SF Canada member Candas Jane Dorsey was recently inducted into Edmonton’s Arts and Culture Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame was established in 1986 to honour individuals and groups whose body of work in arts and culture have brought recognition to Edmonton through their artistic achievements. Candas was one of only four recipients honored this year.
Ursula K. Le Guin has described Candas as “brilliant as William Gibson, as complex as Gene Wolfe, with a humanity and passion all her own.” Quill & Quire contributor Greg Boyd remarked that “the best of her fictions are emotionally grounded in the Alberta landscape: its pure blue arch of sky is too expansive to enclose the imaginative spirit.”
A video profile of Candas by the Hall of Fame is on youtube here.
Candas is the author of several novels, collections of short fiction, and books of poetry, and her work has won the Crawford, Tiptree and Aurora Awards and several WGA awards. She is the founding president of SF Canada and a founding partner of Wooden Door and Associates, a professional communications company. She co-founded the publishing company The Books Collective, which released more than one hundred titles in fourteen years. She has been an active member of the literary community and other arts communities in Alberta for more than forty years. Her work as a creative writing teacher, writer in residence, and mentor has influenced many students and emerging writers. She has been a member of the Writers’ Guild of Alberta for many years and previously served on the organization’s Board of Directors. She has won a number of awards for her writing and community advocacy work, including the WGA’s Golden Pen in 2017, and she was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2018. Her most recent book is ICE and other stories, published by PS Publishing, England, in fall 2018, and she recently signed a three-book deal with ECW Press.
Congratulations, Candas!