Ted Chiang will be artist in residence at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study for the 2020-21 academic year. He will take part in a two-day workshop, engage with Notre Dame faculty, and participate in weekly seminars. His Exhalation (Knopf) appears on the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2019 list.
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Michael Chabon will receive the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award “for his service on the board of the MacDowell Colony, for donating the proceeds of several books to organizations that support writers, and for helping to raise funds to assist other authors,” to be presented at the Poets & Writers 50th Anniversary Gala in New York City on March 16, 2020.
Chabon & Ayelet Waldman’s company Escapist Fare ...Read More
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Author and philanthropist James Patterson is offering bonuses (a total of $200,000) to Barnes & Noble booksellers this year in the form of a contest: he will give $300 to the bookseller in each B&N branch who creates the best display, as judged by store managers. He says, “I’m excited about all the recent changes at Barnes & Noble and to see where they go next. But I’ve always been ...Read More
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Co-founders Kay Holt and Bart Leib announced that Crossed Genres Publications is “on indefinite hiatus, effective immediately, with the expectation of permanently closing once our current titles are all out of print.” They will not be producing any new titles, and have canceled their planned anthology, Recognize Fascism, co-edited with Crystal Huff. Holt and Leib said,
The decision to close down Crossed Genres is solely the result of personal ...Read More
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The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) has announced Michi Trota as their new editor-in-chief, taking over the role from Neil Clarke, who stepped down earlier this year. Trota will be in charge of the organization’s communications and publications, including the SFWA Bulletin. SFWA president Mary Robinette Kowal said,
After a candidate search, the board selected Michi Trota to head our publications. We were all impressed with her ...Read More
Read moreRecent Nobel Prize in Fiction Laureate Olga Tokarczuk has announced plans to create a new literary foundation based in Wroclaw, Poland, in a villa previously owned by poet Tymoteusz Karpowicz. The organization will offer scholarships to writers and programmers, as well as educational programs. She wants the foundation to foster international dialogue about the power of literature to impact the spiritual and the physical world, and to address social ills, ...Read More
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The inaugural event in the new ephemera reading series took place on November 6, 2019 at Glad Day Bookshop in Toronto, Canada, featuring Madeline Ashby, Rati Mehrotra, and Kelly Robson, as well as a drag performance by Titus Androgynous and Henrietta VIII. Readings will be held on the first Wednesday of each month and are hosted by PodCastle co-editor Jen R. Albert & fantasy author KT Bryski. Funding is provided ...Read More
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San Diego bookstore Mysterious Galaxy, which was in danger of closing after 27 years of business, has found new owners and will remain open for the foreseeable future. Jenni Marchisotto & Matthew Berger purchased the bookstore and signed a five-year lease on a new location. They said,
We are so excited about our new roles as part of the Mysterious Galaxy family. When we attended the holiday party last Saturday ...Read More
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George R.R. Martin opened Beastly Books on November 30, 2019, located next to the Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe NM. Martin said,
We’ve been doing amazing author events at the Jean Cocteau Cinema ever since we reopened the theatre in August, 2013. Dozens of terrific, award-winning, bestselling writers have appeared at the JCC to speak, read, and sign their books… SF writers, mystery writers, historical novelists, romance writers, thriller ...Read More
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Europa SF, the “Pan-European Speculative Fiction Portal,” announced that it will shut down effective December 20, 2019 after seven years of providing English-language news and information covering European fandom. In a Facebook announcement, they cited hosting costs and portal maintenance as the main reasons, and are asking for anyone interested in taking over the portal and domain name to contact them.
[via File770. Edited 12/19/2019 to add the following:]
Cristian ...Read More
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Audible.com has announced their Best of 2019 lists, selected by their editorial team. Titles of genre interest include:
Science Fiction
Publishing firm Blue Corn Creations has gifted $1,000 to create a scholarship for writers of Native American descent who wish to attend the Clarion West Writers Workshop. Blue Corn Creations owner Rob Schmidt said,
We’re excited about developing the next generation of Native superhero, science fiction, and action/adventure stories. To do that, we also need to develop the next generation of Native writers. This scholarship will help accomplish that.
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The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) has named Lois McMaster Bujold the 36th recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award.
SFWA president Mary Robinette Kowal said Bujold “has had an undeniable influence on the field of science fiction and fantasy. From the the Vorkosigan Saga, to the Chalion series and the Sharing Knife series, she finds new ways to explore the genre, mixing and matching ...Read More
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Vonda N. McIntyre (1948-2019) has left her literary assets to Clarion West, expressing her wish that “the organization manage her literary copyrights in perpetuity.” She also left a bequest of $387,129 to the program, the largest single financial gift in the organization’s history: “The bequest will bolster the Clarion West endowment, strengthening our mission and ensuring our financial stability for years. Vonda’s extraordinary generosity will allow Clarion West to continue ...Read More
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Administrators Nisi Shawl and K. Tempest Bradford announced that Writing the Other‘s financial aid program has been renamed the “Vonda N. McIntyre Sentient Squid Scholarship.” The scholarship began in 2016 when McIntyre donated anonymously to the Writing the Other online classes, and was originally named the Sentient Squid Scholarship in honor of a character from her Starfarer series of books.
