GREGORY BENFORD, 82, had a stroke on December 22, 2022. While his condition is serious, he has moved from the hospital to a rehabilitation center, and is reportedly recovering well.
WALTER MOSLEY, 71, won the 2023 Diamond Dagger Award, presented by the Crime Writers’ Association. The award is the highest honor offered by the group, and ‘‘recognises authors whose crime writing careers have been marked ...Read More
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MILESTONES
LAIRD BARRON was hospitalized in early January 2023 with respiratory problems and other medical issues. Mike Davis has organized a crowdfunding campaign as the author lacks health insurance. Davis says, ‘‘Laird is a private person and I’m trying to convey just how serious this is without revealing too much personal information. Make no mistake: This is very serious, and potentially life-threatening. For more: <www.gofundme.com/f/laird-barron-hospital-costs-medication-costs>.
Author and Locus reviewer PAUL
Artist Andrew Jones (AKA Android Jones) suffered a tragedy when his studio in Colorado burned down on January 18, 2023. Jones said,
My father designed and built this barn with his hands. I grew up in this barn. Nearly every material thing I cared about was inside. Decades of sketchbooks, all my archived originals, drawings and paintings, all of my art materials, terabytes of over 20 years of digital art, ...Read More
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MILESTONES
ROBIN MCKINLEY is the 39th recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial SFWA Grand Master Award. Her award will be presented during the SFWA Nebula Conference, to be held May 12–14, 2023 at the Sheraton Park Hotel at the Anaheim Resort in Anaheim, CA.
Tordotcom editor RUOXI CHEN won the $2,500 Superstar prize at Publishers Weekly’s annual Star Watch awards gala, held November 15, 2022 in New York ...Read More
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NANZUKA is working with COEXIST and UCCA Lab to host “H.R. Giger X Sorayama: Approaching” from December 25, 2022 – March 24, 2023. The exhibition features 45 works from H.R. Giger and Hajime Sorayama, and is divided into “Surrealistic Explorations, Fear, and Fantasy”, “The Eve of Tomorrow, Between the Biological and the Mechanical”, and “Seeds of Pop Culture.”
The exhibition will be on view at UCCA Lab in Beijing. For ...Read More
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President Barack Obama has announced a 13-title list of favorite books of 2022. Titles and authors of genre interest include:
President Obama announced the full list via Twitter, along with
The Huntington Library in San Marino CA announced that they have acquired the papers of Thomas Pynchon. The collection filled 48 boxes: “70 linear feet of materials created between the late 1950s and the 2020s — including typescripts and drafts of each of his novels, handwritten notes, correspondence, and research.” Pynchon’s papers were collected and represented by his son, Jackson Pynchon. The materials are being processed and will be available ...Read More
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MILESTONES
SF writers J. DIANNE DOTSON & GARETH L. POWELL were married November 5, 2022 in a small ceremony held in Los Angeles CA. Dotson designed her wedding dress herself: “I chose red as it is my favorite color and it honors Gareth being half-Welsh, given the colors of the Welsh flag.”
ALICIA WANSTALL-BURKE is now represented by the John Jarrold Literary Agency.
STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES is the ...Read More
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JEFF VANDERMEER’s literary interests are now represented by Joe Veltre of the Gersh Agency, who was already his film and TV agent. VanderMeer has also joined the Gersh Speakers Bureau as a client. Alex Kohner of Yorn Levine provides additional representation as VanderMeer’s entertainment attorney.
DEREK KÜNSKEN is stepping down as programming co-chair of Can*Con, Ottawa’s literary SF/F conference, after 11 years working on the conference. Co-chair MARIE
MARYANN HARRIS, artist, musician, and wife of Charles de Lint, became ill on September 6, 2021 with encephalitis, and was eventually diagnosed with the rare, tick-borne Powassan virus. She spent eight months in intensive care before being transferred to a complex care facility, where she is on a ventilator and almost entirely paralyzed. Fundraising efforts are underway to defray the considerable costs; details, and updates on her condition,
WENDY N. WAGNER is now represented via Lane Heymont of The Tobias Agency.
