Winners of the 2000 Rhysling Awards have been announced by the Science Fiction Poetry Association. The Science Fiction Poetry Association was founded in 1978 by Suzette Haden Elgin and annually bestows Rhysling Awards for the best Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Horror poem of the previous calendar year. There are two categories, Short Poem for poems 50 lines or less and Long Poem for poems longer than 50 lines. The 2000 Rhysling Chairperson was D. M. Rowles.

Rebecca Marjesdatter of St. Paul, Minnesota has been awarded the Rhysling Short Poem Award for her poem, Grimoire, first published by Tales of the Unanticipated. Geoffrey A. Landis of Berea, Ohio, has been awarded the Rhysling Long Poem Award for his poem, Christmas (when we all get time machines), first published by Asimovs Science Fiction magazine.

Rebecca Marjesdatter received a BA in Creative Writing from the College of St. Catherine, MN, where she studied with the novelist Jonis Agee. Marjesdatter also has a MLIS (Masters of Library and Information Science) from the same school. Her first genre publication was in Tales of the Unanticipated, published by the Minnesota Science Fiction Society. Marjesdatter belongs to the Lady Poetesses from Hell, a poetry performance group that reads at local genre conventions. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with her two cats, the minimum required of a writer, lesbian, and Dianic Wiccan. Her pen name honors Marjorie, her adoptive mother, who died of breast cancer in 1994.

Geoffrey A. Landis is a senior research scientist with the Ohio Aerospace Institute, working at the NASA John Glenn Research Center. His work on the Pathfinder project involves understanding the effect of Martian dust on the solar energy reaching the surface of Mars, and learning how much dust deposits on the solar arrays. In addition to his work at NASA, Landis has published over fifty science fiction short stories, including Ripples in the Dirac Sea, which won the Nebula award for best short story in 1990, and A Walk in the Sun, which won the Hugo award in 1992. His work has been translated into fourteen languages. Dr. Landis lives in Berea, Ohio, along with his wife, Mary Turzillo, who is also a science fiction writer. More information can be found at his web page, http://www.sff.net/people/geoffrey.landis

Posted July 13, 2000