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Category Archives: IAFA

ICFA Membership Survey

Hello IAFA Members!

Make sure to check the email account linked to your IAFA Member Profile for an important survey from the IAFA Board.

Information for ICFA 40

ICFA 40 “Politics and Conflict”

When: March 13–17, 2019

Where: Marriott Orlando Airport Hotel, Orlando, Florida, USA

Guest Scholar: Mark Bould (University of the West of England)

Guest Author: G. Willow Wilson (Ms. Marvel, Alif the Unseen)

Membership and registration gateway: https://www.fantastic-arts.org/mnrgateway/

Cost: Early registration is $110 for regular members and $55 for students. Those presenting must be IAFA members, which costs $85 for North American individual, $90 for international individual, and $60 for student individual.

Please note that the Friday Guest Scholar lunch is included with your registration fee. The other meals cost extra.

Complete price list (prices go up January 14, 2019): https://www.fantastic-arts.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/ICFA-40-price-summary.pdf

Authors, artists, and editors: Invitation emails have been sent out separately.

Graduate students: Not sure yet if you got funding? Go ahead and book your room anyway. You can always cancel it, and the conference hotel nearly always sells out. Also, the room rates at the conference hotel are by room, regardless of the number of people in it. Feel free to share!

Merch: All merch is now the same price: $25 per piece. Regular T-shirts and fitted T-shirts (formerly called ladies’ fitted T-shirts), as well as small and large totes, all cost the same. Now if you realize you would prefer another piece of merch, you can freely exchange it, as there is no price difference.

Problems logging in? What if the system fails to recognize your name/e-mail combination? Don’t create a new profile. STOP and e-mail me. I can update your info.

Are you a joint membership holder? The joint membership administrator first must pay the IAFA membership fee through her own account. Then each person must log in individually and sign up for the conference. It’s best if the admin doesn’t do this through her account because the system populates the sign-up form, and it will mess up individual preferences, like division membership or dietary needs. If you want everything on one invoice, then generate invoices for each transaction (joint membership; individual conference attendance). Then STOP. Email me the invoice numbers and I will contact you with directions on how to pay with one transaction.

Do you have a credit? (The system will tell you.) Sign up as usual, which will generate an invoice. Then STOP. Do not pay. Instead, e-mail me with the invoice number and tell me to apply your credit. I will then contact you with your outstanding balance, if any.

Looking forward to seeing you in Orlando!

Karen Hellekson, ICFA Registrar (iafareg AT gmail.com)

ICFA 40 Announcement of 25th Anniversary of Dell Magazines Award

ICFA 40 Announcement of 25th Anniversary of Dell Magazines Award

At ICFA 40, the Dell Magazines Award will celebrate its 25th anniversary with the return of the first Dell Award winner, Eric Choi, to the Conference on the Fantastic. Choi, a celebrated Canadian aerospace engineer and award-winning writer and editor, will receive a special commemorative plaque at the conference awards banquet from Sheila Williams, editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine and co-founder and co-judge of the award with author and teacher Rick Wilber. The Dell Magazines Undergraduate Award for Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing (formerly the Asimov Award) honors the best previously unpublished undergraduate science-fiction or fantasy short story of the year. A number of other winners and finalists from previous years will be in attendance.

Call for Nominations by 30 October 2018: IAFA President and First Vice President

Call for Nominations by 30 October 2018: IAFA President and First Vice President

The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts announces a call for nominations for the elected Executive Board positions of President and First Vice President. To be eligible for President, an IAFA member in good standing must have served either as a Division Head or as a member of the IAFA Executive Board. Any IAFA member in good standing may run for the position of First Vice President.

Those interested in running or in nominating someone for either position should send a nomination to both IAFA Immediate Past-President Sydney Duncan at and IAFA Chief Technical Officer Michael Smith at by 30 October 2018. The Election Committee will notify each nominee of her or his nomination and will provide each with the names of everyone else who has accepted nomination during that election cycle. Candidates declining nomination must notify the Election Committee immediately upon notification of their nomination.

