Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America President, Russell Davis, has announced the following appointments:

 
JAYME LYNN BLASCHKE NAMED SFWA COMMUNICATIONS & MARKETING DIRECTOR

As part of our ongoing effort to streamline member services and make SFWA a more functional and flexible organization, I'm pleased to announce that Jayme Lynn Blaschke has been appointed as the SFWA Communications & Marketing Director.

Jayme has been a member of SFWA since 1997, and his work has appeared in a variety of anthologies and other publications. He has a B.A. in Journalism with a minor in Speech Communication from Texas A&M, and has held a range of reporting and editorial positions with newspapers and magazines, and has extensive public and media relations experience.

As many of you know, Jayme has been the chair of the Publicity Committee and also volunteered as the SFWA WebRing master. A major portion of his new responsibilities will be ensuring that SFWA gets better and more marketing and publicity opportunities, as well as helping us develop ways to communicate and share information with and from the members (about their projects) more effectively than we have in the past.

I'm really excited to be working with him, and think he has some excellent plans to put SFWA on a faster, more reliable communications, marketing and public relations footing.

 
STEVEN SILVER NAMED SFWA EVENTS COORDINATOR

As part of our ongoing effort to streamline member services and make SFWA a more functional and flexible organization, I'm pleased to announce that Steven H. Silver has been appointed as the SFWA Events Coordinator.

Steven H Silver has several years of con-running experience, including working as programming chair for Chicon 2000 (WorldCon), and has chaired two Windycons and the first Midwest Construction, a con devoted to con-running. In 2004, Steven served as the liaison from Noreascon IV to SFWA and the following year he helped run the 2005 Nebula Award Weekend in Chicago.

Steven has served on the Nebula Award jury four times, twice on the short fiction jury and twice on the novel jury, including a current stint as the chair of the novel jury.

Steven founded the Sidewise Award for Alternate History and has been nominated for the Hugo Award nine times, eight times as Best Fan Writer and once for Best Fanzine. He has sold two short stories, and runs ISFiC Press.

In addition to ensuring that SFWA Events such as the Nebula Award Weekend and the SFWA Suite at WorldCon operate in a successful manner, Steven will also be helping to establish a SFWA-presence at other conventions and ensuring that future administrations have all the records necessary to continue building these events successfully. I'm really thrilled to have him on board and am looking forward to working with him in the coming months.

 
CAT RAMBO NAMED AS NEW CHAIR FOR COPYRIGHT COMMITTEE

I'm pleased to announce that Cat Rambo has been appointed the new chair of the SFWA Copyright Committee.

Cat Rambo's fiction has appeared in such places as Asimov's, Strange Horizons, and Subterranean. Her collaboration with Jeff VanderMeer, The Surgeon's Tale and Other Stories, was published in 2007. She is the co-editor of Fantasy Magazine.

Cat has worked in the fields of network security and technology writing for such companies as Intrusion Detection, RSA, and Microsoft. She maintains an online presence at http://catrambo.livejournal.com. Along with technology writing, she writes about and for games and has overseen the online game Armageddon MUD for the past two decades. She has done podcasts for Pod Castle, EscapePod, and Clarkesworld.

Cat holds a BA in English and Gender Studies from Notre Dame and an MA from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. Her teaching experience includes courses for Bellevue Community College, the Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, Johns Hopkins, Towson State University, and Indiana University. She is a graduate of Clarion West and Taos Toolbox.

Cat has been a member of SFWA since 2005 and has served on a Nebula jury as well as working with both the Copyright Exploratory Committee and the Copyright Committee, copy-writing for the Nebula website, and assisting with volunteer descriptions.

Posted July 10, 2008