Registration is now open for the transformed professional development conference.
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), today unveiled the virtual home for SFWA’s 2020 Nebula Conference Online and showcased features of the upcoming professional development conference for science fiction and fantasy writers.
“We have been offering a streaming extension of the Nebulas for the past two years, with a long-term plan for more. With this new platform, not only will we be able to include people who would not otherwise be able to attend the Nebula Conference, but we’ll also be able to offer year-round opportunities for education and outreach,” SFWA President Mary Robinette Kowal said.
The Conference, Transformed
This year’s transformed Nebula Conference will be held entirely online and will include two live tracks of live-streamed panels such as “Being a Creative in 2020: Building Community, Visibility, and Audience in a Virtual World”; “Blades and Badasses: Disability and Swordwork,” and “Writing Middle Grade with This Year’s Norton Award Nominee” along with a third self-guided track of pre-recorded presentations which attendees can view at their leisure.
SFWA’s successful conference mentorship program will also continue this year with one-on-one video conversations between early-career writers and established authors. Supporting content including writing workshops, forums, chats, and virtual room parties (including a dance party hosted by bestselling author and former SFWA president John Scalzi) will round out the weekend.
The 2020 Nebula Conference Online will be held from May 29-31. Registration, which includes three days of online panels with real-time interaction, an annual subscription to archived content, and a one-year subscription to SFWA’s quarterly magazine the Bulletin, will be $150.
Kowal said that “SFWA’s vision for this year’s conference is for attendees to feel elevated through the content, enjoy a sense of community with their peers, and have an opportunity for celebration. We hope this year’s conference will replicate the informative, exciting, and social experience that the Nebula Conference has always offered, while being more accessible than ever before, and welcoming attendees from around the world who may never have had the chance to attend previously.”
The annual culmination of the conference is the Nebula Awards ceremony, a gala event in which SFWA members award the 2019 Nebula Awards® to the best works of science fiction and fantasy of the year. This year’s event will also take place virtually and will be live-streamed to conference attendees and the public alike, on May 30th at 8:00 PM ET.
Taking a New Direction
With today’s announcement, SFWA officially launched the 2020 Nebula Conference Online registration page, an online entry point for conference attendees that shares the aesthetic of the conference while the full conference experience is finalized.
This year’s transformed Nebula Conference comes in response to public health measures addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, which have limited in-person gatherings and instituted physical distancing policies across the United States.
For the first time, part of the proceeds from this year’s conference will go to SFWA’s “Where The Need Is Greatest” fund to provide grants to members to address the financial difficulties experienced by many of SFWA’s members as a result of the unprecedented circumstances surrounding COVID-19. In addition, SFWA’s Emergency Medical Fund is available for members who have unexpected medical bills that interfere with their ability to write.
“We are all aware of the hardships that our members have experienced — and will continue to experience — as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Kowal said. “It’s our hope that the 2020 Nebula Conference Online will continue to be a valuable resource for everyone who can attend, member and non-member alike, while also raising much-needed funds to help those in our community who have been hardest hit by the disease and its repercussions.”
New Look, New Feel
Visitors to the 2020 Nebula Conference Online landing page will notice the refreshed and redesigned SFWA logo, the work of SFWA’s new art director, Lauren Raye Snow. The new look and feel for SFWA’s logo is part of a planned refresh for the organization’s publications, web sites, and visual assets. The new-look will extend across all parts of the 2020 Nebula Conference Online materials and is inspired by the fantastic visual aesthetic of early 20th century graphic arts.
Snow said, “I’m excited by the opportunity to reclaim and explore a classic domain with culturally expansive motifs, characters, and messages.”
Intended to be timeless, invoking both the WPA’s National Parks posters and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Space Tourism project: the update captures the best of that pioneering spirit as 2020 launches SFWA into the future.
Visit the 2020 Nebula Conference Online Registration Page: https://nebulas.sfwa.org/nebula-conference-2020-announcement/