Candidates eligible for the offices to which they have been nominated and willing to run for those offices will be asked to submit position statements by 20 November 2018. The Election Committee will distribute position statements and ballots to the membership on 10 December 2018, and ballots will be counted by the Election Committee after 10 January 2019. If no candidate receives a majority vote, a runoff election between the two candidates who have received the most votes will be conducted. The Election Committee will announce results of the election at the IAFA business meeting at ICFA 40 in March 2019, with additional announcements in appropriate IAFA venues thereafter.

For those elected, terms will begin immediately following the conclusion of ICFA 40 in March 2019 and will last for three years. Duties of each position are listed below. Please contact Sydney Duncan if you have any questions. We look forward to hearing from you!

President

The President is the chief executive officer, responsible for directing and coordinating all functions of the organization, including the annual conference, the quarterly journal, other sponsored publications, the Awards Program, and public relations of all kinds. The President sets the agenda for, and presides at, all meetings of the Executive Board and the annual business meeting at the ICFA. The President is also the chief planning officer, responsible for setting agenda in all Association projects. The President oversees the work of the other officers, recruits special guests, seeks institutional support, confirms non-elected Board members, etc. The President is elected by majority vote of the IAFA members who participate in the election.

First Vice President

The First Vice President coordinates the ICFA Program, overseeing the work of the Divisions 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 Chair 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 David G. Hartwell Emerging Scholar Award, including the following: advertising the award, organizing the prize committee, and collecting and forwarding submissions to the committee for a blind reading process. The First Vice President is elected by majority vote of the IAFA members who participate in the election.

Important Information for ICFA 40

ICFA 40 “Politics and Conflict”

When: March 13–17, 2019

Where: Marriott Orlando Airport Hotel, Orlando, Florida, USA

Guest Scholar: Mark Bould (University of the West of England)

Guest Author: G. Willow Wilson (Ms. Marvel, Alif the Unseen)

Will you be attending?
Register: https://iaftfita.wildapricot.org/event-2865930

Event details

Call for papers: https://www.fantastic-arts.org/annual-conference/submissions/ or as a PDF: https://www.fantastic-arts.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/ICFA40-CFP-Final-1.pdf

Proposal deadline: October 31, 2018.

Membership and registration gateway: https://www.fantastic-arts.org/mnrgateway/

Cost: Regular member early registration is $110; it goes up to $135 on January 15, 2019; then up again to $165 on February 1. Students, there is no early registration fee break for you. Use the “normal” registration fee of $55, which goes up to $110 on February 1. Please note that the Friday Guest Scholar lunch is included with your registration fee. The other meals cost extra.

Preferred pronouns: We now have a ticky box for your preferred pronouns. This will appear on your badge unless you opt out.

Swag update: We have abolished the pink tax. All swag is now the same price: $25 per piece (up slightly from last year). Regular T-shirts and fitted T-shirts (formerly called ladies’ fitted T-shirts), as well as small and large totes, all cost the same. Bonus: if you realize you would prefer another piece of swag, you can freely exchange it, as there is no price difference.

Problems logging in? What if the system fails to recognize your name/e-mail combination? Don’t create a new profile. STOP and e-mail me. I can update your info.

Do you have a credit? (The system will tell you.) Sign up as usual, which will generate an invoice. Then STOP. Do not pay. Instead, e-mail me and tell me to apply your credit to the invoice. I will then contact you with your outstanding balance, if any.

Looking forward to seeing you in Orlando!
Karen Hellekson, ICFA Registrar (iafareg@gmail.com)

CFP: “Politics and Conflict,” the 40th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

Please join us for ICFA 40, March 13-17, 2019, when our theme will be “Politics and Conflict.”

