Skip navigation

Author Archives: Skye Cervone

Call for Interim Technology Officer

The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts is accepting applications for the position of Interim Chief Technology Officer.

 

The duties involved in the position include:

  • inputting the conference program into the Sched app and continuing to update it with errata
  • managing the IAFA and the Board listservs  
  • ongoing technical maintenance of the IAFA website (running on WildApricot) 
  • managing email forwarders for the Board and officers 
  • supporting, in a limited capacity, the VICFA team 

Except for populating Sched with the program, which requires a stretch of time before the conference, most duties are low-intensity outside the March conference window, which requires more sustained attention. 

Prospective candidates do not need to have specific experience in the duties listed above but must feel securely comfortable with digital technologies and be willing to learn (the learning curve for all duties is not particularly steep). 

The appointed candidate will be trained by the IAFA CTO and will begin their duties immediately upon appointment, most likely around February 25. The length of the appointment is not fully clear at this time but may extend until the end of the calendar year with a possibility of becoming (semi)permanent.

Those interested in applying must send a brief statement of interest in, and qualifications for, the position to the IAFA President, Pawel Frelik (p.frelik@uw.edu.pl), no later than February 20, 2023.

2023 IAFA Crawford Award and Shortlist Announced

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

2/7/2023

2023 IAFA Crawford Award and Shortlist Announced

 

The winner of the 2023 Crawford Award, presented annually by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts for a first book of fantasy published the prior year, is Simon Jimenez for his novel The Spear Cuts Through Water (Del Rey). Jimenez had previously published a well-received science fiction novel, The Vanished Birds (2020), but The Spear Cuts Through Water is his first fantasy book, making it eligible for the award.

The awards committee also named a shortlist including Maya Deane, Wrath Goddess Sing (William Morrow), Naseem Jamnia, The Bruising of Qilwa (Tachyon), Alex Jennings, The Ballad of Perilous Graves (Redhook), and Jacob Kerr, The Green Man of Eshwood Hall (Serpent’s Tail)

Participating in this year’s nomination and selection process were Cheryl Morgan, Karen Burnham, 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 18, during the 44rd 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 Isiah Lavender III.  The International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, or ICFA, is held annually in Orlando, Florida.  This year’s conference, March 15-18, on the theme of Afrofuturism, will feature Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki as Guest of Honor.

Call for Fantasy Literature Division Head

The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts is accepting applications for the position of Division Head of the Fantasy Literature (FL) Division. (Please see the division description below.)

Division Heads are appointed by the President on the recommendation of the First Vice President, who chairs the Council of Division Heads after formal discussion and a majority vote of the Board. The term is for three years. The incoming FL Division Head will begin full Division Head duties immediately following the conference in March of 2023. The Division Head term runs for three years.

The incoming FL Division Head will begin their term in March of 2023 and end the term in March of 2026.

Division Heads may have an opportunity to extend their term.

Each Division Head organizes and supervises all conference activity within a subdivision of fantastic scholarship. Division Heads work under the guidance of the First Vice President. Division Heads are responsible for recruiting session proposals and papers and are responsible for formatting these to the requirements of the First Vice President. Division Heads are responsible for forwarding all information to the First Vice President in a timely fashion. Division Heads have the responsibility to check the draft program for accuracy and AV needs. Division Heads are expected to liaise with other Division Heads and the First Vice President. The First Vice President is the final arbiter of the program under the aegis of the Executive Board. At the conference, the Division Heads oversee sessions in their respective Divisions and collect suggestions for future topics, special guests, etc.

Those interested in applying must send a cover letter explaining their interest in, and qualifications for, the position, and a current CV, to the First Vice President, Valorie Ebert at iafa.1vp@fantastic-arts.org, no later than March 1, 2023.

Fantasy Literature (FL) – The Fantasy Literature division welcomes critical scholarship on all aspects of fantasy literature (broadly defined to mean anything from genre fantasy to magic realism), including, but not restricted to, criticism on works by fantasy authors writing in English, interdisciplinary approaches to the genre, and scholarship on fantasy theory.

