Author Archive

Tananarive Due Selected as Toastmaster for the 61st Annual Nebula Awards Conference  

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San Francisco, CA  – February 24, 2026

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA)  is proud to announce that American Book Award, NAACP Image Award, and British Fantasy Award-winning author Tananarive Due will serve as Toastmaster for the 61st Annual Nebula Awards Conference happening in Chicago, IL from June 3-7. Previous Toastmasters include Erin Roberts, Sarah Gailey, Aydrea Walden, and Astronaut Dr. Kjell Lindgren.

“Due is an exceptional speaker – brilliantly insightful, delightfully funny – and deeply generous in her commitment to elevating the craft of speculative fiction writing across media,” said SFWA Executive Director Isis Asare. “She is the perfect toastmaster for the Nebula Awards Conference celebrating N. K. Jemisin as the recipient for the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award and Gay Haldeman as the recipient for the Kevin O’Donnell, Jr. Service to SFWA Award.”

A rich tradition of storytelling

Due is the acclaimed author of The Reformatory (winner of a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Chautauqua Prize, Bram Stoker Award, Shirley Jackson Award, World Fantasy Award, and a New York Times Notable Book), The Wishing Pool and Other Stories, Ghost Summer: Stories, My Soul to Keep, The Good House, and contributing author of Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror.

A seasoned multimedia creator, Due and her husband/collaborator – Steven Barnes – recently co-directed their first short horror film, “The Keeper” (Samansa/Blackmaled), which will stream on Samansa in September. They also wrote “A Small Town” for Jordan Peele’s The Twilight Zone on Paramount Plus and two segments of Shudder’s anthology film Horror Noire. In addition, they co-wrote the Black Horror graphic novel The Keeper, illustrated by Marco Finnegan and published by Megascope. Due and Barnes co-host the podcast Lifewriting: Write for Your Life! Due also served as executive producer on Shudder’s groundbreaking documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror.

“It’s such a thrill to be invited to be Toastmaster at the Nebulas, which has such a storied history, especially during a year honoring N. K. Jemisin and Gay Haldeman. Events like this remind us of the power of art to help create hope and change during difficult times,” Due said.

Gearing up to the Nebulas in Chicago

Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes will also participate in author signings, hybrid panels, and in-person craft workshops during the Nebula Awards Conference. Author signings will be open to the public and copies of Due’s work will be available to purchase onsite from local independent bookstore Call and Response. Hybrid programming will also be available to attendees of Horror Writers Association’s StokerCon as a result of a recent collaboration between HWA and SFWA.

“The Horror Writers Association is pleased to see more collaboration and advancement of partnerships between genre-organizations. We’re excited to offer this unique virtual experience to members of both SFWA and the HWA to encourage virtual participation for both the Nebulas and StokerCon,” stated Maxwell Gold, Executive Director of the Horror Writers Association.

Learn more about the 61st Nebula Awards Conference, running from June 3-7 in Chicago, IL by visiting SFWA.org. Nebula Award Finalists will be announced March 15. Secure early registration pricing before May 1st.

New Jay Kay Klein Photos Online including 1967 Nebulas; Need Caption Help

UPDATED 3/1/26.

To the science fiction community,

I’m Dr. Phoenix Alexander, the Klein Librarian for Science Fiction and Fantasy here at University of California, Riverside, where I steward the Eaton Collection: one of the world’s largest cataloged collections of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and related genre materials. I’m also a published author of over 20 short stories in venues such as F&SF, Lightspeed, Escape Pod, and The Dark, and serve on SFWA’s History Committee.

I joined UCR Library in 2022, but as you might know, we began digitization of the Jay Kay Klein photographs back in 2017, publishing just under 6,000 images onto a publicly accessible digital repository, Calisphere, as part of a mass digitization pilot initiative. During this pilot initiative, we solicited community feedback on the descriptions of the photos, utilizing a Google form and later a comment function on Calisphere itself. From Fall 2019 to Summer 2021, the UCR Library undertook a comprehensive review project, led by Andrew Lippert, Special Collections Processing Archivist, to update all of the titles and descriptions for the Klein photos on Calisphere, incorporating the voluminous and extraordinarily helpful community feedback received since the initial publication of the photos.