We welcome papers on the work of: Guest Scholar Mark Bould (Reader, University of the West of England; winner of the SFRA Pilgrim Award; author of several books on sf including Science Fiction: The Routledge Film Guidebook) and Guest Author G. Willow Wilson (winner of a PEN Center award; writer of the Hugo-Award-winning series Ms. Marvel, author of Alif the Unseen). Speculative texts have a tremendous power to help us envision how the world might be otherwise and to see the historical contingencies that have given us the world as we find it. Fantastic genres allow us to imagine other paths that history might have taken and to explore the power dynamics of conflicts among competing factions, from the local scale of family and gender arrangements to the global scale of transnational trade and migration. Such texts can often articulate critiques that would have been silenced by censorship of realist genres in times and places of government, religious, or other oppression. We invite papers that understand the concept of politics very broadly, from international relations and structures of governance, through to the politics of everyday life. If at times the genres of the fantastic can be complicit in naturalizing and perpetuating dominant power structures and the politics they endorse, more often they provide a rich set of tools for telling such stories from marginalized perspectives, visions that cannot be captured by a realism that is structured by default ideological assumptions. We also welcome proposals for individual papers, academic sessions, creative presentations, and panels on any aspect of the fantastic in any media. We will gather in 2019 to question, celebrate, argue over, and deduce speculative fiction’s contributions to thinking through the politics and conflicts of our past and its capacity to guide us toward more inclusive futures.

The deadline for proposals is October 31, 2018. We encourage work from institutionally affiliated scholars, independent scholars, international scholars who work in languages other than English, graduate students. Artists are encouraged to submit proposals for our Creative Track, which features sessions on writing, art, music, and poetry, as well as panel discussions on topics of interest for creative professionals.

For more information on the IAFA and its conference, the ICFA, see https://www.fantastic-arts.org/.

The Submissions Portal opens on September 1st. To submit a proposal, go to https://www.fantastic-arts.org/icfa-submissions/.

To contact the Division Heads for help with submissions, go to https://www.fantastic-arts.org/about/governance/division-heads/.

For more information about the Creative Track, go to https://www.fantastic-arts.org/annual-conference/creative-track/.

JFA and Mailing Addresses

Hi, IAFA members.

Now that JFA 28.3 is off to the printer, we’ll soon be preparing the mailing list for JFA Volume 29 (2018). If you joined or renewed your membership in the association between the end of the 2017 conference and the 2018 conference, you are subscribed to JFA Volume 29. (If you joined after this year’s conference, in April 2018 or later, your subscription will begin with JFA Volume 30).

We want to make sure your copy of the journal makes it to you and doesn’t get sent back to our office, so we’d really appreciate it if you’d take a moment to make certain that your information is correct in your member profile on the website. Please visit the membership page on IAFA.org, and log in using your user name and password. Once you’ve logged in, you can View your profile, and on the profile page, click on Edit profile to update your information, if necessary.

Please check that your postal address is correct.

While you’re checking out your profile, please also consider updating your areas of interest. You can list subgenres, theoretical approaches, or specific works and authors. Sometimes we need to add to our pool of peer reviewers for articles submitted to JFA, and the information you list in Interests can help us find a good match.

Thanks so much,

Chrissie

You can also view this message on the JFA blog: http://www.fantastic-arts.org/jfa/jfa-subscriptions-updating-mailing-addresses/.

CFP: “Politics and Conflicts,” the 40th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

CFP: “Politics and Conflicts,” the 40th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

Please join us for ICFA 40, March 13-17, 2019, when our theme will be “Politics and Conflicts.”

We welcome papers on the work of: Guest Scholar Mark Bould (Reader, University of the West of England; winner of the SFRA Pilgrim Award; author of several books on sf including Science Fiction: The Routledge Film Guidebook) and Guest Author G. Willow Wilson (winner of a PEN Center award; writer of the Hugo-Award-winning series Ms. Marvel, author of Alif the Unseen).

Speculative texts have a tremendous power to help us envision how the world might be otherwise and to see the historical contingencies that have given us the world as we find it. Fantastic genres allow us to imagine other paths that history might have taken and to explore the power dynamics of conflicts among competing factions, from the local scale of family and gender arrangements to the global scale of transnational trade and migration. Such texts can often articulate critiques that would have been silenced by censorship of realist genres in times and places of government, religious, or other oppression. We invite papers that understand the concept of politics very broadly, from international relations and structures of governance, through to the politics of everyday life. If at times the genres of the fantastic can be complicit in naturalizing and perpetuating dominant power structures and the politics they endorse, more often they provide a rich set of tools for telling such stories from marginalized perspectives, visions that cannot be captured by a realism that is structured by default ideological assumptions. We also welcome proposals for individual papers, academic sessions, creative presentations, and panels on any aspect of the fantastic in any media. We will gather in 2019 to question, celebrate, argue over, and deduce speculative fiction’s contributions to thinking through the politics and conflicts of our past and its capacity to guide us toward more inclusive futures.

