Bruce Ballon's book Unseen Masters was nominated for an Origins Award for Best Role-Playing Game Adventure of 2001. The winners will be announce at the 2002 Origins Game Expo, the North American Games Showcase, in Columbus, Ohio, July 4-7. The Origins Awards are the highest honour conveyed for excellence in hobby game design. Past winners have included such classic games as Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, and Civilization. Unseen Masters is also the first RPG game module to be nominated for a Bram Stoker Award.

The Grand Prix de la science-fiction et du fantastique québécois 2002 went to Natasha Beaulieu. Other finalists included Laurent McAllister and Danielle Simard. The $2,500 prize was awarded on April 25, in Quebec City.

Joël Champetier's 13th book, Les Sources de la magie (Alire), a humorous fantasy, was published this spring.  As well, it looks like the movie adaptation of his novel La Peau blanche, for which he co-wrote the screenplay, is a go; more details will follow.

E. L. Chen  has a short-short forthcoming in Challenging Destiny, titled "Bobby's First ABC's."

Candas Jane Dorsey's book Paradigm of Earth (Tor) has been shortlisted for the second annual Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic.

Donna Farley's poem "Wizards" will be reprinted in an upcoming issue of Spellbound Another poem, "The Poet's Attic" will appear in Star*Line. She is about to hand in her non-fiction book Seasons of Grace to Conciliar Press for publication later this year.

Phyllis Gotlieb's poetry book, Red Blood Black Ink White Paper, spanning 40 years of work, is now out from Exile Editions. Phyllis read from the book at Harbourfront on March 20.  Phyllis's new novel MindWorlds is now out from Tor Books.

Phyllis was profiled in the May 20 issue of Maclean's Magazine in an article entitled "Grandmother of Us All."

Hiromi Goto's novel The Kappa Child (2001 Red Deer Press) has been chosen for the 2001 James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award. The award will be presented at Readercon, July 12-14 in Burlington, Mass. Hiromi will receive $1000 in prize money and an original artwork created by Kandis Elliott. The James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award was created in 1991 to honor Alice Sheldon, who wrote under the pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr. It is presented annually to a short story or novel that explores and expands gender roles in science fiction and fantasy.

The Kappa Child has also been shortlisted for the second annual Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic.

Jan Lars Jensen's story "The Secret History of the Ornithopter" is currently nominated for the Seiun award in Japan.

Marie Jakober's novel The Black Chalice (EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing) was sold to The Science Fiction Book Club (New York) and was a featured selection for May. The Black Chalice was previously short-listed for the first annual Canadian Sunburst Award, has been selected as a finalist for ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year Award, and won a 2001 IPPY Award for fantasy and science fiction. The trade paperback edition of The Black Chalice was recently published by ACE (Penguin Putnam - New York).

Marie's short story "Slither" appeared in the recent anthology The Blue and the Gray Undercover, edited by Ed Gorman and published by Forge.

A historical novel with some SF elements will be coming out from Forge in December, entitled: Only Call Us Faithful; A Novel of the Union Underground. Book club rights for this novel have also been sold.

Sandra Kasturi launched a new poetry chapbook, The Day I Ate Jupiter (and other poems), edited by David Clink, in Toronto on March 20. Also launched at the same event were David Clink's The Surly Blondes of Earth, which Sandra edited, and Herb Kauderer's Ghosts Dream of Mad Men, edited by Carolyn Clink. Sandra's poem "Carnaval Perpetuel" appeared on-line at Strange Horizons in the spring.

John Park has sold a short story, "Imprint," to On Spec.

Holly Phillips's story "Adapting for the Deep," published in On Spec, received an honorable mention in 2001 The Best of the Soft SF Contest.

Ursula Pflug's novel Green Music has been released by Tesseract Books. She also recently had a story up at Infinity Plus.

Mark A. Rayner is the "acting" secretary, co-founder and chief webmonkey of the Emily Chesley Reading Circle, a society dedicated to literary scholarship and frequent meetings in the pub. The society is trying to rehabilitate the reputation of a long-overlooked speculative fiction writer of the late-Victorian era, Emily Chesley. If you haven't heard of her, be sure to visit the site.

Kate Riedel's story "To Others We Know Not Of," originally published in Weird Tales, will appear in Harper/Eos's best fantasy anthology. Kate has recently sold two stories to On Spec, "Chasing Chickens," for the Shakespeare theme issue (so far), and "Kid Brother," publication date to be announced.

Vincent W. Sakowski's novel Some Things Are Better Left Unplugged, published by Eraserhead Press, was officially launched on March 21at McNally Robinson Bookstore in Saskatoon.

Karl Schroeder is pleased to announce the publication of his second solo novel, Permanence, which has been garnering highly favorable reviews. His previous novel, Ventus, will be published in a two-volume French translation in June, by Editions Denoel of France. There is also a rumored Russian edition, not confirmed yet. Meanwhile, his novella "The Dragon of Pripyat" was translated into French for the magazine Bifrost, and another story, "Making Ghosts", will appear in an upcoming issue of Solaris. Karl has completely revamped his website, which, he says, "is now 'bloggish' and full of new and interesting material."

Douglas Smith's Aurora-eligible story, "By Her Hand, She Draws You Down" was selected for The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror (Volume 13), as well as for another antho, Fresh Blood. The story first appeared last year in the UK magazine, The 3rd Alternative, #28.

Doug is currently "Foreign Author of the Month" at Twilight Tales website, which is featuring his other Aurora-eligible story, "The Red Bird." He has an upcoming story in the all-Canadian author issue of Oceans of the Mind later this year, the current issue of infinityplus has a reprint of his story "New Year's Eve," and he has translated reprints appearing in Czerwony Karzel (Poland), Dramatourges of the Yann (Greece) and Science-Fiction Magazine (France).

Isaac Szpindel has a story in Julie Czerneda's Wonder Zone Explorer anthology, and an episode of the series Rescue Heroes called "Underwater Nightmare" airing on WB and Teletoon. The episode is a cool SF concept of a disaster at an undersea amusement park built around a dormant marine volcano.

You can see Ed on stage July 23 to August 4 at the Souris Valley Theatre in Estevan, Saskatchewan, performing in the two-person musical Cocktails for Two Hundred.