Over the last few years, we’ve continued to digitize the remaining 57,000 images from the Klein collection (an ongoing project that will take many more years to complete, as you can imagine!), but we’re delighted to announce the publication of the first of eleven boxes of photos, comprising almost 2,000 images of 47 conventions and events.

To share hundreds of photos more quickly with the community, we decided to implement a two-phase approach to our descriptions. Some photos from the new box will appear with basic information about the convention or event they belong to, with Klein’s original identifiers for his images as temporary titles. These will be updated later with more details about the people and topics depicted. Other photos will have descriptions already enhanced by myself and Andrew Lippert, both subject specialists (albeit not infallible ones!). We will continue describing and publishing the remainder of the photos, one box at a time, in chronological order.

Once again, we welcome feedback from the community to assist with identifications in the photos. We have compiled a web page with guidance on commenting practices to ensure that your time and labor is respected, and that your feedback will be most helpful to us as we continue to review, add, and amend the descriptions of these images. As science fiction fans and experts, we are of course familiar with the well-known figures of the genre that you’ll see in these collections—so if possible please avoid identifying figures such as Asimov, Heinlein, Pohl, and others of similar notoriety. Your feedback will be most valuable in identifying the lesser-known individuals in the photographs, in particular, fan attendees.

In the Jay Kay Klein photograph collection each individual photo is on its own webpage. Click the photo to open the page. The ‘Item Information’ section has a description containing identifications made on earlier passes. Are you able to add one?  We use Disqus to collect comments giving us identifications. There is a button to ‘JOIN THE DISCUSSION’. Click that button, and existing comments will be displayed with the newest identifications. You will be able to add your own.

We’re honored to be able to make these wonderful snapshots of the SF community publicly accessible in the years to come, and thank you in advance for your patience and generosity! If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at phoenix.alexander@ucr.edu.

Many thanks,

Phoenix & the UCR team

For ease of reference, the new collections are as follows (you can search for them in the ‘Event’ box to the left of the landing page for the Klein photos, NOT the ‘Decade’ box):
1950s_1
1950s_2
1950s
1950
Hydracon, 1950
1950s_3
1951_1
1951_2
Unknown_1
Nycon 2, 1956
1960
1961
Midwestcon 13, 1962
ESFA, 1963
1963_1
1963_2
1963_3
ESFA, 1964
Midwestcon 15, 1964
Philcon, 1964
ESFA, 1965
1965_1
FistFa, 1965
1965_2
1965_3
Lunacon 8, 1965
Disclave 9, 1965
Midwestcon 16, 1965
Asheak, 1965
Boskone 1, 1965
Philcon, 1965
Boskone 2, 1966
Lunacon 9, 1966
Moskowitz gathering, 1966
Los Angeles and San Francisco Trip, 1966
Midwestcon 17, 1966
1967_1
Lunarians, 1967
IEEE International Convention, 1967
Open ESFA, 1967
Science Fiction Writers of America Awards, 1967
Pohl at Syracuse University, 1967
Lunacon 10, 1967
Jay Kay Klein (left), Frederik Pohl (right) at the 1966 Worldcon in Cleveland.

Announcing Our Latest Kevin O’Donnell, Jr. Service to SFWA Award Recipient, Gay Haldeman

The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) is proud to announce that the latest Kevin O’Donnell, Jr. Service to SFWA Award will be presented to Gay Haldeman at the 61st SFWA Nebula Awards® for her outstanding work on behalf of the organization.

Gay Haldeman is a long-time SF fan, who began attending conventions in 1963. Born Mary Gay Potter, she met Joe at age 15 when he was 17, and together they built a life around science fiction. Gay helped found the Science Fiction League at the University of Iowa in 1975, and also the club convention DemiCon. Gay Haldeman was active in the Washington Science Fiction Association, serving as club secretary from 1966-1971. She shared NESFA’s Skylark Award with Joe in 1996 and won the Worldcon’s Big Heart award in 2011 in Reno.

A master of many disciplines, Gay earned a Master’s degree in Spanish Literature from the University of Maryland and another in Linguistics, from the University of Iowa. She taught for many years at MIT’s Writing Center.

Last year, when Brian Herbert accepted the Infinity Award on behalf of his late father, he reminded us that life partners often make the most famous work in our field possible–including Beverly Herbert, whose care and contributions made her husband Frank’s success possible.