The deadline for proposals is October 31, 2018. We encourage work from institutionally affiliated scholars, independent scholars, international scholars who work in languages other than English, graduate students. Artists are encouraged to submit proposals for our Creative Track, which features sessions on writing, art, music, and poetry, as well as panel discussions on topics of interest for creative professionals.

For more information on the IAFA and its conference, the ICFA, see https://www.fantastic-arts.org/. The Submissions Portal opens on September 1st. To submit a proposal, go to https://www.fantastic-arts.org/icfa-submissions/.

To contact the Division Heads for help with submissions, go to https://www.fantastic-arts.org/about/governance/division-heads/.

For information on the Creative Track, go to https://www.fantastic-arts.org/annual-conference/creative-track/.

Call for IAFA Program Book Editor

Call for Program Book Editor

The IAFA is soliciting applications for someone to edit the conference program book. This appointment will be for one-year, on a trial basis, with the possibility of renewing the position indefinitely. Experience with IAFA culture is considered an asset for this position. Professional experiencing with layout and similar design work is a must. The content for the book will be provided by the IAFA officers, and the files used in design of previous program books will be made available to help assist in the production of the new one. At the time of appointment, the IAFA will provide a detailed outline to the Program Book Editor of what should be included in the program book and in what order it should be printed.

The duties of the Program Book Editor include:

• Work with the Public Information Officer and Registration/Membership Coordinator to develop templates for the book in a professional design program (i.e., InDesign, Quark, or equivalent);
• Using these templates, and information provided by the First and Second Vice Presidents about the conference’s guests and program schedule, produce camera-ready copy for the production of this book;
• With art provided by the Second Vice President, design the cover of the book;
• Submit the program book layout for approval to the IAFA Board by February 15, 2019, and make any adjustments as required by the Board after this review;
• Continue to update the book with cancellations and other errata up to the time of printing; in consultation with the First Vice President maintain an errata sheet once the book has gone to print;
• Produce an index for this book, with individuals listed by name and session number, and include this index in the final book;
• Investigate appropriate vendors for printing the book in a cost-effective manner and arrange for the printing and delivery of the book to the hotel in numbers as specified by the Registration/Membership Coordinator.

The IAFA will pay a stipend of $500 for this work. Those interested in applying should submit
1. a cover letter, which provides details of professional layout and design experiences, as well as information about the candidate’s history with the IAFA;
2. a portfolio of previous design work; and
3. a CV outlining relevant professional and academic experience.

Applications should be sent to Sherryl Vint, IAFA President, at sherryl.vint@gmail.com. The closing date for applications is July 15, 2019. An appointment will be made by the end of July.

Reminder: Call for Applications for Division Heads Children’s and Young Adult Literature (CYA) and International Fantastic Literatures (IF)

  • April 24, 2018 – 1:23 pm
  • Posted in IAFA, ICFA
  • Comments Off on Reminder: Call for Applications for Division Heads Children’s and Young Adult Literature (CYA) and International Fantastic Literatures (IF)

The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts is accepting applications for the position of Head of the Children’s and Young Adult Literature (CYA) and International Fantastic Literatures (IF) Divisions. 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, Isabella van Elferen at i.vanelferen@kingston.ac.uk, no later than 15 May 2018.

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 majority vote of the Board. The terms are for three years. Both the CYA and the IF Division Heads will “shadow” the current Heads until their appointment begins at the conclusion of the conference in 2019.

Responsibilities:

· 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.

Requirements:

· A track record of publications and presentations in the field of CYA or IF

· A track record of conference organisation and/or research management

· Collaborative and teamwork mentality

· Interpersonal skills

For more information on the CYA and IF divisions, the position of Division Head, or the IAFA, please email Isabella van Elferen, i.vanelferen@kingston.ac.uk