Reminder: Call for Nominations for 1st VP and PIO

There are still a few days left to nominate or self-nominate someone for two open IAFA board positions:

First Vice President

The IAFA requests nominations for individuals interested in becoming our First Vice President. Nominees must be members in good standing. Before nominating someone, please make sure they are a member and willing to stand for election. Self-nominations are welcome.

The First Vice President is a member of the Executive Board, elected by majority vote of the IAFA members who participate in the election, serves a three-year term unless otherwise stipulated, and may be re-elected.

The First Vice President coordinates the ICFA Program, overseeing the work of the Division Heads and scheduling paper sessions for the Annual Conference Program. The First Vice President also consults with the President and Second Vice President concerning appearances by special guests in panels, readings, and lectures, and with the Conference Director about physical arrangements such as AV equipment, room assignments, etc. The First Vice President substitutes for the President when necessary. The First Vice President also oversees the IAFA Graduate Student Award, including the following: advertising the award, organising the prize committee, and collecting and forwarding submissions to the committee for a blind reading process.

Nominations should be sent to Dale Knickerbocker, the IAFA Immediate Past President, at knickerbockerd@ecu.edu. Nominations will close on December 8, 2022.

Candidates will be contacted by the IAFA Immediate Past President and asked to submit their Candidate Statement by December 9, 2022. Voting begins in December and finishes in January. The person elected will take office at the end of the 2023 ICFA. Questions about the position should be directed to the current 1st VP, Valorie Ebert, at iafa.1vp@fantastic-arts.org.

Public Information Officer

The IAFA requests nominations for individuals interested in becoming our Public Information Officer (PIO). Nominees must be members in good standing. Before nominating someone, please make sure they are a member and willing to stand for election. Self-nominations are welcome.

The PIO is a member of the Executive Board, elected by majority vote of IAFA members who participate in the election, serves a three-year term unless otherwise stipulated, and may be re-elected.

The PIO edits and distributes promotional materials and forms publicity liaisons with other organizations, where appropriate. The PIO maintains and regularly updates the website and blog, creates and distributes information from the Board–such as Calls for Papers and election material–and contributes photos and promotional copy to the IAFA website. The PIO maintains and regularly updates social media feeds, responds to inquiries via social media, and monitors the IAFA’s public image on social media. The PIO takes Executive Board minutes, disseminates them, archives them, and makes them available for archival use. The PIO is the recorder of motions and amendments at official meetings. The PIO maintains the IAFA electronic archive.

Nominations should be sent to Dale Knickerbocker, the IAFA Immediate Past President, at knickerbockerd@ecu.edu. Nominations will close on December 8, 2022.

Candidates will be contacted by the IAFA Immediate Past President and asked to submit their Candidate Statement by December 9, 2022. Voting begins in December and finishes in January. The person elected will take office at the end of the 2023 ICFA. Questions about the position should be directed to the current PIO, Skye Cervone, at iafa.pio@fantastic-arts.org.

IAFA Executive Board

CFP: Disruptive Imaginations, Joint Annual Conference of SFRA and GfF, TU Dresden, Germany, August 15-19, 2023

  • December 1, 2022 – 1:00 pm
  • Posted in CFP
  • Comments Off on CFP: Disruptive Imaginations, Joint Annual Conference of SFRA and GfF, TU Dresden, Germany, August 15-19, 2023

Disruptive Imaginations 

Joint Annual Conference of SFRA and GfF

TU Dresden, Germany, August 15-19, 2023

 

This conference will merge the annual meetings of the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) and the German Association for Research in the Fantastic (GfF). With some overlap in membership and a shared interest and mission, we believe that a joint conference offers great potential for dynamic exchange, constructive discussions, and new insights and perspectives. This expanded focus on SFF allows for a consideration of a wide range of genres and forms that include science fiction, fantasy, horror, and the weird. For more information on the respective associations, please see below. We are excited to welcome you all to Dresden in August 2023!