Gay has been a proud steward of her husband Joe’s excellent career in genre for decades, and it is this curatorial care that she has also graciously gifted to the SFWA community through her volunteer work with us, most recently in the role of SFWA Ombudsman and more broadly as one of the most welcoming people this organization has been fortunate to count among its own.

“What a joy it has been to get to work with Gay over the years, and an honor to learn from her grace and expertise,” said Kate Ristau, SFWA President. “She is the literal embodiment of community; she has selflessly given her support to SFWA over the years while also challenging us to do better and to be better.”

“Gay was one of the first people to welcome me to SFWA, and her kindness to members, volunteers, staff, and the board is unparalleled,” Russell Davis, Operations Director said. “Her presence, her demeanor, and her unwavering commitment to making SFWA better for everyone in our community is second to none.”

SFWA is excited to honor Gay this year at our conference in Chicago, and we hope you’ll join us in honoring her service to the SFF community either in person or online during the event.

AMENDED RULES for the Nebula Awards (NEW!)

Earlier today, SFWA released a note from the Board on this year’s Nebula Award Rules with a link to the 2025 rules.

To be clear, SFWA does not support the use of LLM generative models in the production of creative work. 

The Nebula Award Rules linked did not reflect our current policy and deeply held beliefs and values, and they were amended to reflect that.

With further input, today, we made an important change to the Nebula Awards Rules in two board votes that we would like to share with you:

Previous Text:

“Works that are wholly written using generative large language model (LLM) tools are not eligible.”

New Text:

“Works that are written, either wholly or partially, by generative large language model (LLM) tools are not eligible.”

-and-

Previous Text:

“Works that used LLMs at any point during the writing process must disclose this upon acceptance of the nomination, and the nature of the technology’s use will be made clear to voters on the final ballot”

New Text:

“Works that used LLMs at any point during the writing process must disclose this upon acceptance of the nomination, and those works will be disqualified.”

We will update our posted rules in the coming days to reflect this change. 

We look forward to 2026 with optimism for the future of human-created work (that’s compensated, celebrated and supported)!

Keep on creating,

Kate Ristau 

SFWA President

On the Nebula Awards Rules for Our Current Nominations Cycle

Note from the SFWA Board of Directors

Nebula finalist nominations are flowing in. Thank you for your patience and encouragement as we set up a new system that is responsive, interactive, and secure. Members can visit their new Membership Portal today to read more about the Nebula process from our Nebula Awards Commissioner, Marcus Whitnell.

Since 1965, the Nebula Awards have been one way we honor the speculative fiction creators who bring us groundbreaking work that challenges expectations and opens up new possibilities. 

I have worked on the Nebula Awards since 2020, producing the ceremony in 2023 and 2024. Behind the scenes, the team tried to read through every piece, play every game, and watch every show that hit the final ballot. I may have spent a lot of time with Karlach in Baldur’s Gate…

In all that time, the quality of the ballot continues to shine as bright as the brightest…Nebula. 

Sorry, I couldn’t help myself with the obvious metaphor.

But the rules we used in 1965 to prepare the ballot and support voting would not stand up to scrutiny in 2025. Over the years, the SFWA Board, staff, the Nebula Awards Commissioner (NAC), and the SFWA Awards Rules Committee (SARC) have worked to make sure the rules provide a secure, fair, legitimate, and legal framework for nomination and recognition.

This year’s review process raised several questions in genre categories, as well as around category minimums, appeals, and the use of LLM tools.

Vice President Anthony Eichenlaub detailed the rules revision process, beginning with the genre discussions, as follows:

“What ended up as a few bullet points in the official Nebula rules was actually a collaborative effort with the SARC, the NAC, and the comics and poetry committees. The words ‘poem of any length’ was the result of a long discussion on the nature of poetry and how our rules could possibly define the difference between poetry and very short prose fiction. We ultimately decided to trust the nominators and the voters. A lot of our philosophy comes down to that. Trust the voters.”

These rule revisions saw several rounds of back and forth between committees, members, board, and staff, revealing more areas of concern. 

“While we were updating the rules for poetry and comics, we also addressed some minor pain points,” Anthony explained. “Our CFO, Jonathan Brazee, was the NAC before he was a Board member, and he had fantastic insight into the behind-the-scenes process. We changed how we do category minimums and added clarification on how rules can be appealed.”

These changes helped to refine the nominations process, with an emphasis on clarity and consistency.

