CBS Bay Area Wiki Party!

Hi all CBS members and wannabe members in the San Francisco Bay Area!

Please join us for our first ever CBS Wiki Party this Wednesday, March 2. Info is below. Please RSVP via Facebook, or in comments below. Looking forward to seeing you all there!

— Claire

*****
Wednesday, March 2 · 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Mission Creek Cafe
968 Valencia St (between 21st St & Liberty St)
San Francisco, CA

WHO: All members of the Carl Brandon Society (or folks who are interested in becoming members) who are in the San Francisco Bay Area at the time.

WHAT: Let’s hang out and fill in some of the articles on CBS’s wiki!

WHAT TO BRING:
1. Bring your laptop! (There IS wifi at Mission Creek!)
2. Bring information (this can be in your head or you can find it on the internet) about a writer of color (or an sf work by a writer of color or an sf work that deals with race and ethnicity) that you can put into a wiki article.
3. Bring your checkbook (you can sign up for or renew your membership here!)
4. Bring your squee (because why meet up with other fans if you don’t?)

WHY:
1. CBS’s wiki could be a great resource but we need to start filling it in. It’ll be much more fun if we do it together!
2. The Bay Area’s fen of color and allies really need to start getting together on a regular basis.
3. Fogcon will be happening the following weekend, so let’s get revved up for it!
4. Squeeeeeeeeee!!!
5. Do we really need a reason?

MORE INFO: http://carlbrandon.org/
http://www.carlbrandon.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Carl Brandon Awards Given at Arisia 2011

From left to right: Cecilia Tan, Vandana Singh, Andrea Hairston, Tananarive Due. Photo by Sitara Chapman.

The Carl Brandon Society awards for 2008 and 2009 were given this past weekend at Arisia 2011:

2008:

  • Vandana Singh’s novel Distances won the Carl Brandon Parallax Award.
  • Tananarive Due’s short story “Ghost Summer” won the Carl Brandon Kindred Award.

2009:

  • Hiromi Goto’s novel Half World won the Carl Brandon Parallax Award.
  • Justine Larbalestier’s novel Liar won the Carl Brandon Kindred Award.

The Carl Brandon Society Parallax Award recognizes an outstanding work of speculative fiction by a writer of color. The Carl Brandon Society Kindred Award recognizes an outstanding work of speculative fiction dealing with race/ethnicity. Each award includes a US$1000 prize. Previous winners include Walter Mosley, Susan Vaught, Andrea Hairston, Nnedi Okorafor, and Minister Faust. A complete list of Parallax and Kindred Award winners’ works is available at http://carlbrandon.org/awards.

Tananarive Due and Vandana Singh received their awards in person at the ceremony. Andrea Hairston accepted the award for Hiromi Goto and Cecilia Tan accepted the award for Justine Larbalestier.

Nominations for 2010 awards are open through February 28, 2011. Visit the awards page at carlbrandon.org for more information. You can also donate to support the awards at carlbrandon.org.

Fundraising Tally, Big Thanks, And The Winners of the Butler Scholarship eReader Drawing

Last night the Drawing came to a close and now it’s time to announce the winners of the 5 eReaders and the autographed Dark Matter anthology. But first, I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who made this fundraiser successful.

We raised $4,520 from tickets sales and so far $490 in direct donations since the drawing began. We haven’t even calculated all of the donations sent in via mail yet! Right now the total stands at $5,010, which is simply amazing. Our original goal was just $1,000. Once we blew past that in the first 4 days, we set our sights on raising $3,200, the price of a Clarion West tuition. Once we met that goal, our next was to raise $4,950, enough for a tuition to Clarion Diego. In the last 30 hours of the drawing we sold 799 tickets and blew past that goal, too. Thanks to those of you who bought tickets and donated we were able to exceed our goals time and again. We appreciate your participation and generosity so much. Thank you.

Next, a huge, huge thank you to Jenn Brissett. Without her we never would have been able to pull this drawing off. She did all the technical wizardry on the backend and when problems arose (and they did… oh they did) she worked hard to fix them and keep the drawing going. All while doing her graduate work and under major time crunches. Jenn is nothing short of an angel, and we all so, so appreciate her hard work.

Thanks to the other folks behind the scenes who helped put this whole thing together: Candra Gill, who took care of all the other technical needs surrounding the CBS website plus was smart about everything; Nisi Shawl, Claire Light and Kate Schaefer, who gave support, advice, guidance, and time as we rushed to make this whole thing a reality; Pablo Defendini and Nivair Gabriel who volunteered to convert stories into ePub files to make them compatible with the eReaders (for which I am eternally grateful); Matt Kressel whose work on the KGB Raffle inspired us to try it here and who offered advice and technical know-how. And thanks to the members of the Carl Brandon Society board who gave the green light to begin with.

I can never convey enough gratitude to the companies that donated the technology. Barnes & Noble, Kobo and Spring Design all jumped at the chance to be a part of this fundraiser. Thanks for making such wonderful, tempting eReaders and for supporting literature in the digital age.

A big, big thank you to all of the writers and publishers who sent us fiction, poetry and essays to include with the eReaders. The full list is here. The eReaders were a big draw, of course, but your donations added an extra layer of awesome to the prizes.

Everyone who spread the word about this online, on social networks, via blogs, or by word of mouth: thank you.

And now, here are the winners:

The winner of the Spring Design Alex eReader is: Kang-Yun Tsai
The winners of the Barnes & Noble Nook are: David Linder and Joshua Kidd
The winners of the Kobo Wireless Reader are: Jessica Nasca and Molly Aplet
The winner of the autographed copy of the Dark Matter anthology is: Deanne Fountaine
Congratulations to all of you! If we haven’t contacted you directly yet, we will very soon.