Science fiction student writing award presentation 2020
Channel: Chris McKitterick
Date: 16/05/2020

Because 2020 is the Year of Zoom events, the University of Kansas held its awards events online. Here's my contribution to this year's presentations, honoring Violet McClendon with the James E Gunn Award for Science Fiction Writing at KU, which I created in honor of my mentor. James Gunn, who founded his center shortly before I became involved in 1992, died in December, 2020, and the original Gunn Center was soon taken over by the department where he and I once worked, so this was my final presentation of the award. I have no association with any awards presented by the department's new SF center.

This short video includes brief comments about science fiction, this SFnal moment we were living through, various student awards and workshops I used to offer through Jim's original SF center, and the winner.

My new Ad Astra Center for Science Fiction & the Speculative Imagination at KU now serves the original center's mission of working to make the world better through science-fiction education. We begin operations in August, 2022, offering talks, masterclasses, workshops, and more aimed at educating creatives, educators, fans, and others in using the mode and methods of speculative fiction in their work - to help "Save the world through science fiction!"