When Words Collide 2021

Save the dates this August 13 through 15 2021 for When Words Collide (WWC) the annual Canadian literary festival based in Calgary, AB. This popular event for fiction readers, writers, artists, and publishers is open for registration.

As with last year’s online event, WWC 2021 will be both online-only and FREE to attend with most panels and workshops taking place via Zoom. WWC is an inclusive event with programming covering a broad range of commercial and literary fiction, poetry, and more.

WWC has grown to become one of Canada’s largest literary events and is now celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2021.

Learn more about WWC at: whenwordscollide.org/About_WWC

Register to attend this year’s virtual conference here: whenwordscollide.org/Registration

A Virtual Campfire Tale with Mark Leslie

Join SF Canada member Mark Leslie for a virtual event tomorrow, Tuesday April 13, 2021 at 7 PM EST. Mark will be live reading “The Shadow Men” a short story meant to be read around a campfire.

Mark’s reading will be live streamed to YouTube and Facebook, with an interactive chance to ask questions as well as some prizes randomly drawn from those who comment.

Register in advance for an extra chance to win one of Mark’s audiobooks.

Congratulations to Nalo Hopkinson!

SF Canada extends our heartiest congratulations to Nalo Hopkinson on being named SFWA’s 37th Damon Knight Grand Master.

Nalo Hopkinson is an award-winning speculative fiction author, including Locus, Aurora, and Sunburst wins. She was born in Jamaica, but spent most of her life in Toronto. Hopkinson has authored novels and short stories, edited anthologies, and now works as a professor of creative writing at the University of California.

“Naming Nalo as Grand Master recognizes not only her phenomenal writing but also her work as an educator who has shaped so many of the rising stars of modern SFF.” – SFWA President Mary Robinette Kowal

This Award recognizes a lifetime achievement in speculative fiction and will be presented at the 56th Annual Nebula Conference and Awards Ceremony, held online the weekend of June 4–6, 2021.

Stories From The Motherland & Many Lands

On January 31, 2021 at 4pm EST SF Canada member Bernadette Gabay Dyer will be part of a free online concert brought to you by Storytellers of Canada.

Stories From The Motherland & Many Lands will feature stories from Caribbean and African storytellers in both English and French.

Funds raised through this event will support the 2021 StorySave Rita Cox Project.

Full details about this event are available at: storytellers-conteurs.ca/en/news/Jan-2021-concert.html

Register to attend online at rb.gy/iuy2zu or email admin@storytellers-conteurs.ca

Bernadette Gabay Dyer was born in Kingston Jamaica, and has lived in Toronto Canada for many years. She is a Poet, a Storyteller, an Artist, a Playwright, and the author of four novels, and a short story Collection. Bernadette is a member of the Writer’s Union of Canada and  Science Fiction Canada. Her work has been widely anthologized, and her poetry and short stories have appeared in the University of Miami Journal, as well as in Wasafiri from St Mary’s University in London England. Bernadette is currently awaiting  the publication of a new collection of short stories in 2021.

Zee by Su J. Sokol

SF Canada member Su J. Sokol is launching Zee, xyr third novel. This title is being released jointly in French (December 3, 2020) and English (December 6, 2020) by New Brunswick publisher Mouton noir Acadie, an imprint of Bouton d’or Acadie.

Zee can hear what you’re thinking and feel what you’re feeling. She sees herself through your eyes and what she sees changes who she is. Sometimes Zee is the precocious daughter of her four grown-ups. Other times, she’s a rough boy from Brooklyn, New York, playing basketball and getting into trouble. Zee’s grown-ups are worried. They test Zee’s special powers and conspire to keep them secret. Zee figures out what they’re up to and fights back. Zee just wants to fit in, to meet the confusing expectations coming at her from all directions, but will losing sight of who she is put Zee in even greater danger?

Learn more about Zee at an online launch in either French or English.

  • French Event: Thursday, December 3 at 7pm EST on either Facebook or Zoom.
  • English Event: Sunday, December 6 at 7pm EST on either Facebook or Zoom.

Su J. Sokol is a social rights activist and a writer of speculative, liminal and interstitial fiction. Originally from Brooklyn, xe now makes Montréal xyr home. Xyr short fiction has appeared or is upcoming in The Future Fire, Spark: A Creative Anthology, TFFX 10th Anniversary Anthology, Glittership: an LGBTQ Science Fiction and Fantasy Podcast, Glittership: Year One anthology, After the Orange: Ruin and Recovery, and Amazing Stories.

Su’s debut novel, Cycling to Asylum, was longlisted for the Sunburst for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, and has been optioned for a feature-length film. Xyr second novel, Run J Run, was published by Renaissance Press in May of 2019.

Learn more about Su and explore xyr other titles at sujsokol.com

Order your copy of Zee from your favourite local bookshop (a great way to support independent booksellers during the pandemic), from Bouton d’or Acadie in French or English, on Amazon, or via Kobo.

Tower in the Crooked Wood by Paula Johanson

SF Canada member Paula Johanson is re-releasing an ebook version of her short novel, Tower in the Crooked Wood, with publisher Doublejoy Books.

Join Paula on her Facebook page today, November 30, 2020 at noon PST for an online book launch.

They were stolen in the dark to work for a night and a day, building a tower for the wizard Krummholz on faraway Copper Island, in a place where the trees grow twisted in a poisoned bog. Some of the unwilling workers were returned bewildered, bruised, and marked by whips — others died as the uncaring wizard called new workers to his tower. Now Jenia is the only one left of her family willing to leave her orchards and walk five hundred miles in search of her abductor, and the answers to questions burning inside her.

 

Why was she stolen out of the dark? What is wrong at the heart of the tower? And why does the magic twisting the very trees strike a strangely familiar note? All Jenia knows for sure is that she will not let herself be made a prisoner again, not by magic nor by force of arms. When a soldier tries to trap her in a lord’s garden, and a village of gentle people tell her to give up her hopeless quest, Jenia has to choose where to place her trust: in friends, in strength, or in the cunning in her own two hands.

 

And then the wizard Krummholz sends his call out again…

“A wealth of realistic detail lends authenticity to this engrossing tale of a young arborist, ‘a scholar of trees.’ Paula Johanson has created a magical alternative world both mythic in feel, and hauntingly evocative of our own.” – Eileen Kernaghan, author of The Snow Queen.

Paula Johanson is a Canadian writer. A graduate of the University of Victoria, she has worked as a security guard, a short order cook, a teacher, newspaper writer, and more. As well as editing books and teaching materials, she has run an organic-method small farm with her spouse, raised gifted twins, and cleaned university dormitories. In addition to novels and stories, she is the author of forty-two books written for educational publishers, among them The Paleolithic Revolution and Women Writers from the series Defying Convention: Women Who Changed The World. Johanson is an active member of SF Canada, the national association of science fiction and fantasy authors.

Learn more about Paula and explore her other titles at paulajohanson.blogspot.com.

Order your copy of Tower in the Crooked Wood at !ndigo, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and other digital booksellers.