Writers & Illustrators of the Future Awards Come Back Strong

The Writers of the Future Award has been going on for 37 years now. Created in 1983 by L. Ron Hubbard, the award started because the author wanted to provide aspiring writers of speculative fiction a break.

Five years later, the contest was such a success that the companion Illustrators of the Future Award was created.

“It’s free to enter, all writers and artists maintain rights to their work, and the winners are flown out to Hollywood for a week-long workshop,” John Goodwin, president of Galaxy Press stated about the contest. “It’s an amazing start to hopefully a wonderful career. We’ll match them effort for effort: if they want to become a writer or an illustrator, we have all the judges who are themselves the top writers and top artists in the industry who are there willing to help them.”

The 2020 awards ceremony was postponed (and eventually canceled) due to the pandemic, but on October 22, 2021, Author Services and Galaxy Press (the publishers of the anthology that publishes the winning entries every year) combined the 2020 and 2021 ceremonies into one. In fact, the 2020 grand prize winners were not announced: the winners themselves did not want to know who won until they could meet at the event.

The 12 winners of the 2020 contest and the 14 winners of the 2021 contest were announced in a ceremony at the Taglyan Compex, with a book signing and reception for the two new anthologies. You can view the full ceremony on YouTube.

“Tonight, we’re welcoming into the professional world of science fiction and fantasy 12 new writers and 12 new illustrators from Volume 37,” Goodwin continued. “But because of COVID last year, we had to postpone the event. So, this is the first time we’ve had a combined event with Volume 36 and 37 winners.” The winners who couldn’t attend this year’s workshop due to COVID restrictions will be invited to next year’s.

The two volumes were also connected by having two stories in the same universe by author Jody Lynn Nye, and the covers both have illustrations of “Melana, Priestess of the Temple of Peace”. Nye said, “I was privileged to work with Echo Chernik who was the wonderful artist who produced these, and it’s been an unusual thing to have happened with this. Normally, every story that you contribute to this is one and done. But in this case, the character continues on into the next story.” (You can hear a full-length interview with Nye in my podcast, linked here.)

“They invited me to do the cover artwork, and they wanted me to create something that would inspire her,” said Chernik, who is also the coordinating judge of the Illustrators of the Future. “I’ve worked for many years with artists and art directors and writers, and so I specifically designed something that would be inspirational to her, but not knowing what the story was going to be, so that she could take it and run with it.” She continued, “When COVID happened and we lost last year, I contacted them again and said, ‘Why don’t we try to do two covers so that we can link the stories together?'”

The ceremony itself opened with Crystal Starr as Melana, singing “write the story, sing the song, and play the part.” Mistress of Ceremonies Gunhild Jacobs, who is the executive director for Author Services, Inc., got us off acknowledging the impact of COVID on the contest.

The awards themselves were interspersed with non-speeches throughout, including an audio clip from L. Ron Hubbard talking about whether it was important to write to a schedule or not. (Hint: for him, it wasn’t.) They also had a memorial section, honoring judge and author Mike Resnick and one of the founding Illustrators of the Future contest judges Ron Lindahn.

The keynote speaker was Toni Weisskopf, the Publisher of Baen Books. Starting out with a humorous, “My people!”, the theme of Weisskopf’s speech was how important speculative fiction is to helping us get through difficult times.

“Let me tell you, there has never been a better time to be involved with science fiction. Science fiction won: at the box office, on TV, in popular culture of all kinds,” she said. “But there is a downside to all of that. Back in the day, there was a sense that we – those of us who read and wrote and illustrated and published and reviewed SF – that we were all in this together. It was, to quote a fannish trope, ‘a proud and lonely thing to be a fan.’ Well, we have lost the lonely, and some of us might say we are on the way to losing the proud part, too. But we don’t have to. We, all of us here, the bright stars of the future, we are a community. And tonight, I want to remind us of some of the things that we do right as a community: things that we can be proud of. I’m not saying there’s no room for improvement: I prefer to focus on the positives, the things that bring us together, not the things that divide us. And in my fifty or so years of being part of this community, I’ve come to the conclusion that science fiction is a conversation. Science fiction is the literature of ideas, and ideas were made to be shared.”

The winners were a wide range of ages, locations, and genders, and this was demonstrated in their various acceptance speeches.

Heather A. Laurence from Washington state said, “When we started this, we were the Illustrators of the Future, but let us now be the Illustrators of the Present,” while Irmak Çavun from Turkey said, “from a small town in Turkey to LA, I cannot express how thankful I am.” She went on to thank her parents, stating, “in a country that didn’t care about art and dreams, I’m thankful that they said it was okay that I could do what I did.”

There were lots of shoutouts in the thanks to not only family, but teachers as well. John M. Campbell thanked his wife, his first reader. Isabel Gibney thanked her teachers: “they encouraged me to believe that a career in art is a possibility, even when I didn’t believe in myself.” And Will Knight thanked his parents, “without whom I would still be a nebulous pixel in the universal consciousness without a corporeal form.”

The winners included those who had submitted the first time to those who submitted many, many times. Anj Dockkrey had first submitted when she was 18, and finally got here 19 years later. Emma Washburn, who is 16 and a first time winner, talked about the importance of student journalism. Luke Wildman had submitted 14 times before being accepted. “There were a few rough years there,” he said in his speech. “There were years when I was working in factories and working in cubicles and writing soulless marketing posts. There were also times when I was sitting by my mom’s hospital bed while she was going through cancer treatments.”

The end of the ceremony announced the winners of the Golden Brush and Golden Pen awards, which comes with a $5,000 prize.

The two Illustrators of the Future Golden Brush Awards were announced first.

The 2020 winner (Volume 36) was Anh Le, originally from Ho Chi Minh City and now living in Kansas City, Missouri. In his first acceptance speech, he talked about how he and his parents came from Vietnam in 2007, and how drawing helped him acclimate to American culture. “The only thing I could use to express my emotions and my creativity was to draw,” he stated. In his acceptance speech for the Golden Brush, he once again thanked his parents. “To see that my parents are so proud is just … I can’t even express it in words.”

The 2021 winner (Volume 37) was Dan Watson, who is from the UK. As such, his speech was recorded and broadcast as he was unable to attend. “I love the fantasy and sci fi community: the art, the writing, the people.”

The Writers of the Future Golden Pen Award was next.

C. Winspear was the Volume 36 / 2020 winner. He is based in Australia, and so like Watson had recorded an acceptance speech. The whole thing is golden, filled with humor. “I look forward to defining the future of sci fi and fantasy with you,” he said.

Barbara Lund, from Draper, Utah, was the Volume 37 / 2021 winner. Both of her speeches were very short. In fact, her acceptance speech for the Golden Pen Award was over before they even had time to put her name up on the chyron.

Mistress of Ceremonies Gunhild Jacobs then wrapped up the awards with a look toward the future, encouraging writers and illustrators to keep creating and submit to the contest. “You have a chance to pursue your dreams, and help us build that finer tomorrow.”

I’ll be doing an audio version of the ceremony for my podcast. For more information about the Writers and Illustrators of the Future Award, visit the official website. You can see all my photos from the event here.