Robert J. Sawyer, Canada’s best-known science fiction writer, has written a series of blog posts discussing people and things he believes are deserving of nominations for the Aurora and Hugo Awards, which will be presented at the World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal this August. In the last of the series, he recommends work by his writing students…one of whom is me!
It was in Rob’s class in writing science fiction, part of the Writing With Style program at the Banff Centre, that Marseguro was born, on September morning in 2005.
Besides Marseguro, he also recommends Tony Pi, one of his students at the University of Toronto in 2001, who has stories “all over the place”; Douglas Smith, a student of his at Ryerson University in 1997, whose first collection, Impossibilia, is now out from PS Publishing; Hayden Trenholm’s novel Defining Diana (Bundoran Press) and his short story “Love In its Season” (OnSpec, Summer 2008)–Hayden took Rob’s workshop with the Imaginative Fiction Writers Association (IFWA) in Calgary in 1996); Susan Forest (IFWA workshop 2003), whose short story “Back” appeared in the June 2008 Analog; Matthew Johnson (University of Toronto 2005), who had two short stories in Asimov’s this year, “Another Country” in the April-May issue and “Lagos” in the August issue, and Randy McCharles, whom Rob also recommended for a fan Aurora for his work on the World Fantasy Convention, who has taken more workshops with Rob than anyone else (IFWA 1996, IFWA 2003, and Banff Centre 2006)and who had his first major pro publication this year: the novelette “Ringing the Changes in Okotoks, Alberta” in Tesseracts Twelve, edited by Claude Lalumière.
I know all of these ex-Rob students except for Matthew Johnson, and for what it’s worth, I echo Rob’s recommendations.
And I thank Rob very much for his!