January 23, 2008
2008 Collins Award Announcement
Robert A. Collins Service Award
The Board of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts is pleased to announce the 2008 recipients of two Robert A. Collins Awards.
To Katy Hatfield for her service as Membership and Registration Coordinator for numerous ICFAs. As the “face” of the IAFA and the first person members often met at ICFA, Katy was instrumental in representing the Board, maintaining the registration lists, and using her quick problem-solving skills to settle unexpected conference problems and fielding members’ questions and concerns.
To Len Hatfield, for his service to the IAFA and ICFA as President, Vice-President, Science Fiction Literature and Theory Division Head, Audio-Visual Support, and Head Tech Gnome. Len’s expertise has been instrumental in updating and servicing technology at ICFA, establishing and maintaining the IAFA website and listserv, and recruiting new members to the Board.
Each award is for 2008 but the recipients will be recognized at the 2009 banquet at ICFA-30. Congratulations to the two of them for their individual honours.
The Robert A. Collins Service Award, named after the conference’s founder (who was also its first recipient in 1985) is an occasional award presented to an officer, board member, or division head for outstanding service to the organization.
Posted by GrahamMurphy at 07:13 PM | Comments (0)
January 10, 2008
2008 Crawford Fantasy Award Shortlist and Award
The winner of the 2008 Crawford Fantasy Award is Christopher Barzak, for his first novel One for Sorrow (Bantam). The award, sponsored by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, recognizes an outstanding first book of fantasy published during the preceding year, and will be presented March 22 at the association’s annual conference in Orlando, Florida.
In a departure from past years, the Association has simultaneously released the winner along with the shortlist for the award. Other titles on this year’s shortlist are Laird Barron, The Imago Sequence (Night Shade); Ron Currie, Jr., God is Dead (Viking); Ellen Klages, Portable Childhoods (Tachyon); and Ysabeau Wilce, Flora Segunda (Harcourt). Ekaterina Sedia’s The Secret History of Moscow, praised by a number of the award nominators, was ineligible for the shortlist because of an earlier fantasy novel published by Sedia in 2005.
Instead of a formal committee structure, the Crawford Award is determined by a panel of nominators, who review and discuss each other’s nominations. This year’s panel included John Clute, Kelly Link, Farah Mendlesohn, Cheryl Morgan, and Graham Sleight. The award is administered by Gary K. Wolfe of the IAFA Board.
The Crawford Award was established in 1985 through a grant from Andre Norton in memory of early fantasy small-press publisher William L. Crawford, who had died the preceding year. Past winners have included Charles de Lint, Susan Palwick, Greer Gilman, Jonathan Lethem, Candas Jane Dorsey, Alexander Irvine, Steph Swainston, and Joe Hill. Last year’s winner was M. Rickert.
Posted by GrahamMurphy at 03:48 PM | Comments (0)
November 09, 2007
World Fantasy Awards
Congratulations to those winners and nominees of the 2007 World Fantasy Awards. Also, a heartfelt congratulations to our fellow IAFAer Gary Wolfe who won Special Award: Non-Professional for his numerous reviews and criticism. The full listing can be found here.
Posted by GrahamMurphy at 05:52 AM | Comments (0)
October 12, 2007
Doris Lessing Wins Nobel Prize
The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA) is delighted that Doris Lessing, Guest of Honor at the 1989 International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts and longtime IAFA friend, has been awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature. Writing on her Children of Violence series, The Guardian states on its website : "By combining literary science fiction with a stringent, pioneering brand of feminism, Lessing gave a glimpse of the qualities for which she was to become famous.” As an author of the fantastic and only the 11th woman to win the award in Nobel's 106-year history, nothing can take the bloom off of this honour. Congratulations on this well-deserved award!
Posted by GrahamMurphy at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)
September 26, 2007
Jamie Bishop Memorial Award-Winning Essay
The 2007 Jamie Bishop Memorial Award for an Essay Not in English was awarded to Carlos Abraham for "Las utopías literarias argentinas en el período 1850-1950." A .pdf of the award-winning essay is now posted on the IAFA website under the "Awards" link. Click here to get to the main site.
