International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts

Hello ICFA 38 Attendees!

We look forward to another exciting conference, and, as the Marriott has filled to capacity again this year, we have every expectation of a successful event!

In the event that you missed the deadline for the Marriott, we have secured a few rooms at the Sheraton next door. Please contact Jeri Zulli at jerzulli@live.com in the next week if you would like to book a room at the Sheraton.

If anyone has a last minute change of plans and needs to cancel a room at the Marriott, please contact us instead of the hotel, so we can pass it on to another attendee who is hoping for a room. (Cancellations with the hotel directly will no longer return that room to IAFA’s room block.)

Thanks

Jeri Zulli
jerzulli@live.com

Announcing: The Return of the Flash Play Festival!

One Night Only—Friday, March 24
9:45-10:45 p.m.

In the festive Capri Room of the Orlando Airport Marriott

Hosted by Marco Palmieri
Directed by Carrie J. Cole and Kelli Shermeyer
Written and performed by some of your favorite academics, authors, and editors

Your challenge is to write a ten-minute play (roughly ten pages of dialogue) which MUST INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING:
No more than THREE performers
One of THREE props—(a BAT, a MECHANICAL ARM, a CURSED MAP)
The following line:
“I think we can agree this did NOT go as planned.”

Deadline for submission: WEDNESDAY, 3/1. Send your plays (and any questions you may have) to carriejcole@gmail.com with the subject line “ICFA Flash Play Festival”.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to take this opportunity to remind you all that the deadline to apply for the SCIAFA Writing Workshop is coming up on Friday, Feb 10th. The Writing Workshop is a wonderful opportunity to work with a professional to improve your writing and prepare for publication. Here again is the information about the workshop and the particulars for applying:

One of the main events sponsored by the IAFA Student Caucus is the SCIAFA Writing Workshop that takes place during ICFA. It is a chance for graduate students to share their written work with a professional in the field and receive invaluable feedback and advice as they work to improve their writing and shift from conference papers to publications. In the past, this workshop has been run by such people as Sherryl Vint, Ritch Calvin, and Brian Attebery. This year we are pleased to announce that the workshop will be run by Christine Mains.

Christine Mains has taught SF, Fantasy, and popular culture at the University of Calgary and Mount Royal University. She is a past Vice President of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts and is currently an Associate Editor for Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. She has published on SF television and on the works of Patricia McKillip and Charles de Lint. She moonlights as a freelance editor of fiction and academic writing.

The workshop will focus on issues to consider when revising conference papers or dissertation chapters into articles that might be submitted to JFA or other journals. The workshop is capped at 10 participants. It will be held in the last time-slot of the conference: Saturday, March 25, from 4-5:30pm. To apply for the workshop, please submit a two-page writing sample and the following information no later than Friday, February 10.

-your name
-your preferred email address
-your institutional affiliation and adviser
-what stage you’re at in your program
-your dissertation or thesis topic (1-2 sentences)
-the issues or problems in your writing you’d most like to address (1-2 sentences)
-the title(s) of academic journals you’re most interested in submitting to

Submissions should be sent to cemains@shaw.ca

Prior to the workshop, participants will need to send their full paper submissions (~5000 words) no later than March 10. They will also need to bring two copies of the paper to the workshop for peer review.

Any questions may be addressed to both Christine Mains at cemains@shaw.ca and Amanda Rudd at rudd.am@gmail.com

—
Amanda Rudd
PhD Candidate in English and American Literature
University of Houston

Ladies and Gentlemen,

As we get closer to ICFA 38, I would like to take this opportunity to ask you to consider being a mentor for the Mentorship Program sponsored by the SCIAFA. At this time we have far more mentees signed up for the program than mentors. If you have attended ICFA before, and wish to help newcomers to the conference, I encourage you to sign up to be a mentor.

