Joanna Russ - our next author - receives 2015 SFWA Solstice Award (jointly?)
Stuart Grout
Joanna Russ and Stanley Schmidt: Recipients of the 2015 SFWA Solstice Awards
SFWA is pleased to announce Joanna Russ and Stanley Schmidt as the recipients of the 2015 SFWA Solstice Awards. These awards are granted in recognition of the positive impact and influence the recipients and their work have had on the science fiction and fantasy genres. The awards will be presented at SFWA’s 50th Annual Nebula Awards Weekend in Chicago, IL, May 4-7, 2015.
JOANNA RUSS (1937-2011)
Besides honoring her contributions as a fiction writer, SFWA is also honoring her roles as mentor, teacher, editor, and critic–indeed one of the co-creators of SF Feminist Criticism.
How To Suppress Women’s Writing is not just an important work in our field, but an important work in any field. As John Clute wrote in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: “With Russ’s third novel, The Female Man (1975), which awaited publication for some time, programmatic feminist fiction may be said to have come of age in American sf, though it would be unfair to describe this complex tale as exhausted by the iteration of its burden… she was a thoroughly grounded intellectual, and every word she wrote, fiction or nonfiction, was shaped by thought in action. Despite this – or perhaps because of this – she remained exceptionally persuasive. She told often unpalatable truths in tales that were, as pure story, a joy to read.”
Russ’s other works included Picnic on Paradise, The Hidden Side of the Moon, Magic Mommas,Trembling Sisters, Puritans and Perverts: Feminist Essays, and The Country You Have Never Seen: Essays and Reviews. She passed in 2011.
“How to Suppress Women’s Writing, taught me how =not= to talk about the quality of others work. I’m pleased that we are honoring Joanna and sad we did not do it while she still lived. In a better world, the Trans Temporal Agency swept her into a future where her back doesn’t hurt and the last thing that beings use to discuss a person’s worth is their gender.” ~Steven Gould, SFWA President