SFWA Pressbook
For Immediate Release
4 September 2007

Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop 2007

Launchpad Astronomy Workshop, 2007. Photo by Jeremiah Tolbert.

Photo by Jeremiah Tolbert

K. Tempest Bradford, Josepha Sherman, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Vonda N. McIntyre, Samantha Henderson, F. Brett Cox, Jeffrey A. Carver, Lori Ann White, Eugie Foster, Michael Livingston (top row), Scott Humphries, Mike Brotherton, Vylar Kaftan, Jerry Oltion, and Gerald M. Weinberg.
More photos at Starrigger.net and flickr.com

Thirteen SF/F writers participated in the first annual Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop, a NASA-funded educational program for established writers, July 15-22, 2007, at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. Workshop director, astronomer, and SF writer Mike Brotherton, writer and amateur astronomer Jerry Oltion, and secondary education expert Jim Verley spent a week covering a myriad of astronomical topics ranging from stellar evolution and cosmology to back-of-the-envelope orbit calculations for writers. Visits to Red Buttes Observatory and the Wyoming Infrared Observatory (WIRO) capped a fascinating and enjoyable week for the writers in attendance. It was all part of a NASA program seeking to improve science literacy in the public by first improving science literacy among those who write stories that the public reads.

A second workshop is planned for the summer of 2008.

More information is online at www.launchpadworkshop.org.

Reported by Jeffrey A. Carver


Jeffrey A. Carver runs an online Writing Workshop and writes a blog, "Pushing a Snake up a Hill." He is a member of SFWA.

Workshop director Mike Brotherton and visting instructor Jerry Oltion, as well as a number of the workshop attendees, are members of SFWA

Launchpad website


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