Sean Stewart and Charles de Lint have both been nominated for World Fantasy Awards.  Sean was nominated for Mockingbird (Ace), while Charles was nominated for Someplace to be Flying (Tor).

The Georgia Straight book section (August 5-12 issue) picked Peter Watts's novel Starfish as its Choice of the Week.

The Writer's Digest Book Club has ordered another thousand copies of Crawford Kilian's book Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Matt Hughes is finalizing terms of a two-book deal with Warner Aspect for a US mass-market edition of his first novel, a comic fantasy called Fools Errant, plus a sequel. The book was originally released in Canada by Maxwell Macmillan in 1994 just in time for that publisher to be devoured and dissolved in the Paramount/Viacom corporate feeding frenzy, so it was never marketed. 

Matt has been writing suspense fiction lately -- one thriller published, two more circulating to New York editors, and some short story sales in the US -- and is  just wrapping his first ghostwriting job, the memoirs of Len Marchand, the first Indian to be elected to the Canadian House of Commons.

Matt also says he recently sold his first crime fiction short story ever to  Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. It's called "Something to Sell" and 's about an ambitious but unlucky Vancouver burglar.

Stories by Sandra Kasturi, Eileen Kernaghan and Cory Doctorow were all Honorable Mentions in the 12th annual Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthology, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling and published by St. Martin's Press.

A select group of reviewers, authors, and professional magazine editors were asked to submit five ranked choices. Semi-finalists resulted from this much larger list of nominations. One of the Sturgeon heirs was then involved in selecting the finalists. The winner and two runners-up were chosen by Sturgeon award judges James Gunn, Frederik Pohl, and Kij Johnson and announced at a banquet on July 9, 1999 in Lawrence, Kansas, in conjunction with the presentation of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel and the 1999 inductees to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

"I Love Paree,"a story Cory collaborated on with Michael Skeet, has been accepted for publication by Gardner Dozois for Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine.  Cory describes it as "a gonzo story set in a futuristic, revolutionary 'Paree' in which the Communards have nationalized the Wal-Marts and are industriously tearing out the epoxy-resin cobblestones laid down by the Disney Company, and are replacing them with good, French epoxy-resin cobblestones."

Michael Skeet's story "Near Enough To Home" from Arrowdreams: An Anthology of Alternate Canadas, edited by Mark Shainblum and John Dupuis, appears in David Hartwell's Year's Best SF #4.

Edward Willett's third young-adult novel, Andy Nebula: Interstellar Rock Star, has just been published by Roussan Publishers in Montreal, as part of their Out of This World SF/fantasy line.  A favorable review appeared in the July issue of Quill & Quire.

Ed has also just sold his short story "Moon Baby" to Artemis Magazine.  It will appear in the second issue, dated Summer 2000.

Catherine Donahue Girczyc is working on a Disney Channel show called So Weird which is shot in Vancouver. She reports she's been working on it since April, and is the Script Coordinator (but says, "please, no one send me any scripts, we don't/can't, due to legalities, read them"). She says it's great fun and she really enjoys being part of the story department on an SF series

Eileen Kernaghan has sold a short story to the 1999 Crime Through Time anthology of historical mysteries, edited by Sharan Newman and Miriam Grace Monfredo for Berkley Books. The story, "Dinner with H.P.B." revolves around Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophist Society in late Victorian London.

Check out the new Angel/Angle electronic horror/fantasy/SF Poetry Anthology site (http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/4464). It features poems by, among others, Mary Choo and Eileen Kernaghan.

A review of Joël Champetier's SF novel The Dragon's Eye appeared recently in the New York Times. A review of the French version appeared in Le Devoir, which said it was "as good as Blade Runner.   Almost..."  Says Joël, "I had to smile at that 'almost'!"

Le Devoir also published a review of Jean-Louis Trudel's young adult novel Un automne a Nigelle.

Karl Schroeder was recently interviewed on the subject of  Merlin for the Discovery Channel's program Grand Illusions: The Story of Magic.

Canadian SF was profiled in the June 21 issue of Maclean's Magazine in a story by Brian Bethune entitled "Northern Stars."  SF Canada member Nalo Hopkinson was mentioned as a Campbell Award Nominee, and Phyllis Gotlieb and Joël Champetier both received favorable mention for their latest books from Tor.

On Saturday, June 19, the 1999 Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy was held at Ryerson University, with the help of Ryerson Polytechnic University, the staff of the Merril Collection, the Friends of the Merril Collection, the Canada Council for the Arts through TWUC, the National Science Fiction and Fantasy Society, Veronica Hollinger, Peter Halasz, Tracie Dickey, and Sue McLean.  SF Canada members Nalo Hopkinson and Elisabeth Vonarburg read from their works.

Among the papers given was "Matters of Fact and Fiction: The Magic Realist Challenge to the English-Canadian Tradition" by Annika Hannan, who discussed a tradition of English-Canadian "magic realist" art, including that of painter Christine Pflug, mother of SF Canada member Ursula Pflug.   Another paper was what may be the first critical study on the work of Robert Charles Wilson, presented by member Allan Weiss.