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Are you going to the World Science Fiction Convention in Seattle, August 13-17, 2025? The Carl Brandon Society will be there, and we’re having a tea party on Saturday, August 16, from 2pm to 4 pm, in the Issaquah Room on the third floor of the Sheraton Grand Hotel. Will you join us? All members of the convention are welcome, and any friend of the Carl Brandon Society is welcome whether you’re a convention member or not.

Come for a few minutes or for the whole two hours! Meet steering committee members Shiv Ramdas, Yang-Yang Wang, Kate Schaefer, and Nisi Shawl and K. Tempest Bradford before they go on to their duties as Hugo Ceremony hosts. Chat with our Program Director, Isis Asare, whom you may know in one of her other roles as founding CEO of Sistah Scifi or Executive Director of SFWA. Eat a few cookies, drink some tea or water, find out more about our programs, make a donation to support us. Let us know what you think of what we’ve been doing. Tell us what you’d like us to try in the future, and what you’d be willing to work on to make happen.

If you want to support the publication of the essay anthology Ex Marginalia edited by Chinelo Onwuala, we’ll have a limited number of copies available as thank-you gifts for donations of $50 or more for that project. We ask that you wear a mask except when eating or drinking so everyone can stay healthy.

Also, we could use a few volunteers at the event to help us host—just send a message to treasurer@carlbrandon.org if you’ll be available.

Thanks so much! It’s been a long time since we had an in-person event. We hope to see you there.

Most years, we send out an email in June roughly coinciding with Octavia E. Butler’s birthday on June 22nd. Most years, that email has to do with Octavia’s work or with some of the work we do in her memory. This year is a little different, because right now we are living in the world of Parable of the Sower.

You don’t need us to enumerate all the parallels. We know you’ve been watching in horror, maybe writing to your congressional representatives, maybe going to protests, trying to be supportive to people under more stress than you, accepting support from people under less stress than you.

We can’t fix what’s wrong with the United States right now, but we must go on doing the work the Carl Brandon Society exists to do, pursuing our mission and bringing our vision to life. As a reminder, those things are:

 

Our Mission

The mission of the Carl Brandon Society is to increase racial and ethnic diversity in the production of and audience for speculative fiction.

 

Our Vision

We envision a world in which speculative fiction, about complex and diverse cultures from writers of all backgrounds, is used to understand the present and model possible futures; and where people of color are full citizens in the community of imagination and progress.

That work continues to be needed, to give hope and help for the future. Stories matter. Stories change the world. Now, more than ever, it’s important that we all tell our own stories, and that we have the tools with which to do that work.

You have helped us before, by donating, attending our classes and parties, by cheering us on. Thanks so much for that support! Help us again by donating at https://carlbrandon.org/donate/.

 

Sincerely,

Tempest Bradford, Jaymee Goh, Susheela Bhat Harkins, Shiv Ramdas, Victor Raymond, Kate Schaefer, Nisi Shawl, and Yang-Yang Wang

The Carl Brandon Society Steering Committee

 

P.S. your donation directly benefits our core programs: the Butler scholars you help us send to the Clarion workshop in San Diego and Clarion West in Seattle, the award winners you have us recognize, the online writing workshops you support or attend, the book fairs that get diverse books into kids’ hands.  Please give so we can keep doing all of that – and more.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact: Isis Asare
Carl Brandon Society
isis@carlbrandon.org
www.carlbrandon.org

Anselma Prihandita, Clarion UCSD Octavia E. Butler Scholar 2024, First Indonesian to win Nebula Award

Seattle, WA—June 16, 2025 Anselma Prihandita (penname: AW Prihandita), Clarion UCSD Octavia E. Butler Scholar for 2024, has won the Nebula Award for Best Novelette: “Negative Scholarship On The Fifth State Of Being,” and is a finalist for the 2025 Ignyte Award for Outstanding Novelette. Prihandita’s Nebula award on June 7th makes her the first Indonesian to win—or even be nominated—for the prestigious award.

Her novelette, “Negative Scholarship On The Fifth State Of Being” was published in Clarkesworld in November 2024. The novelette follows an intrepid practitioner-doctor who works to diagnose an extremely rare alien species. The novelette—with a word count at just over 8K words—covers climate change, the healthcare industrial complex, and how we navigate morality when limited by legality.

“Semau thought, maybe not for the first time but it felt like the first time, that maybe the health model was designed to fail. In some cases, at least. For some beings.” from “Negative Scholarship On The Fifth State Of Being.”

With Semau, Prihandita develops a compelling main character grounded in her research for her PhD in language and rhetoric and inspired by her participation in “ASIAN 207: Science and Speculative Fiction of Southeast Asia,” taught by Prof. Nazry Bahrawi at the University of Washington. Prihandita was able to further develop this story, and others, while a participant of Clarion San Diego. Her participation was made possible by her Octavia E. Butler scholarship.

“Anselma Prihandita’s historic Nebula win is a pivotal moment for Southeast Asian speculative fiction and global storytelling. Anselma is mapping new ground. Her work reminds us that the future of speculative fiction must be multilingual, multicultural, and unapologetically inclusive. The Carl Brandon Society is thrilled by Prihandita’s achievement, and the promise of her future literary career,” says Jaymee Goh, a Carl Brandon Society Steering Committee Member.

Learn more about the Carl Brandon Society and become a part of the future of speculative storytelling by visiting https://carlbrandon.org/. Look for our fundraising request in your email early next week. Every donation makes work like this possible.

About the Author: Anselma Widha Prihandita (she/her) is an Indonesian speculative fiction writer, college writing instructor, and PhD candidate in rhetoric and composition, with scholarly (and personal) interests in decolonial and transnational writing. She splits her time between the US West Coast, where she currently teaches and studies, and Indonesia, where she grew up and where her home remains. She attended the Odyssey workshop in 2023 on their Fresh Voices Scholarship and the Clarion workshop in 2024 on the Carl Brandon Society’s Octavia E. Butler Scholarship. Her stories are published or forthcoming in Clarkesworld, Cast of Wonders, and khōréō, among other venues.

About the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship: The Fund is administered by the Carl Brandon Society because its mission is consistent with one of the Society’s primary goals: increasing the representation of people of color in the fantastical genres such as science fiction, fantasy, and horror. In addition, Butler was an early member of the Carl Brandon Society, a nonprofit charitable organization. Donations made to the fund through the Carl Brandon Society are tax-deductible.

About the Nebula Awards: The Nebula Awards® are voted on and presented by full, senior, and associate members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. Founded as the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1965 by Damon Knight, the organization began with a charter membership of 78 writers; it now has over 2,000 members, among them many of the leading writers of science fiction and fantasy.

About the Ignyte Awards: The Ignyte Awards began in 2020 alongside the inaugural FIYAHCON, a virtual convention centering the contributions and experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in Speculative Fiction. The Ignytes seek to celebrate the diversity of science fiction, fantasy, and horror by recognizing incredible feats in storytelling and outstanding efforts toward inclusivity of the genre.

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Seattle, WA 98102