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Monthly Archives: February 2022

ICFA 43: Volunteers Needed and Other News

We are less than a month away from ICFA 43!

Volunteers Needed

ICFA runs on volunteers. If you would like to help out with the Registration desk and/or AV, then please let us know and indicate your availability with this form: https://forms.gle/64ZDmD5Rwih6KxE3A Volunteers will be compensated per hour toward their registration costs.

Program Available

The draft program for the conference can be viewed at https://iaftfita.wildapricot.org/

Virtual Presentations

Unfortunately, our conference center at ICFA is not equipped for virtual presentations, so we cannot offer the kind of hybrid conference that some other organizations have done. If you are scheduled to present, but find that you cannot attend in person, then please let us know so that we can remove you from the program. Please also look for details about the new all-virtual October Conference!

The October Conference

We will be hosting our first annual all-virtual October conference this year. Details about how to submit to this conference will be announced later this year, but they will be separate from ICFA submissions. If you find that you cannot attend ICFA after all, then you may re-submit your presentation for the October conference, but there is no guarantee of acceptance since the theme and scope may be different.

See you in March!

Emily Midkiff

IAFA Registrar

2022 IAFA Crawford Award and Shortlist Announced

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

2/10/2022

 

2022 IAFA Crawford Award and Shortlist Announced

 

The winner of the 2022 Crawford Award, presented annually by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts for a first book of fantasy, is Usman T. Malik for his story collection Midnight Doorways: Fables from Pakistan (Kitab).

The awards committee also named as runners-up E. Lily Yu’s novel On Fragile Waves (Erewhon), and Isabel Yap’s collection Never Have I Ever (Small Beer).

Participating in this year’s nomination and selection process were Cheryl Morgan, Karen Burnham, Graham Sleight, Niall Harrison, Liza Trombi, Candas Jane Dorsey, and Mimi Mondal. The award is administered by Gary K. Wolfe and will be presented at a banquet March 19, during the 43rd International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in Orlando, Florida.

Also at the banquet, the IAFA Distinguished Scholarship Award will be presented to the conference’s guest scholar and former IAFA President Farah Mendelsohn.  The International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, or ICFA, is held annually in Orlando, Florida.  This year’s conference, March 16-20, on the theme of “Fantastic Communities,” will feature Nisi Shawl as Guest of Honor.

Announcing the Next IAFA President

It is my great pleasure to announce the election of the next President of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts: Dr. Pawel Frelik.

A two-term Division Head of the IAFA, Paweł Frelik is Associate Professor and the Leader of Speculative Texts and Media Research Group at the American Studies Center, University of Warsaw, Poland. His teaching and research interests include science fiction, speculative visualities, and video games. He has published widely in these fields, serves on the boards of Science Fiction Studies (USA), Extrapolation (USA/UK), and Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds (UK), and is the co- editor of the New Dimensions in Science Fiction book series at the University of Wales Press. In 2013-2014, he was President of the Science Fiction Research Association, the first in the organization’s history from outside North America. In 2017, he was the first non-Anglophone recipient of the Thomas D. Clareson Award. Within IAFA, he has served as Science Fiction Division Head since 2017. Dr. Frelik will assume the presidency at the end of the 43rd ICFA in March.

Congratulations, Pawel!

Dale Knickerbocker
IAFA President

ICFA 43 FLASH PLAY FESTIVAL #6: Call for Plays

The Flash Plays will once again manifest in the Capri lounge at the Marriott Orlando Airport Lakeside! We invite you to submit your play for joyful consideration.

Here are the 2022 “given circumstances” to challenge you to theatrical creative heights:

No more than TEN pages

No more than THREE characters

Include one of the following props:

THE FEATHERS OF THE GOLDEN GOOSE

RODNEY THE FRIENDLY ROBOT

A SACK FULL OF DOLL HEADS

…and include the following line of dialogue

“Time has lost all meaning”

Flash plays should be submitted via email to kelli.shermeyer@gmail.com by March 1th.

The Flash Play performances are Friday, March 18th at 9:45pm.

And if you’re interested in joining the Flash Players on stage, please let us know!

—
Kelli Shermeyer, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)

Announcing Fix’s Second Annual Imagine 2200 Climate Fiction Contest

 


No fee, $8,700 prizes and publication from Fix, Grist’s solutions lab

Fix opens submissions for Imagine 2200 climate fiction contest

 

Submissions are now being accepted for Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors, the annual climate fiction contest from Fix, Grist’s solutions lab. There is no fee to enter. Submit your short story by May 5, 2022 at 11:59 p.m. PST.

 

Imagine 2200 seeks original short stories of 3,000 to 5,000 words that envision the next 180 years of clean, green, and just futures. Judges include Hugo Award-winning writer Arkady Martine, esteemed editor and author Sheree Reneé Thomas, and professor Grace L. Dillon, who coined the term “Indigenous futurism.” Imagine 2200 draws inspiration from Afrofuturism, as well as Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, disabled, feminist, and queer futures, and the genres of hopepunk and solarpunk.

 

While we’re looking for hopeful stories, we also don’t expect you to be overly optimistic or naive. One hundred and eighty years of equitable climate progress will require hard work, struggle, and adaptation, and we invite you to show those as well.

 

In addition, we’re especially interested in cultural authenticity (a deep sense of place, customs, cuisine, and more), rich characters with intersecting identities, and stories that challenge the status quo in which wealth and power are built on extraction, oppression, and violence.

 

The top three winners will be awarded $3,000, $2,000, and $1,000 respectively, and nine finalists will receive a $300 honorarium. Those 12 authors will be published in an immersive digital collection this fall. Conjure your wildest dreams for society — all the justice, resilience, and abundance you can imagine — and put those dreams on paper.

 

There’s no fee to enter, so if you’re ready to get writing, you can find our submissions portal here. If you’d like to get in touch, you can reach us at imaginefiction@grist.org.

 

About Grist

 

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Our goal is to use the power of storytelling to illuminate the way toward a better world, inspire millions of people to walk that path with us, and show that the time for action is now.

 

Fix, Grist’s solutions lab, amplifies bold, equitable ideas for our climate future, and the people working towards them, in an effort to shift the climate narrative toward possibility. Through creative storytelling, network-building, and events, Fix explores the paths to a clean, green, just future, and brings together a growing community of climate visionaries — we call them Fixers — who are leading the way to a planet that works for everyone.