 

Science fiction and the fantastic (SFF) have the power to disrupt entrenched narratives and worldmaking practices. Whether in the form of hard science fiction, utopian speculation, high fantasy or supernatural horror, SFF is fundamentally anchored in imaginations of disruption—a tear in the fabric of reality, an estrangement of the senses, a break with the known world, or a transgression of boundaries. The conference theme “Disruptive Imaginations” invites participants to engage with disruption as a variegated paradigm of the SFF imagination. As a mode of disturbance or interruption, a disruption implies that habitual patterns of perceiving, inhabiting, and ordering the world are unsettled, giving way to uncertainty and the unknown. It can occur at scales that range from the micrological to the cosmic. At the precarious threshold between chaos and order, a disruption carries the potential for transformative system change and can produce a shift in hegemonic articulations of ‘the im/possible.’

 

Fredric Jameson famously invokes disruption as the fundamental discursive strategy of political utopia, which only “by forcing us to think the break itself” enables the imagination of worlds otherwise. What would it mean to think disruption “as restructuration and the unexpected blasting open of habits, as that lateral side-door which suddenly opens onto a new world of transformed human beings.”[1] Disruption has been championed as a strategy of intervention across the political spectrum and impels a careful examination of questions of agency and power (relations). Who or what has the power to disrupt and whose experiences of disruption are acknowledged while others remain suppressed or invisible? In the face of a lingering pandemic, looming threats of nuclear warfare, global heating, environmental racism, and extractive capitalism, how can imagination offer a counterforce to the disruption of lifeworlds?

 

“Disruptive Imaginations” seeks to confront SFF narratives of innovation, progress, and other-worlding with the faultlines of their own construction. Envisioned in part as a critical response to neoliberal models of disruptive innovation, “Disruptive Imaginations” invites scholarship and creative work that interrogates methods of both local and larger systemic change that does not fetishize newness, and that anchors in the critical world-making capacities of literature and the arts. As a literary and artistic mode, SFF ceaselessly rehearses alternatives and dishabituations of the status quo while also creating spaces that expose and resist the disruptive forces of white supremacy, settler-colonialism, heteropatriarchy, and ableism. Beyond the promises of a technological fix or a naive return to equilibrium, how might SFF help foster an understanding of complex and messy worlds in crisis? What are the limits of disruption as a useful story to think worlds with, and what collateral damage does it entail? What kinds of different paradigms (speculative and otherwise) may be needed to disrupt disruption?

 

We invite papers on all forms and genres of science fiction and the fantastic in relation to the paradigm of disruption, including but not limited to literature, music, film, games, design, and art. Presentations may be held either in English or German. We strive for a diversity of voices and perspectives from any and all disciplines and career stages. While papers on any subject in SFF are welcome, we especially encourage topics that resonate with the overall conference theme and that engage disruptive imaginations along axes that include but are not limited to

 

SFF imagination under conditions of disruption

e.g., energy crisis; toxicity; climate disruption; war; colonialism; dis/ability and ableism; trauma; white supremacy; …

 

SFF imagination against disruption

e.g., resilience; worldmaking; utopia; decolonization and restitution; cultural healing; kinship; critical and co-futurisms (African and Afro-futurisms, Indigenous Futurisms, Queer and Trans Futurisms, Crip Futurisms, LatinX Futurisms,…); …

 

SFF imagination in need of disruption

e.g., SFF and systems of oppression; the energy unsconious of SFF; transhumanism and eugenics; SFF tropes/histories/conventions of white supremacy, colonialism, heteropatriarchy, and technological solutionism; …

 

SFF imagination as a force of disruption

e.g., SFF in/as activism; emancipatory forms of SFF publishing (e.g., Destroy! Series); the cultural/bodily/social/political/aesthetic/ecological impact of SFF; SFF as medium of political subversion and agitation; alt-right utilization of SFF rhetoric; …

 

SFF imagination of disruption

e.g., ruptures of space and time; geoengineering; gene editing; hacking; revolution; border crossings, unsettling of hierarchies, chimeras and hybrids, creative technologies and alternative communication media; …

 

It is possible to submit proposals for individual presentations and preformed panels in English or German. Non-traditional formats (roundtable, artistic research, participatory formats, etc.) are welcome. For individual presentation, we ask for an abstract of 300 words and a short bio (150 words). For preformed panels we require a proposal (single file) that includes a 300 word summary of the panel topic, abstracts of 200 words for each contribution, and bio notes (150 words) for all participants. Please send all submissions to disruptive.imaginations@tu-dresden.de by March 1, 2023. Options for limited hybrid participation will be available. More information will be supplied soon on our conference website www.disruptiveimaginations.com.

