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Guy Gavriel Kay Interview

Guy Gavriel Kay is a Guest of Honor at our upcoming ICFA-30; so, it is fortunate timing that Alaya Dawn Johnson has conducted a recent interview. The link is here.

IAFA Elections

Nominations for election to the positions 2nd Vice-President and Treasurer of the IAFA are now closed. Below you will find the candidates’ statements. Ballots for these two elections will be made available shortly.

Sydney Duncan’s Candidate Statement for 2nd Vice President

I am interested in the position of Second Vice President of IAFA. I’ve been a member of our organization for about 10 years now, reading fiction and poetry at the conference, serving as panel chair, and presenting papers.

I have stepped in at the last moment at the conference on more than one occasion to moderate panels or host readings when the need arose. I read widely in the field and consider myself a knowledgeable participant in academic and creative conversations on the fantastic. I am dedicated to seeing that the level of creative participation at the conference remains high. I am well-suited to be graduate student liaison, having served for 3 years as the advisor to the English Graduate Organization (over 140 students) when I was at the University of Alabama.

I have excellent computer skills, organizational skills, and a deep commitment to IAFA. I get along well with everyone in the IAFA organizational structure, both past and present. I have excellent relationships with many of the writers who regularly attend the conference and know many more from the convention circuit who are not regular attendees – but might be someday. I am eager to become more involved in IAFA, which I think is growing in new and interesting ways, and I am excited about opportunities to help the organization improve. I am in a secure tenure-track position at Frostburg State University, where service to professional organizations off-campus is considered of great value, so I have solid institutional support to take on the duties of Second Vice President.

I hope the IAFA membership will give me strong consideration as a candidate for Second Vice President.

Sydney Duncan; Assistant Professor of English; Frostburg State University

William Clemente’s Candidate Statement for Treasurer

Serving as Treasurer for the past three years taught me a great deal not only about keeping the records but also about the IAFA. I enjoyed the experience and am happy to run again for the position. I will continue to work hard to ensure accurate and open records of the organization’s accounts.

William Clemente; Professor of English; Peru State College

World Fantasy Award Winners Announced

This information available from www.locusmag.com.

“This year’s winners include Guy Gavriel Kay’s novel Ysabel, Elizabeth Hand’s novella Illyria, and Theodora Goss’ short story “Singing of Mount Abora”, with other categories won by Ellen Datlow, Robert Shearman, Edward Miller, Peter Crowther, and Midori Snyder & Terri Windling. Lifetime Achievement Awards were presented to Leo & Diane Dillon and Patricia A. McKillip.”

This is particularly timely since Kay is one of our Guests of Honor at the upcoming ICFA-30 (March 18-22, 2009). Congratulations to the winners and all the nominees and don’t forget to congratulate Kay when you see him in Orlando this March. For information on the conference, check out our website.

Call for Proposals for Upcoming Anthology

Call for Proposals
Fantastic Voyages, Monstrous Dreams, Wondrous Visions: Cinematic Folklore and Fairy Tale Film

Submissions are invited for an edited collection of essays on fairy tale film. Suitable topics include but are not limited to:
• Intersections between folklore, fantasy, and film theory
• Postmodern and psychoanalytic perspectives on cinematic folklore
• Metamorphosis, enchantment, monstrosity, and abjection in fairy tale film
• Transgender or transbiology in fairy tale film
• The rise in popularity of adult fairy tale films
• The convergence of science fiction and fairy tale fantasy film
• Ethnographic studies of fairy tale film viewers and audiences
• Fairy tale film narratives of Happily-ever-after, the American Dream, utopia, and other cultural discourses
• Discourses of Otherness, (post)coloniality, and Orientalism in fairy tale film
• Fairy tale film as cultural pedagogy, encoding issues of socialization, sexuality, gender, race, and class difference
• Analyses of particular works by fairy tale filmmakers from Georges Méliès and Walt Disney to Tim Burton and Stephen Spielberg
• Global migration of cinematic folklore, cross-cultural translations and transformations
• Genre and generational shifts and remixes in fairy tale film from melodrama and romantic comedy, to science fiction, horror, noir, and action adventure
• Fairy tale motifs in the visual culture of film shorts, TV advertising and music video
• Historic and contemporary perspectives on innovative cinematography and special effects in animated and live-action fairy tale film, from puppetry to Pixar
• Political economy/capitalist relations of production and direction of cinematic folklore
• Relationship of “classic” 19thC fairy tale illustration (from Arthur Rackham, Kay Nielsen, Walter Crane, Edmund Dulac, et al.) and the Disney animation image repertoire to the iconography of contemporary cinematic folklore

Final essays should range in length from 5,000 – 9,000 words. Previously published work, appropriately revised and/or updated, will be considered. Send 500-word proposals (or completed essays) and a brief c.v. electronically as email attachments to Sidney Eve Matrix (matrixs@queensu.ca) and Pauline Greenhill (p.greenhill@uwinnipeg.ca) by 1 January 2008.

