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What I'm Looking Forward to about This Year's Nebula Conference Programming: An Appreciation of Kate Baker

Back when I was VP of SFWA, Executive Director Kate Baker told me she had a dream. “I want to make the Nebula conference -the- premier conference for professional F&SF writers,” she said. “Something that no one wants to miss. A conference so good that if someone has budget for only one convention each year, that’s the one they know they’ll get the most value out of.”

It seemed like a pretty good goal to me. After all, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America is over fifty years old, has close to 2000 members, including some pretty impressive names, has and continues to do major work in the field protecting professional F&SF writers, and gives out one set of the industry’s major awards as well as the recognition of the SFWA Grand Mastership.

It’s five years later, and in my opinion, Kate’s done what she set out to do. She didn’t do it alone, of course. She had the help of a whole lot of amazing SFWA staff and volunteers, including the amazing Terra LeMay and Steven H Silver. Mary Robinette Kowal got turned loose on programming the last couple of years and has been doing a stellar job. And others have made their mark with additions, such as the Nebula Award Alternate Universe Acceptance speeches or the mentoring program led by Sarah Pinsker or (I’d like to think) two I’ve contributed: the volunteer appreciation breakfast as well as the spouses and partners reception that have been regular features (and I hope will continue to do so!) Or the Book Depot, because I don’t know of ANY other con that takes as much care to make sure that its authors — including the indies — can sign and sell their books there. And there’s a fancy Nebula website, which remains a work in progress as more and more gets added to it, preserving the history of the Awards.

We’ve only got a small fraction of the schedule so far, with plenty of new stuff getting added every day, but here’s some highlights.

  • Panels about interesting things that may lead to story ideas, like the Future of Death, Realistic Military in Fiction, and Megatrends in the Near Future.
  • That mentoring program has grown every year, and now we do it at WorldCon as well. People new to the Nebulas can go knowing they’ll have someone there to explain stuff and fill them in on the etiquette of things as well as provide a friendly face and introduce them to people.
  • Interesting, innovative programming that comes in a variety of forms, including the Ignite talks and office hours, stuff that ranges all over the place and includes things like deep dives into Facebook advertising or what life aboard a space station is like.
  • A chance to explore some new areas of fiction, such as one of the several Interactive Fiction or Writing for Hollywood panels.
  • Plenty of panels aimed at indies and hybrids like myself, including the Self-Publishing Committee Town Hall, which should have plenty of crunchy info about recent and upcoming self-publishing events.
  • Panels that talk about practical things, such as combining parenthood and writing, productivity tools, or make-up basics for writers about to make media appearances.
  • The yearly What Teens Are Looking For in YA is a great panel that features actual teens talking about what they like to read and how they discover it, which is always informative. I think this is the 5th year (?) for this panel.
  • Memorials to a few of our lost greats, such as Ursula K. Le Guin and Vonda N. McIntyre. SFWA’s got a lot of history, and the Nebulas give us a chance to celebrate some of the folks we’ve lost each year.

I don’t mean to imply that the old version of the Nebulas was not what they promised to be. They were a chance to mingle and meet, but programming was usually slim and single track at best, and sometimes the topics were very broad indeed. They didn’t feel like a professional conference so much as a party. That’s fun, but it doesn’t give members stuff they actually need to be successful at what they do.

So…well done, Kate. You deserve a lot of applause for the effort you’ve led and you did exactly what you said you would do. The Nebulas now also stay within their budget, which is impressive, and has made enormous strides towards paying for itself, an important thing at a time when we see SFWA’s budget changing and adapting to the new publishing landscape.

It’s my last Nebula weekend as SFWA president, so I’ll be flitting around with a lot of relief on my face. Please say hi, but more importantly, please tell Kate and her team how much you’re enjoying the conference. I’m really going to miss working with this group of fabulous, amazing, talented people.

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Talking About Fireside Fiction's #BlackSpecFic Reports, Part 1 of 2

sound-1283826_1920A few days ago Steven Barnes, Maurice Broaddus, Tananarive Due, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Tonya Liburd, and Nisi Shawl were kind enough to let me record their conversation about Fireside Fiction’s reports on blacks in speculative fiction. The discussion centered specifically on what SFWA can learn from the report in order to improve/expand existing efforts as well as things it should or shouldn’t be doing.

The Subject Under Discussion

For those unfamiliar with the report, you can find Antiblack Racism in Speculative Fiction: #BlackSpecFic: A Fireside Fiction Company special report (2015) here, and the follow-up 2016 #BlackSpecFic Report here.Both reports are accompanied by a wealth of essays by black writers.

Here is the central fact they present. Black writers are underrepresented in fantasy and science fiction short fiction magazines. The 2015 figures: 2039 stories in 63 magazines, of which 38 stories were by black authors, in 2015. The report noted the flaws (I’ll talk more about some of the reactions later) but it was a pretty good effort at analysis no one had done before.

In preparing for the conversation, I went not just through the reports, but the accompanying essays and some of the pieces inspired by the topics that had been raised. One of the pieces of data I acquired recently that wasn’t answered earlier was the results of the survey SFWA administered in 2017 to its members: information about the composition of the organization’s membership. Here it is from the survey, administered during the middle of this year.