Posted by GrahamMurphy at 03:29 PM | Comments (0)
April 22, 2007
Thomas D. Clareson Award Announcement
The IAFA would like to offer its most heartfelt congratulations to Dr. Michael Levy for winning the 2007 Thomas D. Clareson Award for Distinguished Service. As reported on the SFRA website, the "award is presented for outstanding service activities-promotion of SF teaching and study, editing, reviewing, editorial writing, publishing, organizing meetings, mentoring, and leadership in SF/fantasy organizations." Dr. Levy is Chair of the Department of English at the University Wisconsin-Stout and is currently the Immediate Past President of the IAFA. Congratulations on the well-deserved win.
Posted by GrahamMurphy at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)
April 05, 2007
Bokenkamp from Stanford Named 2007 Dell Magazines Award Winner
The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA) and Asimov's Science Fiction magazine have named Natty Bokenkamp the winner of the 2007 Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing for his short story "The Uncanny Valley." Bokenkamp is an undergraduate at Stanford University.
First Runner-up for the 2007 award is Rahul Kanakia, also of Stanford, for his short story, “Money is the Best Damn Thing There Is.”
Second Runner-up for the 2007 award is Natty Bokenkamp of Stanford for the short story, “Cargo.”
Third Runner-up for 2007 is Rahul Kanakia from Stanford for “The Silent Horde.”
Honorable Mention for the 2007 award goes to Stephen Leech of the University of South Florida for his short story, “The Whale-Zeppelin Canard,” and to Eliza Blair of Swarthmore College for her short story, “Tangle,” and to Seth Dickinson of the University of Chicago for his short story, “Claymore Three-Zulu.” Blair was first runner-up for the award in both 2005 and 2006.
Bokenkamp received $500 for the award and an expense-paid trip to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for the annual Conference on the Fantastic, March 14-18, where he received the award from Sheila Williams, Editor of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine, during the conference awards banquet. Kanakia and Leech also attended the conference and received their awards from Williams during the awards banquet.
The deadline for submissions for the 2008 Dell Magazines Award is postmarked by January 8, 2008. Submissions should be sent to: Dell Magazines Award, School of Mass Communications, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler, Tampa, Fla. 33620. For more information or submission guidelines contact Award Administrator Dr. Rick Wilber at the School of Mass Communications, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler, Tampa, Fla. 33620 at (813) 974-6792 or RWilber@cas.usf.edu or see the magazine's website at www.Asimovs.com, or Wilber’s website at http://www.rickwilber.com/dell%20award.htm
The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts is a worldwide network of scholars, educators, writers, artists, filmmakers, critics, editors, publishers, and performers who share an interest in studying and celebrating the fantastic in all artforms, disciplines and media: literature, art, film, drama, music, philosophy, religion, the sciences, popular culture, and interdisciplinary areas. IAFA publishes an interdisciplinary quarterly, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, the IAFA Newsletter, and an annual IAFA Membership Directory. IAFA also sponsors and organizes the annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, (ICFA) which hosts the world's broadest and largest selection of scholarly papers on the fantastic and has become the major forum for the exchange of ideas and dissemination of scholarship on the fantastic.
The Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing is co-sponsored by Asimov's Science Fiction magazine and the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, and supported by the School of Mass Communications, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL.
Posted by GrahamMurphy at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)
March 26, 2007
Guest Scholar Award
The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts awarded its Guest Scholar Award to Jane Donawerth at this year's International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (March 14-18, 2007). Jane Donawerth is a faculty member of University of Maryland. She is the author of Frankenstein's Daughters: Women Writing Science Fiction and co-editor with Carol Kolmerten of Utopian and Science Fiction by Women: Worlds of Difference. She is a University of Maryland Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and has held NEH and University of Wisconsin Humanities Center fellowships. She is currently working on editing a collection of sf by women in the early pulp magazines. Congratulations!
