“Let’s start with the end of the world, why don’t we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.”

from The Fifth Season, by 42nd Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award recipient N. K. Jemisin

The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) is gearing up to a phenomenal outing in Chicago, where we will convene this June 3-7 for our 61st Annual Nebula Awards Conference and Nebula Awards Ceremony.

The Nebula Finalists are set, and our 42nd Grand Master N. K. Jemisin has paved quite the ambitious trail for us to venture along for this year’s professional development offerings.

Did you know that “worldbuilding” is the most commonly searched term in our extensive resource offerings at Planetside: The Online Magazine of SFWA?

It’s often at the core of what we do as writers, and yet the term is packed with tension and contradiction. Do writers ever really “build” worlds, or are we simply in the business of twisting, refining, and reimagining the worlds to which we belong? Is our work as speculative writers ever really an “escape”, or are we always in deep dialogue with explicit and implicit rules and contracts around us?

Chewy questions like these helped to inspire the theme for our 61st Nebula Awards Conference. This year, we are exploring Worldbuilding and Worldbreaking, in tribute to the work of this year’s Damon Knight Memorial Award Grand Master, N. K. Jemisin. Our programming will foster professional development and writing craft by celebrating worldbuilding on the page, in our broader genre community, in the world at large, in history, and works of alt-history.

We are developing programming that explores these facets of worldbuilding, and also of worldbreaking. We define worldbreaking as any departure from restrictive social norms that creates pathways for deeper understanding, empathy, and liberation. Our core focal points are as follows:

Our core focal points are as follows:

• Worldbuilding and worldbreaking on the page: How do we convey the limits of our narrative worlds, and how do we move beyond them?
• Worldbuilding and worldbreaking in SFF community: How do we create resilience, care, curiosity, audience shares, professional uplift, and dynamic conversations around our SFF?
• Worldbuilding and worldbreaking in the broader world: How does the work we do on the page translate to the world we live in, and vice versa?
• Worldbuilding and worldbreaking in history: Exploring deep lore around the ways in which SFF has worked in other generations to shatter social norms.
• Worldbuilding and worldbreaking in alt-history: There is a special slice of SFF dedicated expressly to imagining our world in a slightly different historical light. If you’re a creator of such work, we look forward to talking together about the strengths and challenges of writing in this dynamic subgenre and form.

Writers, don’t miss out on SFWA’s Nebula Awards Conference in Chicago!

We’ll have more programming news for you in the coming weeks, and we can’t wait to see you out, in person or online. Secure your tickets today!