IDZA LUHUMYO’s “Five Years Next Sunday”(Disruption) won the £10,000 Caine Prize for African Writing, “awarded for a short story via an African writer published in English,”presented July 18, 2022 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
MONICA BYRNE’s The Actual Star (Harper Voyager) won the 2022 Manly Wade Wellman Award, ...Read More
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RUDY RUCKER sold his literary archive to the Special Collections of the UCR Library at UC Riverside. “The Rudy Rucker Archive includes marked-up drafts of forty books, story drafts, letters, videos, audio, scientific papers, rare ’zines, and email.” Henry Wessells of James Cummins Bookseller negotiated the deal with Cherry Williams and Andrew Lippert of UCR.
JESMYN WARD will receive the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction ...Read More
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QUENTIN BLAKE, SALMAN RUSHDIE, and MARINA WARNER all received the High Award Companion of Honour distinction in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. IAN RANKIN received the Knights Bachelor distinction, while JOANNE HARRIS and MICHAEL FOREMAN received the Officer of the Order of the British Empire distinction for services to literature. JAMES DAUNT, head of Waterstones in the UK and CEO of Barnes & Noble in the US, received ...Read More
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ELSA SJUNNESON is now represented by Larissa Melo Pienkowski at Jill Grinberg Literary.
RR HAYWOOD is now represented by the John Jarrold Literary Agency.
JOSHUA COHEN’s The Netanyahus (New York Review) won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in the Fiction category, given for ‘‘distinguished fiction published in book form during the year by an American author, preferably dealing with American life,’’ with its $15,000 prize.
ROBERT J. ...Read More
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Horror author JOHN SKIPP, 64, has announced his retirement from writing and publishing fiction; his final title is collection Don’t Push the Button (Clash Books). Going forward he will focus on music and film. He has two new albums, The Antidote to Fear and Cry Me a Rainbow, out via his own Fungasm Records label. He also wrote, produced, directed, and scored short film Doppelbanger, which premiered ...Read More
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JOANNE HARRIS was re-elected as the chair of the Society of Authors board. She ran unopposed for her second two-year term.
CELIA NERI is now represented by the John Jarrold Literary Agency.
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS has been awarded a star on the Palm Springs Walk of the Stars, which was founded in 1992 and runs through the commercial district of Palm Springs CA. Burroughs lived in Palm Springs ...Read More
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Authors Jennifer Croft, Brandon Hobson, Ladee Hubbard, and Alexandra Kleeman are among the 2022 Guggenheim Fellows, announced by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Fellowships were awarded to 180 recipients across 51 fields of study “on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise.”
The Foundation was started in 1925 and has awarded grants totaling nearly $400 million. Fellowships are through two annual competitions: one for citizens and permanent residents ...Read More
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BRONTE-MARIE WESSON is now represented by the John Jarrold Literary Agency. She is an Australian bookseller and influencer.
SUZAN PALUMBO is now represented by Michael Curry of the Donald Maass Literary Agency.
IORI KUSANO is now represented by Jennifer Jackson of the Donald Maass Literary Agency.
Author COLM TÓIBÍN has been named the new Laureate for Irish Fiction by the Arts Council of Ireland, a position which seeks to ...Read More
Read moreWashington Steam Multilingual Academy in Pasadena CA has been renamed “The Octavia E. Butler Magnet” in honor of the late author, who attended the school (then called Washington Middle School), graduating in 1961. The motion was “passed, approved, and adopted on February 24, 2022, at a special meeting of the Pasadena Unified School District Board of Education.”
