Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Great News

This press release was sent to me by Jayme Lynn Blaschke.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Home-grown Texas authors Joe R. Lansdale and Ardath Mayhar have been named Toastmaster and Author Emeritus, respecitvely, by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America for the 2008 Nebula Awards® Weekend April 25-27 in Austin, Texas.


The event will take place at the Omni Austin Hotel Downtown. The event will be hosted by the Austin Literary Arts Maintenance Organization (ALAMO), with the assistance of SFWA members Elizabeth Moon, John Moore and Lee Martindale.

Joe R. Lansdale of Nacogdoches, Texas, is widely regarded as one of the most thoroughly Texan authors writing today. The author and editor of more than two dozen novels, short story collections and anthologies, he has won a variety of awards in multiple fields including the Edgar award for The Bottoms, the Bram Stoker Award six times and the British Fantasy Award. In 2007 he was named Grandmaster by the World Horror Convention. He has also written westerns, comics, dark suspense, humorous pieces and gonzo fiction that can only be described as “Lansdale-esque.” In addition to his writing, Lansdale is the founder and grandmaster of the martial arts system Shen Chuan and an inductee of the International Martial Arts Hall of Fame. His website can be found at www.joerlansdale.com.

Ardath Mayhar of Nacogdoches, Texas, is widely known for her sweet, grandmotherly appearance which belies a quick wit and fast tongue. The author of 36 novels along with numerous short stories and poems, her publishing career began in 1979 with the philosophical fantasy How the Gods Wove in Kyrannon, and in 1982 she published Golden Dream: A Fuzzy Odyssey, a sequel to H. Beam Piper’s Little Fuzzy. From there she published a wide variety of works including science fiction (The World Ends in Hickory Hollow), fantasy (Exile on Vlahil), westerns (under the pseudonym Frank Cannon), a mountain man series (under the pseudonym John Kildeer), horror (The Wall), folklore (Slewfoot Sally and the Flying Mule) and contemporary fiction (Medicine Walk). She also served on the Writers Digest instructional staff, passing her knowledge and critical eye on to younger writers. Her website can be found at www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/7172/ardath.html

4 comments:

Jayme Lynn Blaschke said...

Darn it, there's a typo in Joe's web address. Bill, if you could be so kind as to remove the first "r" the link will work better.

My bad.

Unknown said...

Will do, Jayme.

Anonymous said...

How do the assembled feel about the "Author Emeritus" tagging? I've always felt that it's more condescending than honorific, which (I hope) has never been the intent...Ms. Mayhar, and her predecessors, usually haven't actually stopped writing...

Unknown said...

I just figure it's honorific, but I'm not all that thrilled with the term. I'm glad to see Ardath being honored, no matter how it's done.