 

Both organizations give out a limited number of travel grants to help students, PhD candidates and non-tenured participants with their expenses: SFRA members are eligible to apply for travel grants of up to 500$; the GfF offers four travel grants of 250€ each, membership not required. Please indicate your interest upon submitting your abstract.

 

Organizing team:

 

Julia Gatermann

Moritz Ingwersen

(North American Literature and Critical Future Studies, TU Dresden)

 

 

The Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung (GfF, the German association for research in the fantastic), was founded 2010 with the mission to promote academic research of the fantastic in art, literature and culture in German-speaking countries and to contribute to a deepening of scholarly and cultural knowledge in these fields (https://fantastikforschung.de). To that end, the GfF publishes the peer reviewed open-access journal “Zeitschrift für Fantastikforschung” (https://zff.openlibhums.org/) and convenes for an annual conference at varying locations in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.

 

The Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA), founded in 1970, is the oldest professional association dedicated to the scholarly inquiry of Science Fiction and the Fantastic in literature, film, and the arts (https://sfra.org). The SFRA’s open access journal SFRA Review is published four times a year (https://sfrareview.org/) and the SFRA meets annually for a conference at varying international locations.

[1] Fredric Jameson. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. Verso, 2005. 232.

Call for Nominations: IAFA 1st Vice President and Public Information Officer

First Vice President

The IAFA requests nominations for individuals interested in becoming our First Vice President. Nominees must be members in good standing. Before nominating someone, please make sure they are a member and willing to stand for election. Self-nominations are welcome.

The First Vice President is a member of the Executive Board, elected by majority vote of the IAFA members who participate in the election, serves a three-year term unless otherwise stipulated, and may be re-elected.

The First Vice President coordinates the ICFA Program, overseeing the work of the Division Heads and scheduling paper sessions for the Annual Conference Program. The First Vice President also consults with the President and Second Vice President concerning appearances by special guests in panels, readings, and lectures, and with the Conference Director about physical arrangements such as AV equipment, room assignments, etc. The First Vice President substitutes for the President when necessary. The First Vice President also oversees the IAFA Graduate Student Award, including the following: advertising the award, organising the prize committee, and collecting and forwarding submissions to the committee for a blind reading process.

Nominations open on  October 25, 2022 and close on November 25, 2022. Nominated candidates will be asked to submit their Candidate Statement to IAFA Immediate Past President Dale Knickerbocker at knickerbockerd@ecu.edu by 25 November 2022. Voting begins in December and finishes in January. The person elected will take office at the end of the 2023 ICFA. Questions about the position should be directed to Valorie Ebert at iafa.1vp@fantastic-arts.org.

 

Public Information Officer

The IAFA requests nominations for individuals interested in becoming our Public Information Officer (PIO). Nominees must be members in good standing. Before nominating someone, please make sure they are a member and willing to stand for election. Self-nominations are welcome.

The PIO is a member of the Executive Board, elected by majority vote of IAFA members who participate in the election, serves a three-year term unless otherwise stipulated, and may be re-elected.

The PIO edits and distributes promotional materials and forms publicity liaisons with other organizations, where appropriate. The PIO maintains and regularly updates the website and blog, creates and distributes information from the Board–such as Calls for Papers and election material–and contributes photos and promotional copy to the IAFA website. The PIO maintains and regularly updates social media feeds, responds to inquiries via social media, and monitors the IAFA’s public image on social media. The PIO takes Executive Board minutes, disseminates them, archives them, and makes them available for archival use. The PIO is the recorder of motions and amendments at official meetings. The PIO maintains the IAFA electronic archive.

