News from Jean-Louis Trudel!

SF Canada member Jean-Louis Trudel has been busy lately!

Along with some story acceptances (watch for their release in the coming months!), his poem, “Summer Encroaching, Winter Yielding”, published in Little Blue Marble, was nominated for a Rhysling Award and will be reprinted in this year’s anthology:

And his academic paper on SF dramaturgy in Québec was the runner-up for this year’s Jamie Bishop Award for non-English-language SF scholarship!

Find out more about Jean-Louis at culturedesfuturs.blogspot.com

Congratulations, Jean-Louis!

In Days to Come by Lisa Timpf now out!

SF Canada member Lisa Timpf’s book of speculative haibun poetry, In Days to Come, has been released by Hiraeth Publishing, and is now available!

The poems in this collection are grouped into four sections. The first, “Terra, Terra,” includes poems set on the planet Earth. That is true of many of the poems in the second section, “Looming Shadows,” though they have been grouped together in relation to some of the potential disasters we as a human race have set ourselves up for—nuclear warfare, climate change, and so on. “Alien Encounters” contains poems relating to imagined interactions with other space-faring species. “Other Worlds” rounds out the collection with speculations on what life might be like if and when humanity spins out to the stars.

Find In Days to Come at Hiraeth Publishing and find Lisa here.

In Memoriam: Heather Spears (September 29, 1934 – April 15, 2021)

Marion Heather Spears, Canadian writer and artist and long-time SF Canada member, passed away last year in Copenhagen, Denmark.

She was educated at the University of British Columbia, The Vancouver School of Art and the University of Copenhagen, and lived in Denmark and Canada since 1962. An award-winning poet, she published 15 collections of poetry and 5 novels, illustrated numerous books and articles and drew at literary festivals and other live drawing venues. Hundreds of her drawings are collected at the Welcome Trust, London, and the Merrill Collection, Toronto. The Heather Spears archive is housed at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

As well as being a long-time member of SF Canada, Heather Spears was a member of PEN, The League of Canadian Poets, The Writers’ Union of Canada, The Society of Authors, and Tegnerforbundet af 1919 (Danish drawing association). SFC member Candas Jane Dorsey and others recall Heather fondly at League of Canadian Poets.

Heather’s daughter has reframed  https://www.heatherspears.com  as a memorial, combining it with Heather’s blog and putting up an overview of her life and accomplishments.

As her obituary quotes:  “No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away.” – Terry Pratchett

She will be missed.

New works from Miriam H. Harrison!

SF Canada member Miriam H. Harrison is delighted to share several of her current publications. In the world of fiction, her darkly speculative microfiction “The Stones” is free to read at Pen of the Damned (https://penofthedamned.com/), and her speculative flash fiction “She Drips” appears in A Quaint and Curious Volume of Gothic Tales from Brigid’s Gate Press (https://brigidsgatepress.com/?page_id=144). In the world of poetry, five of her speculative poems can be found in the current issues of Scifaikuest: two poems appear in the print issue (https://www.hiraethsffh.com/product-page/scifaikuest-february-2022-edited-by-t-santitoro) while three appear in the free-to-read digital issue (https://www.hiraethsffh.com/scifaikuest-online) including “Through the reset portal”, which was selected as the editor’s favourite. Later this month, her speculative poem “Think Me Helpless” will appear in a special Women in Horror issue of Frost Zone Zine and will be free to read on the Frost Zone Zine site (https://frostzonezine.com/). More about Miriam’s work can be found on Facebooke(@miriam.h.harrison), Twitter (@MiriamHHarrison), or her website (miriamhharrison.wordpress.com).

Polar Starlight Issue #4 Now Available

Cover for Polar Starlight #4 December 2021

Issue 4 of Polar Starlight, the Magazine of Canadian Speculative Poetry, is now available for download.

This issue features selections from several SF Canada members, including “Vulcanism” by the celebrated speculative poet Colleen Anderson.

 

An excerpt from "Vulcanism" by Colleen Anderson.

Download the whole issue here:

http://polarborealis.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/POLAR-STARLIGHT-4-December-2021.pdf