Please find the full details about the mentorship program below:

SCIAFA Mentoring Program

Since 2001, the IAFA Student Caucus (SCIAFA) has sponsored a Mentoring Program aimed at helping student scholars to find their way around ICFA, discover the natural friendliness of the conference as quickly as possible, use ICFA as an entrance into existing scholarly communities concerned with the fantastic, and leave with both fond memories of the supporting organization and plans to return.
The success of this program depends upon its volunteer participants, and this is your chance to sign up as either a mentor or mentee. IAFA and SCIAFA will be co-sponsoring a designated space where mentors and mentees can meet at the opening Conference Reception on Wednesday evening, March 22, 2016. Attendance at this meeting is the primary task to be undertaken by both mentor and mentee. If you would like to take part in the program in either role but are unable to attend the opening reception, we encourage you to sign up anyway and arrange a more convenient meeting time with your partner. The current SCIAFA representatives will match the mentor-mentee pairs. For this reason, if you interested in joining this program, please answer the following questions and send them to the SCIAFA representatives, Amanda Rudd (rudd.am@gmail.com) and Sarah Fish (srfish36@gmail.com), as soon as possible. Please fill out this information in order to sign up for either position.

1. What is your name?
2. What is your e-mail address?
3. What is your institutional affiliation?
4. What would you consider to be your main interests in the field of the fantastic?
5. When will you be arriving at the conference?
6. When will you be departing from the conference?
7. Are you currently planning to attend the conference reception on Wednesday evening? (*Last year we had a large number of mentees say “yes” and not show up, which creates embarrassments. Please inform us if your plans change and make every effort to follow through with whatever you commit.)
8. Which role are you signing up for, mentor or mentee?

—
Amanda Rudd
PhD Candidate in English and American Literature
University of Houston

Hello IAFAers!

At this point, our headquarters hotel, the Orlando Airport Marriott Lakeside, is almost entirely full–only a night here and there remain. 

We are in the process of negotiating for space at the Sheraton Suites next door, the hotel we have used the last few years for this purpose.  For those of you who are new, this hotel is within a stone’s throw of the Marriott.

I ask that if you who have booked a room at the Marriott but do not plan on attending , please cancel your room this week.  We can only hold the block for this week.  If you cancel after Friday, the room will not return to our block, but to the Marriott, which will then charge the rack rate (twice our special rate); plus, we lose the perks IAFA gets when our folks book into our headquarters hotel, such as room nights for our special guests.  

Remember, canceling IAFA registration does NOT cancel your hotel reservation.

If for any reason you need to cancel your hotel room, and we hope you won’t because we want to see you at the conference this year, please let us know, so that we can alert people who have expressed a need that they still need to book a room!

While I have your attention and we are speaking of hotels, please be aware of a feature of staying in any hotel:  LOTS OF PEOPLE HAVE KEYS TO YOUR ROOM.  Housekeeping, Electricians, Plumbers, Sales staff–just to name a few.  For this reason, it is imperative that you not leave anything that someone might consider valuable in your room.  We have had few complaints at the Marriott, but it pays to be vigilant.  The hotel will be happy to keep anything for you in the hotel safe.

If you have any questions, please email me at iafareg@gmail.com.

See you all in March!

Valorie 

“The lesson of history is that no one learns.”

― Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates

“We humans do not understand compassion. In each moment of our lives, we betray it. Aye, we know of its worth, yet in knowing we then attach to it a value, we guard the giving of it, believing it must be earned, T’lan Imass. Compassion is priceless in the truest sense of the wold. It must be given freely. In abundance.”

― Steven Erikson, Memories of Ice

“It is blasphemy to separate oneself from the earth and look down on it like a god. It is more than blasphemy; it is dangerous. We can never be gods, after all – but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.”