Nominations open on October 25, 2022 and close on November 25, 2022. Candidates will be contacted  by the IAFA Immediate Past President and asked to submit their Candidate Statement to knickerbockerd@ecu.edu by November 25, 2022. Voting begins in December and finishes in January. The person elected will take office at the end of the 2023 ICFA. Questions about the position should be directed to Skye Cervone at iafa.pio@fantastic-arts.org.

Announcing the New Director of Creative Programming

Dear IAFA Members:

I’m very pleased to share that Dr. Samantha Baugus will now be serving the IAFA as our new volunteer Director of Creative Programming.

The Director of Creative Programming (a new role) assists the Second Vice President with building programming items for the creative track. The job’s primary duties involve corresponding with invited creatives to help build discussion panels for the conference. The person in this role also helps build and manage the invited creative RSVP system, creates draft author reading sessions, and recruits/assigns hosts for creative track sessions. In recognition of the work involved, the volunteer who serves in this role receives complimentary ICFA registration and special event tickets.

The IAFA posted a call for volunteers for this role back in June, but we did not receive any applications for the position. Dr. Baugus, who previously served as the Student Caucus Representative on the Executive Board, subsequently volunteered to serve as Director of Creative Programming. Please join me in welcoming Samantha to this important new role! =)

Best,

David Higgins
IAFA Second Vice President

CFP: The 44th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Afrofuturism

The 44th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

Afrofuturism

Guest of Honor: Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki

Guest Scholar: Isiah Lavender III

March 15-18, 2023

Orlando Marriott Lakeside Hotel

 

The theme of the 2023 ICFA will be “Afrofuturism.” If Afrofuturism is rising, as the title of Isiah Lavender III’s groundbreaking study of the literary movement proclaims, or is already risen like Africa itself, as the title of Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki’s jointly edited anthology asserts, it does so as part of a groundswell across fantastic modes, genres and media. From the cosmic artistry of Sun Ra, and iconic visionaries speaking from and for estranged and defamiliarized spaces such as Olaudah Equiano, W.E.B. DuBois, Chinua Achebe, Samuel R. Delany, Octavia E. Butler, Herbie Hancock, Earth, Wind and Fire, Ben Okri, Michelle Cliff, Maryse Condé, Stafford L. Battle, Tananarive Due, Steven Barnes, N.K. Jemisin, Nalo Hopkinson, Tobias L. Buckell, and Nisi Shawl, to fast-rising stars such as Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Wanuri Kahiu, Fanuel Leul, Sheree Renée Thomas, Zelda Knight, Manzi Jackson, P. Djeli Clark, Mame Boukouma Diene, Deji Bryce Olukotun, C.L. Clark, Rivers Solomon, Tade Thompson, Dilman Dila, Olatunde Osunsanmi, Justina Ireland, and Tlotlo Tsamaase, the 44th Annual ICFA will celebrate the fantastic imaginations of creators from Africa and its Global Diaspora, crossing linguistic and other identity and communicative boundaries and borders to arrive at Afrofuturism’s unifying, edifying, uplifting, and often terrifying revelations.

 

Topics may address, but need not be limited to:

 

  • Representations of African-ness in space and time
  • Afrofuturism among Othered futurisms
  • Depictions of relations in the process of power-shifting by African and Diaspora creatives and scholars addressing race, gender, class, ethnicity, traditional versus colonial nationalities, and/or mechanisms of exclusion, exploitation, appropriation, or reparation, among other topics
  • Exploring traditional, colonial and de-colonialist nationalities, ethnicities and boundary-defined affiliations
  • Reclaiming and proclaiming by proto-claiming
  • Problematics of representations of African-ness by non-African-descent creators
  • Gatekeeping, stereotyping, eurocentrism, and the demand for Realism in African and Diaspora works in scholarship and publishing
  • Being African or Diaspora in publishing: challenges and best practices regarding acceptance, revision and rejection of works, marketing, finding an agent, getting paid
  • New technologies and platforms shaped by Afrofuturism’s creatives, scholars and fans, challenging Eurocentric conceptions of futurism
  • Global applications of an Afrofuturist lens
  • Chattel enslavement and its legacies, as represented in Afrofuturism
  • Globalizing and negotiating identities
  • An African and Diaspora canon
  • Masking, unmasking and empowerment
  • Monstrous, demonic and shapeshifting Afrofuturism
  • Afrofuturism troubling, querying and/or challenging concepts of utopias and dystopias
  • Pandemics, plagues, poxes, and Afrofuturism: the spread of colonizing, eugenicist, genocidal, and/or resistance infections
  • Afrofuturism in languages other than the colonial
  • Globalized neoliberalism
  • Politics, ideologies and revolution