Posted by GrahamMurphy at 06:50 PM | Comments (0)
March 24, 2007
Lord Ruthven Assembly Award Announcement
The Lord Ruthven Assembly's awards for excellence in published works on vampire and revenant themes for 2006 were presented in March, 2007, at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts to Renfield: Slave of Dracula, by Barbara Hambly (Berkley), for fiction, and Slayers and their Vampires: A Cultural History of Killing the Dead, by Bruce McClelland (University of Michigan Press), for nonfiction.
Posted by GrahamMurphy at 12:46 PM | Comments (0)
March 23, 2007
IAFA Graduate Student Award Announcement
IAFA GRADUATE STUDENT AWARD
The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts is pleased to announce the winner of the annual Graduate Student Award. The award, and a cheque for $250, was presented to the winner at the Awards Banquet on Saturday evening.
This year's winner was Richard Landon (University of Iowa) for his paper: "A Half-Naked Muscleman in Trunks: Charles Atlas, Superheroes, and Comic Book Masculinity."
While this essay was the clear winner for all three judges, three others were noted as deserving honorable mention (in no particular order/ranking):
"A Dark and Powerful Force: Female Sexuality in the 'Authentic' Horror Film" (Michael Blouin)
"Looking for Echoes of Medieval Poetry in Arda's Nature" (Stefan Ekman)
"Representations of Gypsiness in English-language Fantasy Literature" (Jeana Jorgensen)
This year's award committee consisted of Edward James, Darja Malcolm-Clark, and Jeffrey Weinstock.
The Graduate Student Award is open to all graduate students (master's and doctoral) at any stage of their programs every year. The student must have had a paper accepted for presentation at the Conference. The paper submitted for the competition should be essentially the same as that presented at the conference. The paper selected will be published in the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts and therefore must not have been previously published or submitted for publication elsewhere.
Posted by GrahamMurphy at 10:10 AM | Comments (0)
March 22, 2007
William L. Crawford Fantasy Award Announcement
The IAFA Crawford Award recognizes an outstanding new fantasy writer. The award was established with the support of the late Andre Norton, who also helped establish the criteria and who continued to support the award over the years.
This year’s winner is M. Rickert for her collection Map of Dreams, published by Golden Gryphon. M. Rickert was on-hand at ICFA to accept the award and now joins an elite group of award winners. Congratulations.
Posted by GrahamMurphy at 02:07 PM | Comments (0)
Best Non-English Language Scholarly Essay on Fantasy in the Arts Award Announcement
The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA) is pleased to announce that its 1st Annual Award for Best Non-English Language Scholarly Essay on Fantasy in the Arts has been awarded to Carlos Abraham for "Las utopías literarias argentinas en el período 1850-1950" ("Argentine Literary Utopias in the Period from 1850-1950").
Carlos Abraham (1975) received his degree in Literature from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata in Argentina, where he is presently pursuing his doctorate. As a scholar, his primary interests are the Hispanic Baroque, and fantasy literature and related genres. He is perhaps best known for his widely acclaimed book Borges y la ciencia ficción (see link). He is also Editor of the scholarly journal Nautilus, and Co-Editor of the literary magazine Éxtasis.
As an author, Carlos has won various literary prizes, among them First Prize in Metrovías's 2005 Cuentos Cortos de Terror competition for best horror short story with his "El negocio de la anciana" ("The Old Woman's Business"). He has published numerous essays, short stories, poems, translations, articles, and reviews in venues such as La Brújula, La Nueva Avenida, Julio Cortázar, Proyección, Los Conspiradores de Siempre, Arkadin y Galaxia, Artifex, Fabricantes de sueños y Textos del trovador, El Día, Nueva Era, Series Monográficas and Cuadernos Angers-La Plata.
We would also like to congratulate the authors of three essays selected for Honorable Mention:
Alfonso Merelo for "Filosofia y ciencia ficción: una aproximación" ("Philosophy and Science Fiction: an Approach")
Rocío Carrasco Carrasco and Elena Domínguez Romero for "Amenazas externas y monstruosidades internas: Planeta Prohibido(1956) de Wilcox y La Tempestad de Shakespeare" ("External Threats and Internal Monstrosities: Wilcox's Forbidden Planet (1956) and Shakespeare's The Tempest").