Ethnicity:
Answer Choices Responses
White 85.40% 778
Hispanic 0.77% 7
Black 0.99% 9
Asian 2.09% 19
Pacific Island 0.00% 0
Mixed Race 3.07% 28
Indigenous 0.11% 1
Prefer not to answer 7.57% 69
Other (please specify)* 25
Answered 911
Skipped 38

(The answer to “Other” ranged from the serious to the not-so-serious.)

For the sake of very broad comparison, American demographics as of July 2016 (according to Wikipedia) were 13.3% African American, 17.8% Latino/Hispanic, and 61.3% white. Like the magazines when it comes to publishing black writers, SFWA’s population skews much whiter than figures might lead one to assume.

The Roundtable
I’m very grateful to the participants for a discussion that was illuminating, informative, and always interesting. I tried to assemble a group that could talk in an informed way and come from different perspectives.

I asked Liburd if she would be our representative of a newer writer, someone who’s hit many of the barriers. At the same time, she has her editorial experience from working with Abyss and Apex. Barnes and Due come from the perspective of long experience with the speculative fiction community. Shawl was one of the people who contributed an essay to the issue. Johnson and Broaddus are both established black writers who work with short fiction.

My apologies for the not-so-great quality. This was recorded via Google Hangout and I do not claim to have anything but the most rudimentary video skills. I ended up converting it to .mp3 file, which is available here:

SFWA Roundtable Podcast on Fireside Fiction’s #BlackSpecFic Report, featuring Steven Barnes, Maurice Broaddus, Tananarive Due, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Tonya Liburd, and Nisi Shawl.

This was a terrific conversation. I was scribbling notes down throughout most of it. In a day or two I’ll post those notes and action items, along with an account of what’s happened so far, but today the focus should be that discussion.

...

What SFWA Offers Me

Cat Rambo and Connie Willis
Here I am with one of my personal heroes, Connie Willis. In Chez Rambo, we have a frequent saying: What would Connie do? And I note that she’s a SFWA member.
One of the questions that’s come up repeatedly as a result of the recent vote to admit indie and small press published members: why join at all?

I joined as soon as I was qualified because Ann Crispin told me to, and she was a smart lady. And here’s a list of the things SFWA has provided me. I am a professional writer. I make a modest amount off writing and teaching, and have a spouse who takes care of a lot of the bills plus the health care. My hope is to continue to grow my writing income. With that in mind, here’s what I get for my dues.

What SFWA offers me:

  • The Grievance Committee. I’ve benefited from mentioning its name in the past when trying to shake payment from a magazine publisher, for example.
  • The Emergency Medical Fund, which I personally haven’t had occasion to use, but am happy to know exists.
    Similarly, the Legal Fund.
  • The SFWA suite at conventions, both for food and drink as well as for the chance to hang with other members and enjoy their conversation. I was delighted to have a chance to sit for an hour and talk with Jacqueline Lichtenburg and Jean Lorrah at Worldcon, for example.
  • Knowledge resources on the website, such as the document on formatting manuscripts or Myrtle the Manuscript.
  • Knowledge resources in the Bulletin, such as recent pieces on what conventions might be useful to me, how teaching and writing intersect, and how to write (and publish) serial fiction.
  • A chance to participate in book festivals and other events, such as the Baltimore Book Festival or the ALA.
  • The PNW SFWA Reading series, at which I’ve been both reader and frequent attendant.
  • Opportunities to publicize books through the SFWA web site, Youtube stream, and Twitter stream.
  • A sense of tradition, of belonging to an institution founded by and which has included (and continues to include) so many of my early influences and heroes in its ranks.
  • The Nebulas and the East Coast Mill and Swill.
  • Free fiction! Both the Nebula Voter packet and what gets uploaded to the boards.
  • New friends who are writers, and plenty of them. I’ve deepened earlier friendships with others and even seen some of my students enter SFWA, which delights me.
  • A opportunity for meaningful, interesting, and informative volunteer work. I’ve served on the Nebula Short Fiction and Norton juries, worked with the Copyright Committee, written for the Bulletin and the SFWA blog, sat at the SFWA table at conventions, helped moderate the discussion boards, and now serve on the SFWA Board. All of that has been rewarding and engaging.

Speaking of that last item, that’s another big plus for me of SFWA: a community that I see evolving on the discussion boards on a daily basis. I see members doing all of the following:

  • Celebrating each other’s victories and small joys
  • Promoting each other and organizational efforts
  • Teaming up on promotional efforts
  • Sharing knowledge, encouragement, and advice
  • Grieving when a member dies and supporting other members through illness or loss
  • Being silly together at some moments and serious at others
  • Discussing the issues affecting writers, the industry, and SFWA overall

So there’s my two cents worth. To my mind and as someone who’s been writing professionally (fiction and freelance) for a decade, SFWA offers me quite a bit. People are welcome to quote this post elsewhere as long as they include attribution.

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