Jeff VanderMeer is an American author, editor, and literary critic. Initially associated with the New Weird literary genre, VanderMeer crossed over into mainstream success with his bestselling Southern Reach Trilogy. The trilogy's first novel, Annihilation, won the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards, and was adapted into a Hollywood film by director Alex Garland. Among VanderMeer's other novels are Shriek: An Afterword and Borne. He has also edited with his wife Ann VanderMeer such influential and award-winning anthologies as The New Weird, The Weird, and The Big Book of Science Fiction.
Bantam Spectra is the science fiction division of American publishing company Bantam Books, which is owned by Random House.
John Joseph Vincent Kessel is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. He is a prolific short story writer, and the author of four solo novels, Good News From Outer Space (1989), Corrupting Dr. Nice (1997), The Moon and the Other (2017), and Pride and Prometheus (2018), and one novel, Freedom Beach (1985) in collaboration with his friend James Patrick Kelly. Kessel is married to author Therese Anne Fowler.
Vericon is an annual science fiction convention at Harvard University, organized by the Harvard–Radcliffe Science Fiction Association. Lasting over a three-day weekend, for the first nine years of its existence it took place on the last weekend of January; for 2010, however, it was moved to mid-March to accommodate changes in Harvard College's academic calendar. It has been described as the largest college-based science fiction convention in the United States.
Weird fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction originating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Weird fiction either eschews or radically reinterprets traditional antagonists of supernatural horror fiction, such as ghosts, vampires, and werewolves. Writers on the subject of weird fiction, such as China Miéville, sometimes use "the tentacle" to represent this type of writing. The tentacle is a limb-type absent from most of the monsters of European folklore and gothic fiction, but often attached to the monstrous creatures created by weird fiction writers, such as William Hope Hodgson, M. R. James, Clark Ashton Smith, and H. P. Lovecraft.
Founded in 1969 the Community of Writers is a writers' conference held each summer in Olympic Valley, California. The Community of Writers is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization and has a governing Board of Directors.
Cordelia Caroline Sherman, known professionally as Delia Sherman, is an American fantasy writer and editor. Her novel The Porcelain Dove won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award.
Small Beer Press is a publisher of fantasy and literary fiction, based in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was founded by Gavin Grant and Kelly Link in 2000 and publishes novels, collections, and anthologies. It also publishes the zine Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, chapbooks, the Peapod Classics line of classic reprints, and limited edition printings of certain titles. The Press has been acknowledged for its children and young-adult publications, and as a leading small-publisher of literary science-fiction and fantasy.
Sycamore Hill Writer's Workshop is an annual workshop for science fiction writers. Since its origin in 1985, it has been held in Raleigh, North Carolina; Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania; and most recently in Little Switzerland, North Carolina.
Readercon is an annual science fiction convention, typically held every July in the Boston, Massachusetts area, currently taking place in Quincy, Massachusetts. It was founded by Bob Colby and Eric Van in 1987 with the goal of focusing almost exclusively on science fiction/fantasy/slipstream/speculative fiction in the written form. Past guests of honor have included authors such as Greer Gilman, Gene Wolfe, Octavia Butler, Samuel R. Delany, Karen Joy Fowler, Brian Aldiss, Nalo Hopkinson, Joe Haldeman, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Peter Straub, and China Miéville, and editors such as Ellen Datlow and David G. Hartwell. The convention also makes a point of honoring a deceased author as the Memorial Guest of Honor. In 2009, for instance, the guests of honor were the living writers Elizabeth Hand and Greer Gilman and the memorial guest of honor was Hope Mirrlees.
Margo Lanagan is an Australian writer of short stories and young adult fiction.
Clarion West or Clarion West Writers Workshop is a nonprofit literary organization that runs an acclaimed six-week residential workshop every summer, online classes and workshops, one-day and weekend workshops, a reading series every summer, and other events throughout the year.
Viable Paradise is an annual one-week residential writing workshop held each autumn on the island of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts and is focused on speculative fiction.
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories is an anthology of weird fiction edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer.
"Singing My Sister Down" is a 2004 fantasy short story by Australian writer Margo Lanagan.
Nebula Awards Showcase 2005 is an anthology of award-winning science fiction short works edited by American writer Jack Dann. It was first published in trade paperback by Roc/New American Library in March 2005.
The Maryland gubernatorial election of 2018 was held on November 6, 2018.