“To date, the Sentient Squid Scholarship has provided over $15,000 ...Read More
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The Guardian announced its list of best science fiction and fantasy books in 2019, selected by Adam Roberts: ...Read More
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The China Science Fiction Research Institute was jointly established by Sichuan University, the Sichuan Association for Science and Technology, and Science Fiction World magazine with “the aim of supporting the development of the sci-fi industry and related literary and artistic endeavours,” and was announced during the fifth China Science Fiction Conference in Chengdu, China. Chengdu is currently supporting a bid to host the 2023 Worldcon.
The institute will also publish ...Read More
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Analog magazine is celebrating its 90th anniversary with “An Astounding 90 Years of Analog Science Fiction and Fact: The Fourth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium”, to be held in conjunction with City Tech College on December 12, 2019 in New York NY.
There will be an author reading and panel, an editorial panel including Trevor Quachri and Stanley Schmidt, a keynote speech from Michael F. Flynn, and various presentations ...Read More
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The Financial Times has released its Books of the Year 2019 lists, selected by “FT commentators, critics and guests.” The Best Books of 2019: Science Fiction were chosen by James Lovegrove:
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Read moreYahoo Groups, which provided mailing lists and online forums for a variety of subjects (including SF/F) announced plans to shut down a large number of their features including deleting archived messages and files, with all groups closing on October 21, 2019. All the archived data in those groups and lists will be deleted by December 14. Writer and historian Ada Palmer says, “This means we have only a few weeks ...Read More
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The New York Times is changing up its bestseller lists again. They’re bringing back the mass-market paperback list (dropped in 2017) on a monthly basis, and running a new monthly combined list for “graphic books” including fiction, non-fiction, and manga for children and adults. Middle-grade and young-adult paperback bestsellers will also be listed monthly, after being discontinued in 2017. The lists are coming back “due to continued reader interest and ...Read More
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Andy Duncan has stepped down as SFWA Member at Large because the position “deserves to be held by someone who can devote much more time and energy to the job than I can.” He will continue “serving the organization in other capacities” and remains “committed to the mission of SFWA.” He is replaced by James Beamon, one of the runners-up in the election.
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Following various allegations of late payments, non-payment, harassment of authors and staff, and other improprieties (as documented extensively at File 770), Sandra Kasturi & Brett Savory have stepped down from all publishing-related duties at ChiZine Publications, effective immediately. Christine Harkin is now interim publisher, and can be reached by email for author-related requests. Kasturi and Savory said:
It is important to us that we clear all outstanding arrears as soon ...Read More
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Kirkus has announced its selections for Best Fiction of 2019, including titles and authors of genre interest in several categories:
Best Science Fiction and Fantasy
Jim Freund’s venerable SF radio call-in show Hour of the Wolf has gone off the air after nearly 50 years. The show aired on WBAI 99.5 FM in New York, but on October 8, 2019, the station’s owner Pacifica Across America canceled all local programming and replaced it with shows from other stations due to “financial losses.” The closure came without warning, and station employees and volunteers vowed to take ...Read More
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Navah Wolfe has left Saga Press, and her senior editor position has been eliminated. Wolfe co-founded Saga in 2013 with Joe Monti as an imprint of the Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division and was named senior editor in 2017. Before that she was a children’s book editor for seven years at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, focusing on SF and fantasy. In 2019, Saga became an imprint ...Read More
Read moreJames Patterson continues his tradition of encouraging children to read, this time by giving grants to 4,500 teachers via his Patterson Partnership. Four thousand teachers will receive $250 to improve their classroom libraries (with a matching 250 “bonus points” from Scholastic Book Clubs), while 500 teachers with three years or less of experience will get $500 and 500 points. This is the fifth year the Patterson Partnership has given grants. ...Read More
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Stephen & Tabitha King have received city council approval to rezone their Bangor ME home as a non-profit, with plans to turn it into a museum. Stephen King’s personal archives, previously housed at the University of Maine, will be moved to the home and made available to scholars and other visitors by appointment. A house next door, also owned by the Kings, will accommodate up to five writers-in-residence at a ...Read More
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The Horror Writers Association (HWA) has announced Mick Garris as media guest of honor for StokerCon UK, to be held April 16-19, 2020 at the Royal and Grand Hotels in Scarborough, UK. He joins previously announced guests Kim Newman, Grady Hendrix, and Gillian Redfearn, with A.K. Benedict as mistress of ceremonies and Robert Lloyd-Parry as special guest.
For more <stokercon-uk.com/guests.htm>.
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The James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award has been renamed the Otherwise Award, announced by members of the Tiptree Motherboard on October 13, 2019. In a statement, they said:
The Tiptree Award was named as a joyful joke, 28 years ago.
James Tiptree, Jr/Alice Sheldon is a complicated figure who has grown more so as participants in the sff world have gained more diverse perspectives and more acute critical analyses. In ...Read More
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LaShawn M. Wanak is the new editor of GigaNotoSaurus, taking over from Elora Gatts. As previously announced, Gatts had assumed the role in December of 2018.
Wanak is a book reviewer for Lightspeed and served as an associate editor at PodCastle from 2013 to 2015. She says,
I know it’s been a while since GigaNotoSaurus has published a new story. Therefore, I’ll be closing submissions this Friday, August 9, 2019, ...Read More
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The Tiptree Motherboard, the seven-member committee in charge of the James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award for books “encouraging the exploration and expansion of gender,” has announced plans to change the name of the award in the future. In a post titled “Alice Sheldon and the name of the Tiptree Award” updated on September 11, 2019, they wrote
We said we would be listening and we have. We’ve read your thoughtful ...Read More
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