― N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“Tell them they can be great someday, like us. Tell them they belong among us, no matter how we treat them. Tell them they must earn the respect which everyone else receives by default. Them them there is a standard for acceptance; that standard is simply perfection. Kill those who scoff at those contradictions, and tell the rest that the dead deserved annihilation for their weakness and doubt. Then they’ll break themselves trying for what they’ll never achieve”

― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“What better way to destroy a civilization, society or a race than to set people into the wild oscillations which follow their turning over their judgment and decision-making faculties to a superhero?”

― Edward James, The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction

Hello Everyone!

The Thirty-Eighth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts is right around the corner! As we approach the warmth and sunshine of Orlando, Florida, I thought I would take this opportunity to let you all know that we are looking for volunteers to help make ICFA 38 a success!

The volunteer positions are as follows with (very) brief descriptions:

AV (Fire Swamp): Set up projectors, troubleshoot presentations

Book Room (Florin): Set up, sell, and pack up the book room

Registration (Cliffs of Insanity): set up and pass out badges and maintain the registration desk

Please use the survey link below to let us know when and where you would like to help.

The rate of compensation for volunteering is $5 ICFA bucks per hour worked, which can be used towards registration or memorabilia. Please note: We can only provide compensation toward future conference expenses. Volunteer hours cannot be used to cover expenses for the current year’s conference, and the hours earned expire in two years.

If you know of other people attending the conference that would like to volunteer and earn ICFA bucks to help them keep coming back, please share the survey with them. If you have questions or concerns, please contact Valorie Ebert, Membership and Registration Coordinator (iafareg AT gmail.com).

Please Note: We need extra volunteers to help load and unload the book room.  If you plan on being at the hotel Monday and/or aren’t leaving until the following Sunday or Monday and would like to help with this important task, please indicate your willingness on the volunteer survey or please contact Valorie Ebert, Membership and Registration Coordinator (iafareg ATgmail.com)..

** Book Room Set Up normally begins at 8:00 a.m. on Monday morning.  They need all the help they can get, so if you are at the conference early on Monday, stop by and lend a hand.

** Book Room Breakdown normally begins at 8:00 a.m. on Sunday morning.  Again, they need all the help they can get, so if you are an early riser, go lend a hand.

You can find the volunteer survey here.

Social Media:

If you are on Facebook you can connect with IAFA here.  In addition, if you are a student you can also join the Student Caucus Facebook page here.

Please follow us on Twitter here!

If you have questions or concerns, please contact Valorie Ebert, Membership and Registration Coordinator (iafareg AT gmail.com). We look forward to seeing you in March!

Regards,

Valorie

“The lesson of history is that no one learns.”

― Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates

“We humans do not understand compassion. In each moment of our lives, we betray it. Aye, we know of its worth, yet in knowing we then attach to it a value, we guard the giving of it, believing it must be earned, T’lan Imass. Compassion is priceless in the truest sense of the wold. It must be given freely. In abundance.”

― Steven Erikson, Memories of Ice

“It is blasphemy to separate oneself from the earth and look down on it like a god. It is more than blasphemy; it is dangerous. We can never be gods, after all – but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.”

― N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“Tell them they can be great someday, like us. Tell them they belong among us, no matter how we treat them. Tell them they must earn the respect which everyone else receives by default. Them them there is a standard for acceptance; that standard is simply perfection. Kill those who scoff at those contradictions, and tell the rest that the dead deserved annihilation for their weakness and doubt. Then they’ll break themselves trying for what they’ll never achieve”

― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“What better way to destroy a civilization, society or a race than to set people into the wild oscillations which follow their turning over their judgment and decision-making faculties to a superhero?”

― Edward James, The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction

Dear ICFA 38 Attendees!

Our ICFA store is now open! 

If you need to get extra tickets to the luncheons or the banquet, or if you would like to purchase a t-shirt or tote, you can now log on to our store to add them on!

If you go to our website here and click the “Members Only” tab at the top of the page, it will give you an option for the store.  

Alternatively, you can click here to go directly to the store! 

If you have any questions, please let me know.

See you all in March! 

Valorie