Capclave

Catherynne Valente does a reading on Wold Newton Reading Extravaganza from her newest book on November 21st 2010 at 6:30pm!

The Habitation of the Blessed Launch Party with Catherynne Valente and featuring medieval multimedia, burlesque belly-dancing, and musical madness! Catherynne M. Valente will read from her newest novel, a journey into the medieval myth of Prester John. Brian Francis Slattery and the West Constantinople Squeezebox All-Stars return to the Wold to provide the soundtrack while Jezebel Wood, Mary Cyn, and Katie Lennon will perform belly dancing and burlesque.

Last night at Capclave’s Award Ceremony, the winner of the WSFA Small Press Award for 2010 (for works published in 2009) was announced.

And the winner is:
“Siren Beat” by Tansy Rayner Roberts, published in Twelfth Planet, edited by Alisa Krasnostein (October 2009)

Alisa Krasnostein accepted the award for Tansy Rayner Roberts.

Also present at the ceremony were:
Kevin Lauderdale, author of “James and the Dark Grimoire” published in Cthulhu Unbound, and Scott H. Andrews, editor of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, which published “The Pirate Captain’s Daughter” by Yoon Ha Lee.

All of the stories were excellent works. Congratulations to Tansy Rayner Roberts for her story and to Alisa Krasnostein for publishing it.

Capclave starts on Friday, October 22nd. If you’ve been thinking of joining us, it is not too late. You can purchase memberships at the door for either a day or for the entire weekend.

At Door Pricing
$60: All Weekend
$25: Friday
$35: Saturday
$10: Sunday

There’s also special rates for active military and students who show IDs at time of registration.

Capclave is a small relaxed literary convention with a program that usually focuses on the short fiction form. Our Guests of Honor and other notable authors, editors, artists, and fans of the short fiction form will explore the creation and enjoyment of short fantasy and science fiction genre stories.

On his blog Jeff VanderMeer announced the finalists for the Last Drink Bird Head Awards — you can learn all about the award there. This year the awards will be given out at Capclave during the Saturday (October 23th, 2010) evening awards ceremony.

THE FINALISTS

Gentle Advocacy— In recognition of individuals willing to enter into blunt discourse about controversial issues…

– Ay-leen the Peacemaker (for Beyond Victoriana)
– Hal Duncan (for blogging and Notes from New Sodom)
– N.K. Jemisin (for blogging and commentary)
– Jason Sanford (for blogging)

Tireless Energy — In recognition of individuals who selflessly give of themselves for worthy causes, websites, or organizations…

– Rick Kleffel (for The Agony Column)
– Leslie Howle (for Clarion West and Hugo House activities)
– Debbie Notkin (for Tiptree Awards work, Wiscon work, and other activities)
– Victor Raymond (for past Carl Brandon Society and Interstitial Arts Foundation work, as well as other behind-the-scenes activities)

Promotion of Reading — In recognition of individuals whose efforts contribute to the promotion of reading or an increase in reading proficiency…

– Colleen Cahill (for Library of Congress work as a genre fiction advocate and as the library’s representative to the ALA)
– James Gunn (for his work with AboutSF)
– Julia Starkey (for building the Harvard Library’s SF/F section)
– Lynne Marie Thomas (for archiving the works and papers of SF/F authors)

Expanding Our Vocabulary — In recognition of writers whose nonfiction, through reviews, blogging, and/or essays, exposes readers to new words and, often, new ideas…

– Matthew Cheney
– Anil Menon
– Abigail Nussbaum
– Adam Roberts

International Activism — In recognition of those who work to bring writers from other literary traditions and countries to the attention of readers in North America, the United Kingdom, and Australia…

– Larry Nolen (for coverage of international fiction, primarily on The Of Blog)
– Charles Tan (for Bibliophile Stalker and The World SF Blog)
– Lavie Tidhar (for The World SF Blog)
– Yan Wu, Guangyi Li, and Nathaniel Isaacson (for Chinese Sci Fi )

The Neil Clarke Special Achievement Award:

Winner: L. Timmel Duchamp

The Special Achievement Award is geared toward recognizing individuals who are proactive behind the scenes but whose efforts often don’t receive the measure of public recognition they deserve. The winner will receive an elegant Hieronymous Bosch bird-with-letter figurine, a certificate, and chocolate. The award is named after the first year’s winner, publisher and editor Neil Clarke.

We finally got the Capclave Hotel Registration page link.  It’s now on our website under Hotels and it’s also here:

http://www.hilton.com/en/hi/groups/personalized/IADMRHF-CAP-20101021/index.jhtml?WT.mc_id=POG

or TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/27k7zj5.

