We're thrilled to present the shortlist for the 2026 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction:

It’s Indigenous History Month! Here’s a list of some of our favourites speculative fiction writers from the so-called “Canada” portion of Turtle Island:

Only 12 hours left - but still plenty of time for other late-night backers like me, or early bird backers tomorrow morn! and you can support @augursociety.bsky.social at some tiers, too! (I'm especially glad to support a Canadian publication! ✨)

I wish that I was in Toronto for this pulp SFF sale! Alt text: a poster advertising a "Fantastic Pulps Show and Sale" at the Toronto Public Library on Saturday, May 30. The poster shows a skeleton draping a pearl necklace around a woman's neck. More details: tpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/events/6a...

I'm super proud of this project. It's designed to help, especially, humanities scholars building datasets. It's a style guide, with tips and guidance for all the many little decisions one makes when making data. Em Nordling did an amazing job writing it. Funded by the NEH until twas terminated!

Bookmarking for teaching next term!

Hugo shortlist observation: the longest novel last year (Tainted Cup, ~120k words) is still shorter than the shortest novels this year (Shroud and Everlasting, ~121k). The longest novel this year is Raven Scholar, ~210k words. (word estimates from Kobo, ymmv)

Fancy some astronomical play? Alicia Mant’s The Study of the Heavens at Midnight During the Winter Solstice, Arranged as a Game of Astronomy, for the Use of Young Students in that Science (1814) represents one of many attempts by women writers to turn scientific learning into fun and games. (1/3)

We would like to draw your attention to two CSECS fellowships whose deadlines have now been extended to May 15: the Peter Sabor Fellowship and the D.W. Smith Fellowship. We encourage you to share this message with eligible colleagues and students! www.csecs.ca/en/announcem...

You can also get Vols 1-3 for a reduced price, if you want even more Canadian sff on your bookshelf!

At under $20, the NEW Broadview Edition of Defoe's vivid, first-person pandemic novel is now out for adoption in your 18th century British Literature courses. 📕Journal of the Plague Year, edited by Celia Barnes & Jack Lynch buff.ly/3YC7tXj

Yeah that’s cool

I can't wait for my pre-order to come in to my local bookstore!

@phdhurtbrain.bsky.social Have you read "The Concert Party" by Mavis Gallant? Some William Morris content! "I said to myself, O.K., imagine your name is Harry Lapwing. Harry Lapwing. You are a prairie Socialist, a William Morris scholar. All your life this will make you appear boring and dull."

I hope science fiction folks pay attention to Solari, the new podcast from @worldsbeyondnumber.bsky.social! Their previous long-form fantasy series was excellent. SF scholars, authors, readers...I'll read your hot takes and Discourse! worlds-beyond-number.simplecast.com/episodes/sol...

I finally went to the History is Painted by the Victors exhibit, and if you have the chance to see Monkman's work - do it! The most moving painting for me was "Going Away Song," a large piece putting the viewer in the direct gaze of Indigenous children during the 1885 hangings at Battleford.

The nomination period for the 2026 Aurora Awards is officially open! All CSFFA members can log into the website at www.csffa.ca and submit up to five works in each our ten categories. Please only nominate what you're familiar with. Nominations close 11:59pm EST on April 4th, 2026. #AuroraAwards2026

It's time! Nominations are now open for the 2026 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, which will be given to a work of imaginative fiction, published in 2025, that reflects the concepts and ideas that were central to Ursula’s own work.

Recommended reading: "Readymade Bodhisattva", the short story by Park Seongwhan, translated in the Kaya Anthology of South Korean Science Fiction.

I just got my annual Public Lending Right cheque for Because Internet from the Canada Council for the Arts, so permit me a thread about what the public lending right is and why you should request books you love from public libraries!

Thinking about an Indigenous colleague's observation that starting a resolution in the depths of winter is counterintuitive. Wait until nature wakes up, friends; it's okay to rest and reflect while the nights are still long.

Bienvenue à Montréal

Very happy to introduce a new tool, BookReconciler! You can take spreadsheets with book data and add subject headings, descriptions, ISBNs, HathiTrust IDs, & more. You can also cluster editions & variations of the same "Work." Led by @thisismattmiller.com and supported by @post45data.bsky.social.