One of the most complex and difficult decisions of 2025 was in rules additions around the use of artificial intelligence: a topic of many SFF stories, and now an active part of the world in which they are created.

Our 2023 statement on AI/ML points to the fact that “writing and publishing genre fiction is a business with important norms.”

At SFWA, we believe in our creators, and we want the Nebula Awards to recognize work that is human-created and expansive.

We want to reinforce industry standards while also encouraging the industry to do better: from crediting authors to valuing their work, to promoting transparency and open dialogue among creators.

Our Complete Nebula Awards® Rules take this approach to heart. The rules state:

  • Works that are wholly written using generative large language model (LLM) tools are not eligible.
  • Works that used LLMs at any point during the writing process must disclose this upon acceptance of the nomination, and the nature of the technology’s use will be made clear to voters on the final ballot.

To repeat, works that are wholly written using generative large language model (LLM) tools are not eligible. The Nebula Awards honor writers and the work they create, not the LLMs they employ. 

When finalists are contacted, before they appear on the ballot, they will be asked to disclose any LLMs they used in the production of their work. The voters can then decide if they would like to vote for these works.

As of now, the industry standard overwhelmingly favors human-created work, from submissions guidelines to awards lists. As your SFWA President, I hope we continue to move in a direction that honors, supports, compensates, and celebrates the humans behind the great stories and poems we have the honor of reading, playing, and watching. 

I have no doubt our upcoming final ballot is going to present an incredible list of finalists. I personally can’t wait to read what you honor with your vote. 

Write on (and make you nominations.

Kate Ristau

SFWA President

Nebula Awards® Nominations Begin!

It’s Nebula Awards® voting season again!

As of December 1, 2025, our Nebula Awards Nomination Ballot is now open. In this year’s ballot, we are honored to celebrate our first-ever Nebula Awards in two new categories, along with our classic range of fiction. Full, Associate, and Senior member of SFWA, are eligible to submit a nomination ballot for the Nebula Awards.

This year SFWA members will be voting for top Nebula honors in the following fields:

  • Best Short Story
  • Best Novelette
  • Best Novella
  • Best Novel
  • Best Game Writing
  • Best Comic
  • Best Poem
  • The Ray Bradbury Nebula Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation
  • The Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction 

Many of these works will then be available in our next Nebula Awards Showcase, for sale right after the winners are announced in June, when we celebrate our latest bright stars in genre at the Nebulas in Chicago.

 

SFWA Names N. K. Jemisin as 42nd Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master

For Immediate Release

On November 16, 2025, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) was proud to announce the latest recipient of its Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award: N. K. Jemisin. Two other SFWA Grand Masters, Lois McMaster Bujold and Nicola Griffith, joined in a keynote presentation ahead of the announcement, which took place at SFWA’s first-ever Quasar conference: a fall online Nebula event.

The SFWA Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award recognizes “lifetime achievement in science fiction and/or fantasy.” It is named after author Damon Knight, SFWA’s founder and the organization’s 13th Grand Master. Initially, the Grand Master wasn’t given out every year, but from 1975 to 2025 much has changed in our field, including the consistency with which we award this prestigious post.

This year, our Grand Master enters a role previously held by Peter S. Beagle, Connie Willis, Nalo Hopkinson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ray Bradbury, Anne McCaffrey, Robin McKinley, Joe Haldeman, and other legends of genre fiction who have been granted this title.

N. K. Jemisin is a fantasy author and 2020 MacArthur Fellow whose fiction has been recognized with multiple Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards. Most of her works have been optioned for television or film, and collectively her novels, including the Broken Earth trilogy, have sold over two million copies. Her speculative works range widely in theme, though with repeated motifs: resistance and oppression, loneliness and belonging, and Wouldn’t It Be Cool If This One Ridiculous Thing Happened.

As SFWA President Kate Ristau noted:

It is my joy and honor to celebrate NK Jemisin as our newest SFWA Grand Master. I cannot imagine a better Grand Master to solidify our next 60 years at SFWA.

At panels and conventions, craft talks and workshops, NK’s name already stands beside masters of fantasy like Tolkien and Le Guin. Her skill in world-building shifted the way many of us view setting. She truly brings her worlds to life. In Jemisin’s work, setting is a construct and a character that creates tension, influences character, and compels the plots forward. To put it simply, she is a master of the craft.