María Beatriz Cóceres for "Donde se detiene la mirada: Buzzati y la crónica policial" ("Where the Gaze Stops: Buzzati and the Police Chronicle")
Posted by GrahamMurphy at 07:26 AM | Comments (0)
December 28, 2006
FemSpec Awards at ICFA 2007
The following is an announcement from Batya Weinbaum.
Femspec is pleased to announce the winners of the Best of Femspec's First Five Years Awards, with many thanks to our judges. They will be presented by founding co-editor Robin Reid at the Cultural Identity Caucus on Thursday night at the March '07 IAFA conference in Florida.
Best Art: Beth Blinebury
Best Cover:Bridget Tichenor
Best Critical Essays:
First--Gina Wisker
Second--Rebecca Hains
Third--Batya Weinbaum
Best Fiction:
First--Rebecca Lesses
Second--Judith Merril
Third--Samuel R. Delany
Fourth--Marilyn Gale
Fifth--Marleen Barr
Best Poetry:
First--Barbara Mincheton
Second--Karen Alcaly
Third--Doreen Russell
Fourth--Tara Leonard
Fifth--Jane Liddell-King.
Best Reviews:
Janice Bogstad
Diona Shaw
Best Special Editor:
Patricia Melzer
Posted by ChrissieMains at 10:34 PM | Comments (0)
August 28, 2006
Congrats to David Hartwell, Hugo Winner
The IAFA executive board would like to extend its congratulations to David Hartwell, ICFA's hard working Book Exhibit Co-ordinator and fashion guru, for finally winning the Hugo for Best Editor; David's often been nominated but this is his first win, and it's well deserved.
Skip on over to Kathryn Cramer's blog for more details and some pics; for even more pics from WorldCon and the awards presentation, check out the front page of Kathryn's website.
Posted by ChrissieMains at 12:53 PM | Comments (0)
July 21, 2006
Ann B. Sullivan Children's Literature Student Conference Fund
Members of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts may be aware of the recent unexpected death of Ann Sullivan, wife of past President C. W. Sullivan and herself a frequent visitor to the Conference. IAFA members may want to express their affection for Chip and Ann and their concern for his loss through a donation.
A memorial fund, the Ann B. Sullivan Children's Literature Student Conference Fund, has been set up to assist students in the Hollins Children's Literature Program in travel to conferences. The fund "is designed to aid the students [Ann] loved and mentored and advance the art of storytelling, at which she was so gifted." Many students in the program at Hollins, where both Chip and Ann have taught, are regulars at the ICFA.
The Sullivan Fund will require a $10,000 endowment before awards can be made to students, which Hollins hopes to raise by June 30, 2007. Gifts and/or pledges to the fund may be made to Alumni/ae and Donor Relations, Hollins University, P.O. Box 9629, Roanoke, VA 24020-1629. Pledges may be made for a five-year period. Additional information about the fund may be obtained by writing the director of the Children's Literature Program, Amanda Cockrell, e-mail acockrell AT hollins.edu.
Posted by ChrissieMains at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2005
Congratulations, Joe!
Joe Sutliff Sanders, IAFA's newest Division Head (CYA) and one of the founders of SCIAFA, the association's student caucus, has landed a position teaching in the Department of English at Illinois Wesleyan University.
"The funniest part of the experience," says Joe, "is that I proposed a slate of classes to them they liked, all except one. I proposed a World Literature course because I wanted to show that I can do it all, and they said that though it was a cool course, that would make me overlap too much with some other professor. So they said, and I quote, 'But I see here you have an interest in comic books; could I talk you into teaching a course on that?'"
Joe will be teaching on families in literature, children in literature, and 19th-century US women's culture. And comics.
Congratulations again, Joe, and best wishes from your colleagues in IAFA.