The page says the room block closes on September 30th, however the Hilton has extended the time to October 8th since we got the link so late.

Please book your room as soon as you can.

We also recently learned of this special deal for those who have/use American Express Cards. You can check it out here if it’s applicable for you.

Also, we still have room in several of our workshops. Check out the workshop page and if interested send email to programming at capclave dot org (make the appropriate changes to that email.

Things are really coming together and we hope to have a DRAFT Program up on the website soon. So check back often.

Jeff VanderMeer reviewed four books for the New York Times Book Review. The reviews are of:

REDEMPTION IN INDIGO, By Karen Lord. Small Beer Press, paper, $16.
THE DERVISH HOUSE, By Ian McDonald. Pyr/Prometheus, $26.
THE GASLIGHT DOGS, By Karin Lowachee. Orbit, paper, $7.99.
A LIFE ON PAPER, Stories. By Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud. Translated by Edward Gauvin. Small Beer Press, $22.

Check out the reviews. One of these books may be of interest and find its way to your to-be-read pile.

The Washington Science Fiction Association is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2010 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction (published in 2009):

“each thing i show you is a piece of my death” by Gemma Files and Stephen J. Barringer, published in Clockwork Phoenix 2, edited by Mike Allen, Norilana Books (July 2009).

“Images of Anna” by Nancy Kress, published in Fantasy Magazine, edited by Cat Rambo (September 2009).

“James and the Dark Grimoire” by Kevin Lauderdale, published in Cthulhu Unbound, edited by Thomas Brannan and John Sunseri, Permuted Press, (March 2009).

“Race to the Moon” by Kyell Gold, published in New Fables, Summer 2009, edited by Tim Susman, Sofawolf Press (July 2009).

“Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” by Eugie Foster, published in Interzone (January 2009) / Apex Magazine (August 2009), edited by Andy Cox (Interzone)/ Catherynne M. Valente (Apex).

“Siren Beat” by Tansy Rayner Roberts, published in Twelfth Planet Press, edited by Alisa Krasnostein (October 2009).

“The Pirate Captain’s Daughter” by Yoon Ha Lee, published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #27, 10/08/2009, edited Scott H. Andrews.

“The Very Difficult Diwali of Sub-Inspector Gurushankar Rajaram” by Jeff Soesbe, published in DayBreak Magazine, edited by Jetse de Vries (October 2009).

The award honors the efforts of small press publishers in providing a critical venue for short fiction in the area of speculative fiction. The award showcases the best original short fiction published by small presses in the previous year (2009). An unusual feature of the selection process is that all voting is done with the identity of the author (and publisher) hidden so that the final choice is based solely on the quality of the story.

The winner is chosen by the members of the Washington Science Fiction Association (www.wsfa.org) and will be presented at their annual convention, Capclave (www.capclave.org), held this year on October 22-24th in Rockville, Maryland.

Matt Staggs interviewed Jeff and Ann VanderMeer for Suvudu at Comic Com about their soon to be released anthology Steampunk Reloaded and the steampunk genre. The video is on YouTube or you can watch it here. (There’s a warning on the video that there is a lot of ambient noise — wind and air traffic in the background.

Daniel Rabuzzi writes:
My fantasy novel The Choir Boats (ChiZine Publications, Toronto, 2009; launched at Worldcon, Montreal) is Wowio’s July Book of the Month. During July 2010 only, the e-book version is FREE here: http://news.wowio.com/2010/07/book-of-the-month-choir-boats/

Reviewers describe it as “Gulliver’s Travels crossed with The Golden Compass and a dollop of Pride and Prejudice,” and “a muscular, Napoleonic-era fantasy that, like Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials series, will appeal to both adult and young adult readers.”

The Choir Boats was selected by January Magazine as a Top Ten Young Adult Novel for 2009.

This special edition of the novel includes bonus illustrations by Deborah A. Mills. It’s also DRM-free, so it can be read on any device compatible with PDFs, and shared with friends just like a regular book.

Author’s bio, publication data and reviews are available at www.danielarabuzzi.com.

Suvudo has an article by Connie Willis about her novel the Doomsday Book.

From the article:

Eighteen years ago readers got lucky—Connie Willis brought us the wonderful Doomsday Book, a novel that would go on to win both the Nebula and Hugo Awards. Time-traveling, the plague, and Connie’s trademark wit—it was a brilliant combination that I will admit blew me away when I read it.

It also introduced us to Colin, a character that she would revisit in her books Blackout and the upcoming All Clear.

Check out the article on Suduvo.