Don Bassie reports that the Made in Canada Newsletter 2003 Prix Aurora Award Supplement is now online. The Prix Aurora Award Supplement is a resource page for the 2003 Prix Aurora Awards. This years supplement includes links to excerpts, cover art, reviews and websites for the nominated Best Long-Form Works in English; complete texts of all of the nominated Best Short-Form Works in English; sample images from the Artistic Achievement works; sample works and information on the Best Work in English:Other nominees, and nominated material and/or information on the finalists in the Fan Categories.  Coming soon (if they're not already there) are excerpts, cover art, reviews and websites for the nominated Best Long-Form Works in French and complete texts of the nominated Best Short-Form Works in French.

Mark Anthony Brennan  recently sold the following short stories: "Humpback IV" to the new British magazine, Here & Now, "Jacob: A Winter's Tale from Copping Moors" to the reinstated Shadowland, and "Athabasca" to Hadrosaur Tales. Over the next six months Mark's work will also be featured in Crux, Descant, Andromeda Spaceways In-flight Magazine, and in the anthologies Open Space: New Canadian Fantastic Fiction and In the Outposts of Beyond.

Mark's articles now appear regularly in InFocus Magazine, and he continues as the fiction editor for SDO Fantasy and SDO Detective.

Dave Duncan's Impossible Odds, A Chronicle of the King's Blades will appear in hardcover in November from Eos. Meanwhile, a paperback reprint of Paragon Lost, A Chronicle of the King's Blades will be out in August. Dave also reports that the third  book of his all-time most popular "The Seventh Sword" series, Destiny of the Sword, is finally available for download at Fictionwise. Books One and Two have been out for some time.

Conventions Dave plans to attend over the rest of the year include Conversion in Calgary August 15 to 17, WorldCon in Toronto August 28 to September 1, and Concept in Montreal November 8, where he'll be Guest of Honour.

Donna Farley won the 2003 Word Guild Award in the Short Story category for her science-fiction story "The Passing of the Eclipse," which appeared in the anthology Sky Songs (Skysong Press 2002, edited by Steve Stanton) and envisions a futuristic, post-cataclysmic, low-tech Earth. The awards, which recognize excellence among Canadian Christian writers, were announced on June 13 at the 19th Annual "God Uses Ink" conference in Guelph, Ontario. Donna's new science-fiction story, "TreeDance," a futuristic story set off-world in a terra-forming environment, will be featured in the Summer issue of Dreams & Visions (#31). Donna has just returned the edited version of her YA SF story "Egg" to Cicada magazine; no publication date has yet been announced.

Marie Jakober's novel Only Call Us Faithful has received the Michael Shaara Award for best Civil War novel of 2002. It has also been shortlisted for the Georges Bugnet Award from the Writers Guild of Alberta.

The book launch for The Stars As Seen from this Particular Angle of Night, a collection of speculative verse (edited by Sandra Kasturi, with a foreword by John Rose, an introduction by Phyllis Gotlieb, an afterword by James Morrow and cover art by Vaclav Vaca, was held  Saturday, June 28, at The Bakka-Phoenix Bookstore, 598 Yonge Street, Toronto. Contributors to the book include Colleen Anderson, Peter Bloch-Hansen, Bruce Boston, Mary E. Choo, Carolyn Clink, David Clink, Peter Crowther, Ian Duhig, R. G. Evans, Donna Farley, Gemma Files, Phyllis Gotlieb, Gavin Grant, Barry Hammond, Charlee Jacob, Sandra Kasturi, Eileen Kernaghan, Susan A. Manchester, Mark McLaughlin, Yves Meynard, Patrick O'Leary, John Park, Jana Phipps, Tom Piccirilli, John Rose, Lucy Cohen Schmeidler, Kathy Shaidle, Marge Simon, Heather Spears, Kiel Stuart, Jason Taniguchi, John Tranter and Carleton Wilson. The book has been handsomely blurbed by  Charles de Lint, Joe Haldeman, David Hartwell, Marie Jakober, Robert Priest and Peter Straub. Copies are available directly from Sandra Kasturi for  $13 CDN/ $10 US (plus shipping).