As a younger writer, I turned pages and felt the ground tremble beneath me in the Broken Earth Trilogy. As New York came to life in the Great Cities Series, I took a closer look at my own hometown—how we create, legislate, and imagine borders, and how the worlds we imagine could come to life beneath our feet.

We don’t write in a vacuum. We write in a world of complexity and trauma. Jemisin helps us hold a mirror up to our darkest fears and our deepest desires. We want to live in a better world, but if we don’t, what stories will we tell? How will we confront history and our possible futures with authenticity and possibility? Jemisin shows us that storytelling is not just an escape—it’s a powerful tool for engagement in our own reality. Through her work, she reminds us that speculative fiction can be both a space for resistance and a landscape for transformation.

I am proud to honor Jemisin for her invaluable contributions to the current state and the future life of speculative fiction. She is helping us build better worlds, imagine different futures, and fight for the world we want to live in right now.

Lois McMaster Bujold, SFWA’s 36th Grand Master, reflected on the role of this award in her work:

I did not altogether understand where the SFWA Grandmaster honor came from until I’d received one myself, and studied up, by which I identified it as “Oh, this is a career award.” If the meaning of any literary award is ultimately created by the works that have won it, looking at the list of my fellow Grand Masters put me in some very meaningful company indeed. It was enormously gratifying to be the recipient of 2020’s Damon Knight Grand Master Award, and it did feel like the culmination of a very long journey; no further ambition need apply.

Which put me, oddly, back where I’d started, with just me, my stories, and their readers.  All the noisy brouhaha of marketing competition and promotion and publisher’s editorial needs dropping (thanks be) away, all the aspects of a career that were not writing becoming optional.

Our 41st Grand Master, Nicola Griffith, commented on how the work goes on after the award:

“The tagline of my first novel was Change or die. I believe that applies to art and life, and unless we want our work to stiffen, slow, and stop we ourselves must keep changing and growing.

The last sentence of my most recent short story is ‘She has arrived.’ She’s made a galaxy-spanning journey through time, space, and realities—astonishing, miraculous—an impossible achievement. But the achievement—the arrival, the triumph, the award—isn’t the point. It’s a marvel, an honour and a touchstone, but at heart it’s part of the continual journey.”

SFWA Executive Director Isis Asare is also delighted to welcome Jemisin into the accolade:

Jemisin’s 2018 Hugo Award acceptance speech starts with the words “It’s been a hard year, hasn’t it.” Those words feel profoundly relevant today. The writer continues on to say that she wrote the Broken Earth Trilogy to speak to the struggle and what it takes to live and thrive in a world that seems determined to break you. And what gets us through is family—blood and chosen—and community. That is the reason SFWA exists. Jemisin, and her masterful writing, reminds all of us that “the stars are ours”.

SFWA is now officially on the road to Chicago, which will be home to SFWA’s 61st Nebula Awards Conference in June 2026. Early bird pricing rises on January 1, 2026, but for now, would-be attendees can purchase regular weekend programming for $250 USD.

We hope to see you out next year at the Nebulas, to celebrate our latest Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master N. K. Jemisin and a whole host of other dynamic voices in science fiction, fantasy, and related genres.

Spread the word!

2026 Nebula Conference Announcement

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) is excited to announce that the 61st Annual Nebula Awards Conference will be held in Chicago, IL from June 3-7—and we’re inviting you along for the ride today!

For $275 USD, you can secure your place with us for all our regular programming, which will be hosted at the tremendously accessible Crowne Plaza Chicago O’Hare Hotel & Conference Center, just two miles from O’Hare International Airport. Closer to the date, we’ll circle back to see if you’d like to join us at a small top-up cost for our Nebula Banquet, too. Registration opens on the 3rd, and the party gets started with full programming on the 4th.

Sometimes called “the jewel of the Midwest,” and bordered by scenic Lake Michigan, Chicago is famous for its bustling music and comedy scenes, its diverse neighborhoods and restaurants, and its exciting historical and cultural attractions. It’s also home to many writers, and it’s especially notable as a home of comics art and slam poetry.

Register now for this discount! Price increases are scheduled for May 1 2026! More information on the Banquet add-on, as well as hotel block pricing, will be released soon.

Online tickets for 2026 are now available! The ticket for online attendance is now available and will increase in price on May 1, 2026! This ticket is only for the 2026 Conference!

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