Octavia E. Butler is a role model for our students as she exemplifies ...Read More
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LAURIE R. KING has been named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, and will be honored at the 76th Edgar Awards Ceremony at the Marriott Marquis Times Square in New York on April 28, 2022. Reviewer LESA HOLSTINE won the 2022 Raven Award, for “outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing,” and Soho Press associate publisher (and author) JULIET GRAMES received ...Read More
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Author Colm Tóibín has been named the new Laureate for Irish Fiction by the Arts Council of Ireland. He takes over from Sebastian Barry, and his three-year term begins this month. The Laureate position “seeks to acknowledge the contribution of fiction writers to Irish artistic and cultural life by honouring an established Irish writer of fiction, encouraging a new generation of writers, promoting Irish literature nationally and internationally and encouraging ...Read More
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JOHN VARLEY, 74, was hospitalized last year with COVID, pneumonia, and congestive heart failure, and received a diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He is home now, and expects to soon “be back at work on my next novel, a re-write and near total alteration of the horrible second draft of my first unpublished novel, Gas Giant.” Read his account here.
TOMI ADEYEMI’s publishing rights are ...Read More
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Former President Barack Obama has announced a 13-title list of the best books of 2021. Titles and authors of genre interest include:
Author BRADLEY P. BEAULIEU suffered a stroke on November 10, 2021, and was admitted for observation and testing. “Knock wood, it seems light so far…. It’s affecting my left hand (fingers, mostly) and the left side of my face a bit. Some slurred speech but not too bad.”
MERCEDES LACKEY is the 38th recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial SFWA Grand Master Award. Her award will be presented ...Read More
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Librarian MISHA STONE of the Seattle Public Library won the Librarian of the Year Award from the Greater Seattle Romance Writers Association. Stone is a Clarion West board member.
Composer JOHN WILLIAMS received the Forry Award for lifetime achievement in the SF field, presented by The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society at their October 9, 2021 meeting.
URSULA VERNON writing as T. KINGFISHER’s “Metal Like Blood in ...Read More
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The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) has named Mercedes Lackey the 38th recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award.
SFWA President Jeffe Kennedy said,
From the time I read my first Mercedes Lackey book as a young woman, her stories have illuminated my imagination and brought joy to my life. With multi-layered fantasy worlds, canny magical systems, and characters who step off the page as ...Read More
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Actor Rich Correll has opened Icons of Darkness, a new Hollywood museum filled with $15 million worth of props and costumes from beloved science fiction, fantasy, and horror franchises.
The collection, which represents “over 100 years of Hollywood film history curated and collected over the last 60 years,” includes props from Jurassic Park, a Darth Vader mask, and lots more costumes and memorabilia. The collection is currently on display ...Read More
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N.K. JEMISIN was named as one of the 100 most influential people of 2021 by Time. See the full list on their website.
NANCY PEARL will receive the 2021 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community, to be presented November 17, 2021 at the National Book Awards ceremony in New York. Pearl is the influential librarian who created the ‘‘One Book, One City’’ program.
SUSANNA ...Read More
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The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (SFE) has launched its Fourth Edition. The online edition of the essential reference work was sponsored by Orion/Gollancz from 2011-2021, but is now published by SFE Ltd and Ansible Editions.
Editors John Clute and David Langford say of the move:
With the release of the Fourth Edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, we have a new publisher and a new web server; but ...Read More
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The Nielsen Bestseller Awards have been announced, and include several titles and authors of genre interest. George’s Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake (Jonathan Cape) was a Platinum Bestseller; Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo (Hamish Hamilton) was a Gold Bestseller; and The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman (Penguin UK & David Fickling) was a Silver Bestseller. Several titles by Matt Haig ...Read More
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DOMINICA PHETTEPLACE has been chosen for the Bookshop Santa Cruz Writing Residency. She will spend two weeks writing at the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods, working on her novel Robot Country, “a dystopian science fiction novel which imagines robots as the agents of the next wave of American colonization and forced resettlement.” For details see the website.
Writers LAUREN DIXON & DALLAS TAYLOR were married July 31, 2021. ...Read More
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