Posted by ChrissieMains at 10:40 PM | Comments (0)
March 30, 2005
A Change in Division Heads
On behalf of the membership of IAFA, the executive board would like to thank Mary Harris Russell for her hard work as Division Head for The Fantastic in Children's & Young Adult Literature and Art over the past year. Mary will be stepping down from the position this year, although she will still be available to advise her replacement, Joe Sutliff Sanders, former Student Caucus Representative.
All other Division Heads will be continuing in their positions this year, although SF Division Head Robin Reid will be stepping aside next year. To that end, she will be assisted this year by Sherryl Vint, who will take over the job following next year's conference.
Posted by ChrissieMains at 10:23 PM | Comments (0)
Sad News
Some sad news around conference time this year: At the Thursday Guest of Honor luncheon, Don Morse announced the passing of author Andre Norton at the age of 93. The author was a supporter of the conference, helping to establish the Crawford Award to recognize outstanding new fantasy writers; I found it especially poignant that the last session I attended at the conference included a paper on her work. Also, shortly after the conference, we learned that longtime IAFA member Bud Foote had died on March 12. Our condolences to their family and friends.
Posted by ChrissieMains at 10:22 PM | Comments (0)
March 24, 2005
The Acceptance Speech That Should Have Been
Each year, a number of awards are presented at the closing banquet of the conference, including the Graduate student Paper Award, first presented in 1987. This year, the award went to an extremely surprised Christine Mains (aka yours truly) who was too stunned to give anything resembling a coherent acceptance speech. I have a somewhat fuzzy memory of being even ditzier than usual. And that's unfortunate, because there are some things I'd really like to say about being a graduate student involved with IAFA and this was the perfect opportunity to say those things.
Thankfully, the blog exists for just such occasions.
"The Speech Given in the Alternate Universe Where Chrissie is Faster at Thinking on Her Feet."
I'm very grateful that such an organization exists, and that it is so supportive of graduate students who are the future of scholarship and teaching. I know that a number of my fellow students whose interests lie elsewhere, in Shakespeare studies or Middle English Literature, for instance, have had a much more difficult time building their careers and finding acceptance among their peers and future colleagues than I have had. Few organizations have such an active graduate student membership, and the senior members of IAFA have been incredibly supportive of the student caucus, not only in organizing and funding the Graduate Student Paper Award but in ensuring that graduate students are welcomed and made a part of the organization and the conference. A representative of the student caucus sits on the executive board, there not only to voice student concerns and convey board concerns back to the students but also to participate fully and equally in planning the present and future of IAFA.
Nor is that participation limited to a single token student at a time; when I offered my time and energy to then-President Len Hatfield a few years ago, he was willing to appoint me to the position of Public Information Coordinator even though I was a graduate student and the board already had a student representative. What mattered was that I was willing and able to get the job done. The senior members of IAFA are well aware that a strong and active future for the association depends on the vision and energy of those of us just beginning our scholarly careers. And we are the future; the student caucus was in its first year or so when I began attending ICFA six years ago, but in the years soon to come, I fully expect that the Division Heads and appointed board members will include scholars who began their involvement with IAFA as part of the caucus, and in the years after that, we will be the elected board, guiding the association into its fourth and fifth decades of existence. I might not be thinking about such a commitment if the association did not demonstrate an equally strong commitment to its graduate students and to me personally.
I am very pleased to have my scholarship recognized by the critics and teachers who matter most in my field; that recognition means a great deal to me, as does this association and all of the people whom I have met over the years as a result of my involvement with it. I intend to be a part of IAFA as long as it exists, and to do everything that I can to ensure that it exists for a very long time.
Oh, lest anyone think I've been replaced by a pod person: This is way cool!
Posted by ChrissieMains at 11:29 PM | Comments (2)
September 05, 2004
Congratulations, Joe
Joe Sutliff Sanders, recently a daddy, won the Provost's Award for Outstanding Teaching, the university's highest teaching award. Joe reports that he was "in competition with graduate student teachers from all the disciplines, so it's a heady experience. I'm contemplating popping unannounced into randomly selected courses taught by other graduate students and smirking at them."
Posted by ChrissieMains at 11:26 PM | Comments (0)