 

We welcome proposals for individual papers and for academic sessions and panels on any aspect of Afrofuturism in any media. We encourage work from creatives, institutionally affiliated scholars, independent scholars, international scholars who work on the fantastic in languages other than English, and students.

 

Proposals not related to the conference theme are also welcome.

 

Submit abstracts here: https://forms.gle/67JJZeKoSWMyhRvQ8

Abstracts due: October 31st

 

ICFA 44 Guest of Honor – Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki

 

Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki is an African speculative fiction writer, editor and publisher from Nigeria. He has won the Nommo award for Best Speculative Fiction by an African, twice, for Short Story and Novella, as well as the Nebula, Otherwise and British Fantasy Awards. He is the first African to have won the Nebula Award for Best Novelette and be a Hugo finalist as well, in the same category. He’ll be the first Black writer to be a Hugo award best editor short form finalist alongside Sheree Renee Thomas and the first BIPOC to be a finalist in both the Hugo Award Editing and Fiction categories in the same year. He has also been a finalist for the Locus, Sturgeon, British Science Fiction and World Fantasy award. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in Tordotcom, Asimov’s, Uncanny Magazine, Apex Magazine, Strange Horizons, Galaxy’s Edge, Tordotcom, NBC and more.

He edited and published the first ever Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction anthology, a Hugo, WFA, Locus, and BFA finalist, and the non-fiction anthology, Bridging Worlds: Global Conversations on Creating Pan-African Speculative Literature in a Pandemic. He co-edited the British Fantasy award-winning Dominion anthology and the Africa Risen anthology, which has a starred review from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. He guest-edited the collections window of Interstellar Flight Press, is the founder of Jembefola Press and the Emeka Walter Dinjos Memorial Award for Disability in Speculative Fiction. He co-organized the Discon 3 African stream and 2021 Nommo Award ceremony, and is a Guest of Honour at the 2022 Can*Con. He is the first African-born Black writer and the youngest writer to be Guest of Honor at the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts 44 taking place in 2023. You can find him on Twitter https://twitter.com/penprince_ and his latest works on his website https://odekpeki.com/2022/09/11/2022-awards-eligibility-post-list/.

Please follow these links to immerse yourself in the works of Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki:

“Destiny Delayed” in the May/June issue of Asimov’s – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kl0Iks1M8xk-zMC-FE3Xl3FsNf8Ce4f9/view?usp=drivesdk

Bridging Worlds anthology:

Bridging Worlds: Global Conversations On Creating Pan-African Speculative Literature In a Pandemic

Too Dystopian for Whom? A Continental Nigerian Writer’s Perspective
https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/too-dystopian-for-whom-a-continental-nigerian-writers-perspective/

Africa Risen anthology pre-order: https://publishing.tor.com/africarisen-shereereneethomas/9781250833006/

 

Guest Scholar – Dr. Isiah Lavender III

 

