G33K Out: Writers & Illustrators of the Future Awards 2019

Episode 44: Writers & Illustrators of the Future Awards 2019

I’ve attended the Writers & Illustrators of the Future Awards several times now. In fact, Episode 22 of this podcast was covering the 2017 ceremony. Attending this awards ceremony is always fun, and this year was no different. This was the 35th annual awards ceremony, and the theme was Retro Robotics.

The keynote was a ‘Science Fiction 101’ by journalist Ed Hulse. Illustrator Bob Eggleton was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award, who is also the artist of this year’s anthology.

Andrew Dykstal took home the Grand Prize Writer Award, and Aliya Chen took home the Grand Prize Illustrator Award. Meanwhile, Alice Wang, who won the fourth quarter illustrator award, became the youngest winner to enter and win. Finally, one of the winners, Preston Dennett, submitted 47 times prior to winning this year, earning 12 honorable mentions over the years.

While as with all red carpets my interviews here are brief, I did manage to snag contact information for a couple of the people I talked to in the hopes of getting longer interviews with them, as I did with Kevin J. Anderson and Nancy Kress last year. I also have some excerpts from the ceremony itself.

Basic show notes:

• Running time is 45 minutes, 37 seconds.
• The interviews were recorded on April 5, 2019. I managed to talk to:
  • author Larry Niven;
  • author Robert J. Sawyer;
  • author Kevin J. Anderson (again);
  • author Jody Lynn Nye;
    • she mentioned Ravelry, an online knitting community;
  • author Nina Kiriki Hoffman;
  • illustrator Larry Elmore (who I briefly interviewed in Episode 22 as well);
  • actor Sean Cameron Michael;
  • actor and producer Edwin Gagiano;
  • producer, director, and actor Kelton Jones; and
  • actor and impressionist Jim Meskimen.
• I also included footage from the ceremony itself. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube.
  • You can find out more about the Writers and Illustrators of the Future Awards on their official website, and you can order a copy of the anthology (not only the one from this year, but some of the prior years as well) from the Galaxy Press official website.
• The mid-show plug is from Neil Teixeira from the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library. You can hear a short interview with him in episode 24, where I covered the 2017 LA Times Festival of Books.
• In this episode, “Angie Geeks Out” about the Warner Bros. Studio Tour in Los Angeles.
• Theme music is “Schoolyard Haze”, by Jari Pitkanen, available via the Free Music Archive.
• This podcast is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike License.
• Interested in hearing other episodes of G33K Out or learning where all you can hear the podcast? Check out the main G33K Out with Angie Fiedler Sutton page.

And now, it’s time to geek out.