ICFA-30: Time and the Fantastic: Time is Running Out

The 30th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts
Time and the Fantastic — Update

The 30th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts will be held March 18-22, 2009, at the Orlando Airport Marriott in Orlando, Florida. The conference begins at 3 pm on Wednesday and ends at 1 am on Sunday upon the conclusion of the conference banquet. Malcolm J. Edwards and Brian Stableford write that “the metaphysics of time continues to intrigue writers inside and outside the genre” of the fantastic; thus, the focus of ICFA-30 is on the intriguing relationships between time and the fantastic. Papers are invited to explore this topic in science fiction, fantasy, horror, and other related modes of the fantastic. In addition, we especially look forward to papers on the work of our honored guests:

Guest of Honor: Guy Gavriel Kay, Aurora Award-winning, Caspar Award-winning, and Mythopoeic Fantasy Award-nominated author of the Fionavar Tapestry (The Summer Tree, The Wandering Fire, The Darkest Road), Tigana, A Song for Arbonne, and The Last Light of the Sun

Guest of Honor: Robert Charles Wilson, Hugo Award-winning author of Axis, Spin, The Chronoliths, Darwinia, Mysterium, and A Bridge of Years

Guest Scholar: Maria Nikolajeva, author of The Aesthetic Approach to Children’s Literature (Scarecrow), The Rhetoric of Children’s Literature (Scarecrow), and From Mythic to Linear: Time in Children’s Literature (Scarecrow)

As always, we also welcome proposals for individual papers and for academic sessions and panels on any aspect of the fantastic in any media. The deadline is October 31, 2008.

We encourage work from institutionally-affiliated scholars, independent scholars, international scholars who work in languages other than English, graduate students, and undergraduate students.

The Jamie Bishop Memorial Award for an Essay Not in English is open to all members of the IAFA. The IAFA Graduate Student Award is open to all graduate students presenting papers at the year’s conference. Details are available via Robin Reid, Second Vice-President (Robin_Reid@tamu-commerce.edu). Finally, the Dell Magazines Undergraduate Science Fiction Award will also be handed out at this year’s conference.

Visit http://www.iafa.org for more details, including the specific div. heads and their respective areas.

IAFA Division Heads

Fantastic Literature in English (FE)
Stefan Ekman
Lund University

Horror Literature (H)
Stephanie Moss
University of South Florida

International Fantastic Literatures (IF)
Dale Knickerbocker
East Carolina University

Science Fiction Literature and Theory(SF)
Sherryl Vint
Brock University

The Fantastic in Visual & Performing Arts (VPA)
Stefan Hall
Defiance College

Communities & Culture in the Fantastic (CC)
Barbara Lucas
Lakeland Community College

The Fantastic in Film and Media (FFM)
Susan A. George
UC-Davis

The Fantastic in Children’s & Young Adult Literature & Art (CYA)
Amie Rose Rotruck
Hollins University

IAFA Membership and ICFA-30 Pre-registration

The IAFA Membership (2009) and ICFA-30 Pre-registration forms are now posted on our website. Head on over and we look forward to seeing you in Orlando in March, 2009.

IAFA Directories for Sale

Extra IAFA directories are available for purchase. They are $5.00 (plus postage) in American funds. Checks or money orders made out to “IAFA” can be mailed to:

Judy Collins McCormick
1504 Cochran Road
Lexington, KY 40502-2321

If you have any questions, please contact Judy Collins McCormick at jarcm@insightbb.com.

ICFA-30: Call for Papers

The 30th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts
Time and the Fantastic

The 30th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts will be held March 18-22, 2009, at the Orlando Airport Marriott in Orlando, Florida. The conference begins at 3pm on Wednesday and ends at 1 am on Sunday upon the conclusion of the conference banquet. Malcolm J. Edwards and Brian Stableford write that “the metaphysics of time continues to intrigue writers inside and outside the genre” of the fantastic; thus, the focus of ICFA-30 is on the intriguing relationships between time and the fantastic. Papers are invited to explore this topic in science fiction, fantasy, horror, and other related modes of the fantastic. In addition, we especially look forward to papers on the work of our honored guests:

Guest of Honor: Guy Gavriel Kay, Aurora Award-winning, Caspar Award-winning, and Mythopoeic Fantasy Award-nominated author of the Fionavar Tapestry (The Summer Tree, The Wandering Fire, The Darkest Road), Tigana, A Song for Arbonne, and The Last Light of the Sun

Guest of Honor: Robert Charles Wilson, Hugo Award-winning author of Axis, Spin, The Chronoliths, Darwinia, Mysterium, and A Bridge of Years

Guest Scholar: Maria Nikolajeva, author of The Aesthetic Approach to Children’s Literature (Scarecrow), The Rhetoric of Children’s Literature (Scarecrow), and From Mythic to Linear: Time in Children’s Literature (Scarecrow)

As always, we also welcome proposals for individual papers and for academic sessions and panels on any aspect of the fantastic in any media. The deadline is October 31, 2008.

We encourage work from institutionally-affiliated scholars, independent scholars, international scholars who work in languages other than English, graduate students, and undergraduate students.

The Jamie Bishop Memorial Award for an Essay Not in English is open to all members of the IAFA. The IAFA Graduate Student Award is open to all graduate students presenting papers at the year’s conference. Details are available via Robin Reid, Second Vice-President (Robin_Reid@tamu-commerce.edu). Finally, the Dell Magazines Undergraduate Science Fiction Award will also be handed out at this year’s conference.

Visit http://www.iafa.org for more details.

Memories of ICFA

Hi all,
Here is a message from Judy McCormick (Conference Publications Officer) and David Hartwell (Book Exhibit Coordinator):

Attention, all regular attendees of ICFA – either recently or of old:

We need your help!
We (the Book Room crew),with the fiercely sentimental editorial and lay-out help of Judy Collins McCormick,are putting together a beautiful and stylish memory book for the 30th anniversary conference next spring, and we would like to get the work done this summer if at all possible.

So . . .

We need your photos!
If you have old photos of ICFA – black and white or color – we would like copies to consider for inclusion in this publication. The older the photos, the better, but please do not neglect the recent past.

Your options:

a)You may scan them at 300dpi and e-mail them to Judy at the address below;
b) You may send physical photos to Judy (e-mail her and ask for her other address), and she will scan them and send them back. (Be sure to include your other address.)

We do, of course, need for you to identify people in the photos, since none of us look the way we used to.It would also help us if you could identify at which conference the photo was taken. And we want to credit the right people, so please let us know who took the picture.

And especially, we need your thoughts!

Yes, here’s the real pitch: We need you to write a personal reminiscence and send it to us, so that we can gather a spectrum of personal essays on what fun the conference has been, not to mention how provocative and interesting and important. We cannot promise to publish every single piece we get, but we can promise to put almost everything up on the internet on an anniversary site, including all those pictures.

Please, please, please, please, please:

E-mail a Word file to Judy at the address below;
In a cover e-mail, include your name, physical address, and phone number, as well as a mention of which conferences you have attended and whether or not you plan to attend ICFA 30. No anonymous submissions will be accepted.

Our current deadline is August 1st, but if you need a bit more time, let us know and we can probably arrange it.

If you are one of the fine people who wrote a piece for our 20th anniversary booklet, we encourage you to revise and expand that piece for the new book. If you are not one of those fine people, you are probably still a fine person, and we still want your reminiscences.

You can reach us for questions at dgh@tor.com and jarcm@insightbb.com

And if we don’t hear from you, we may email you personally — possibly several times — to “encourage” you.

Thanks!
David and Judy

Room Rates for Future ICFAs: You Won’t Believe Your Eyes!

Your Executive Board had its annual meeting May 30 – June 1 and we went to work right away ensuring the ongoing success of both the IAFA and its annual conference (ICFA). You will start to see the outcome of this most-recent meeting in the very near-future; but, I’m pleased to provide you with this morsel of exciting news. Donald Morse (Conference Chair) has been hard at work representing our interests with the Orlando Airport Marriott, a hotel that clearly wants to host ICFA for the foreseeable future. Donald presented this little bit of exciting news to the Executive Board that I now pass along to the membership: no room rate increases for the next three years! Yes, you are reading that correctly. Donald has managed to negotiate with the Marriott to ensure our conference guest room rate will remain at $125 for ICFA30 (2009), ICFA31 (2010), and ICFA32 (2011). This is a financial coup for the membership and ICFA’s ongoing success; so, mark this information on your calendar and book those rooms.

A special recognition needs to be made in honour of Donald Morse. He has worked tirelessly as our Conference Chair to secure the best (and most affordable) rates for ICFA’s future. He deserves a round of applause from the entire membership for securing the conference in our new Orlando home. Thank you, Donald. A pint (at least) of Guinness is owed you at ICFA30.