Isiah Lavender III is Sterling-Goodman Professor of English at the University of Georgia, where he researches and teaches courses in African American literature and science fiction. His books include Race in American Science Fiction (Indiana UP, 2011), Black and Brown Planets: The Politics of Race in Science Fiction and Dis-Orienting Planets: Racial Representations of Asia in Science Fiction (UP of Mississippi, 2014 and 2017 respectively), Afrofuturism Rising: The Literary Prehistory of a Movement (Ohio State UP, 2019), and Literary Afrofuturism in the Twenty-First Century (Ohio State UP, 2020), co-edited with Lisa Yaszek. His interview collection Conversations with Nalo Hopkinson is forthcoming from UP of Mississippi in early 2023. He is currently hard at work on The Routledge Handbook of CoFuturisms, co-edited with Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, Grace Dillon, and Taryne Jade Taylor as well as his manuscript-in-progress, Critical Race Theory and Science Fiction. If you would like to know more about Dr. Lavender, check out https://narrativeencounters.aau.at/how-reading-shapes-us-isiah-lavender/

 

The title of his ICFA Guest Scholar presentation shall be “Imaginary Amendments and Executive Orders: Race in United States Science Fiction.”

 

For a list of the IAFA Divisions and Division Heads, see https://iaftfita.wildapricot.org/Division-Heads.

 

For information about the IAFA BIPOC Caucus, see https://iaftfita.wildapricot.org/BIPOC-Caucus.

 

For information about the IAFA Student Caucus, see https://iaftfita.wildapricot.org/Student-Caucus.

 

For more information, visit our website https://iaftfita.wildapricot.org/.

 

Follow us on Twitter @IAFA_TW. Our conference hashtag is #ICFA44.

“Like” us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FantasticArts/.

To learn more about our Guests of Honor, please see: https://www.fantastic-arts.org/2022/icfa-44-guest-of-honor-and-guest-scholar/

 

ICFA 44 will feature the debut of some new registration categories. “Underfunded” rates have been added at the student price for anyone without the means to attend ICFA otherwise. Several registration levels now have an optional version called “Supporting Rates.” These are a new option that allows some registrants to help the IAFA support the registrations of underfunded attendees. Those selecting this option will be listed and thanked in the conference program (except for the Late Registration Supporting Rate, which will be listed on the errata paper).

3rd Call for October Volunteers!

As our October VICFA is drawing near, we are still looking for volunteers willing to help as tech support during the upcoming virtual conference. We have received 13 generous offers of help, but given the number of concurrent streams and our wish not to overburden the volunteers, we need more!

The conference is scheduled for the weekend of October 7-9 (9 a.m. – 9 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time). At least partial availability during that time window is required.

Volunteers need to be:
available for the aggregate of at least 4 hours over the three days of the conference
comfortable with using Zoom and helping others with it.

All volunteers will receive training before the conference.

Volunteers who are participating in the October 2022 VICFA will have their conference fee waived. Those who are not presenting during VICFA but want to help will receive ICFA 44 T-shirts (to be picked either in March 2023 at the conference or mailed after the conference).

If you’re interested in helping IAFA in this manner, please fill in the Google Form https://forms.gle/vc4XyagH1eBNhdSa9 by September 16. If you have any questions, feel free to contact the IAFA President, who is also wearing the hat of the VICFA Coordinator, at p.frelik@uw.edu.pl .

#IAFAGlobalFantastic

2nd Call for VICFA Volunteers!

Following our previous post, we have received several generous offers of help, but we need more hands on deck!

IAFA is inviting members willing to volunteer as tech support during the upcoming virtual conference (also known as VICFA). The conference is scheduled for the weekend of October 7-9 (9 a.m. – 9 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time). At least partial availability during that time window is required.

Volunteers need to be:

available for the aggregate of at least 4 hours over the three days of the conference
comfortable with using Zoom and helping others with it.

All volunteers will receive training before the conference.

Volunteers who are participating in the October 2022 VICFA will have their conference fee waived. Those who are not presenting during VICFA but want to help will receive ICFA 44 T-shirts (to be picked either in March 2023 at the conference or mailed after the conference).

If you’re interested in helping IAFA in this manner, please fill in the Google Form https://forms.gle/vc4XyagH1eBNhdSa9 by September 15. If you have any questions, feel free to contact the IAFA President, who is also wearing the hat of the VICFA Coordinator, at p.frelik@uw.edu.pl .

Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FantasticArts/

Follow us on Twitter @IAFA_TW

#IAFAGlobalFantastic