over from Chris McKitterick, who served as director beginning in 2010, and has recently moved to the Ad Astra Center for Science Fiction and the Speculative Imagination. Kij Johnson, also a current Locus board member, remains associate director for the CSSF.

McKitterick told Locus:

With James Gunn’s death on December 23, 2020, the field of science fiction studies moved into a new era, an era without one of its first and brightest lights. Jim left behind an important legacy: millions of words of fiction, scholarship, and popular writing; countless scholars, writers, readers, and fans whose lives he changed through his mentorship and insights; and the J Wayne and Elsie M Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas….

I was offered the chance to start a new center at KU focused on public outreach, generating workshops, classes, seminars, and learning opportunities centered around speculative fiction as an effective tool for artistic and scientific creativity. I also look forward to working with STEM research centers and programs here to build programs that meet their needs. It’s exciting to work at a school offering two different programs viewing science fiction in such exciting ways. I’ll do everything I can to help Giselle with the transition, and I’m sure announcements will be forthcoming as she sorts all this out.

The Gunn Center was founded in 1982 by the late Grandmaster James Gunn.

[Via File 770 and Chris McKitterick]

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