Beware: your to-read list shall grow, quite a lot!

Here are the top 10 most popular post-1945 American authors at the Seattle Public Library over the last 20 years.

I told my SFF students that I'd give them "a few" recs for holiday reading. Reader, I gave 17. 😂

Glad to see @worldsbeyondnumber.bsky.social on this list - it's doing some of the best fantasy storytelling of the past few years, imo. "54 episodes of pure gold," indeed. Excited for their upcoming turn to SF!

It started on the weekend. Ice pancakes form and travel down river toward my bridge 🌿

You really have to read this thread. The genius of Tom Stoppard, the fragility of memory, the magic of theatre — and the glorious stubbornness of a researcher who would not stop.

I once asked a bookseller at a large indie store how many people would have to buy a book for it to get the attention of the store buyer and cause an additional order and they said: Three.

Some more details on my new #ScienceFiction anthology, including one inclusion that I’m especially happy about (thanks in large part to Brooks Hefner’s terrific work in *Black Pulp*)

If you're interested in poetry and AI, can I recommend Toward Eternity by Anton Hur? There's an AI, and later, multiple AIs, who are, as they say, "built on poetry," who think that "Poetry, not your body, is the true vehicle of your soul."

Great news! This is out: Opening the black box of EEBO academic.oup.com/dsh/advance-...

Eligibility lists are now OPEN for Canadian speculative fiction works published in 2025. If you purchased a 2025 membership to vote in the Aurora Awards this past year, you can head over to www.csffa.ca and log in to add works to our lists. 1/

Congratulations to Vajra Chandrasekera (@vajra.me), recipient of the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction for Rakesfall! Chandrasekera's book was chosen by authors Matt Bell, Indra Das, Kelly Link, Sequoia Nagamatsu, and Rebecca Roanhorse.

Excited to share my latest publication, "Generative Aesthetics: On formal stuckness in AI verse." It's published in a special issue in the Journal of Cultural Analytics, expertly edited by Tess McNulty and Laura Chapot, on "Computation and Form, Reconsidered." culturalanalytics.org/article/1448...

Reading the Northanger Abbey chapter of @devoney.bsky.social’s latest book and this “turn a Romance into a novel!” table is killing me 😂

Hampsterdance started as a friendly bet between Canadian artist Deidre LaCarte and her sister. She made a page of animated hamsters set to a chipmunked loop of Whistle Stop from Disney’s Robin Hood (1973). Within months, it took over inboxes & office desktops. Today, it's gone from the live web.

Short story rec on using AI to plan your (social etc) life: Better Living Through Algorithms by Naomi Kritzer. (It's not all bad, though!) clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_05_23/

brb, modifying my SF course slideshow for next year 🔥

Aaron Burr: "And Hamilton wrote...the other...51!" [Federalist papers] Me, every time: "🙏 I love the digital humanities" companions.digitalhumanities.org/DH/?chapter=...

Major congratulations to all the Nommo award nominees for 2025! It was an honor to be able to make the announcement virtually at Seattle worldcon. I've read almost all the nominated stories and they represent some of the best of African speculative fiction. You should definitely check them out!

The Hugo Awards are this weekend, and I start teaching my Hugos course on Wednesday! It's fun to teach a "contemporary literature" course and have it be contemporary, indeed!

BTW, if ppl are looking for repositories of scientific films that can be viewed online, I created this list for a class I taught several years ago on science and film. Happy to hear about any that are missing! library.seattleu.edu/guides/FILM3...

A reminder that Rice/Wake Forest’s Course Workload Estimators are helpful for thinking through class labor (and showing your process to your students, if you like)

Thinking about this more and I really like how it opens up reading as a learned skill that is embodied in a context. I think that's a powerful way to think about it in the wake of AI and in reports of literacy problems.

New from Internet Archive Canada: Queen’s University Library has digitized a collection of rare, self-published sci-fi & fantasy fanzines, making long-lost voices from 1940s–1980s more widely accessible. ⚔️ Start your side quest: blog.archive.org/2025/07/15/s... @internetarchiveca.bsky.social

I've been to @joiedelivresmtl.bsky.social, the SFF, bilingual bookstore in Montreal, four times since it opened four weeks ago. If I could, I'd be there for these two talks as well! Support your locals!