Claude Lalumière is the "Foreign Author of the Month" for June 2003 at TwilightTales.com; the feature includes a lengthy bio and three new stories, "Anew Day," "Someone to Watch," and "The World's Forgotten Boy and the Scorpions from Hell." Claude's story "The Lost and Found of Years" went to Intracities, an anthology edited by Michael Jasper, while "The Wizard of North America" went to FictionInferno.com

Claude delivered the manuscripts for the anthologies Island Dreams: Montreal Writers of the Fantastic and Open Space: New Canadian Fantastic Fiction to Véhicule Press and Red Deer Press, respectively.

Claude will be serving on the jury of the 2004 Sunburst Award.

Catherine MacLeod sold her short story "Mache" to TaleBones. It should be in issue #27, due out late in 2003.

Joe Mahoney reports that the original pilot for his proposed radio show for CBC Radio, the science fiction and fantasy magazine show Faster Than Light, hosted by Robert J. Sawyer and broadcast in September of last year, is a finalist for an Aurora Award in the Best English Other category. As well, one of the radio plays broadcast in the pilot, a dramatization of Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations," has been selected by an internal CBC jury to be judged at this year's New York Awards in the category of Best Radio drama. The decision as to whether Faster Than Light will become a regular series on CBC Radio has been put off until the fall, when an independent Program Review Committee will be set up to decide such matters.

Joe adds that, "On a personal front, my non-genre short story 'The Screw-up,' about corporate mismanagement, sees the light of day in the July issue of Our Times: Canada's Independant Labour Magazine."

Derwin Mak sold "It Came to Eat Our Chicken Wings" (about a Hooters Girl, an alien, and a car show) to RicePaper, the magazine of Asian Canadian art and culture, Winter 2002 (The Technology Issue), and "The Siren Stone" to Space, Inc., an anthology edited by Julie Czerneda (DAW Books, 2003).

Steven Mills's story "No Life Like It" appeared in the Spring 2003 issue of On Spec, while "Skin to Skin" was published in The Fed Anthology (Anvil Press).  His new website is now up and running.

Nina Munteanu sold short story "A Butterfly in Peking" to Chiaroscuro (to appear in their July-November 2003 issue).

Recent sales by Ursula Pflug include "A River Garden" to Land/Space; "Python" to Album Zutique #1, and "In Dreams We Remember," to LCRW 12. You can read interviews with Ursula online at The Link and Fantastic Metropolis.

Sherry Ramsey's short story "To Walk The Ways" was awarded first place in the Fantasy Writers Dream Short Story Contest.  The judge was Australian fantasy author Jennifer Fallon, and the story will appear in a future issue of Runes Magazine.

Mark Rayner's story "Un Port dans la Tempête" is in the current issue of Solaris (Summer, 2003). Upcoming stories include "Close to the Wind," Far Sector SFFH (Fictionwise.com) and "Courage Translated," a French translation in Phenix.

Cordially Entertaining Emily Chesley, a play based on the speculative life of Emily Chesley, will be performed in St. Catharines this July and in Toronto at Summerworks (in August). Mark collaborated on the script with the theatre group producing the play, Suitcase in Point.

Last (but not least) The Emily Chesley Reading Circle is releasing its first (paper) publication this July, called The Meanderings of the Emily Chesley Reading Circle. In addition to publishing the winning entries of the first two Tundra Prize competitions, it includes the first part of an abridged biography of Emily Chesley, plus a selection of her short stories and poetry that she penned in the time period covered by the bio. More information about both is available at the Emily Chesley Web site.

Simon Rose has been carrying out a number of book-signings at Calgary bookstores in support of his YA novel The Alchemist's Portrait.

Mark Shainblum's story "Endogamy Blues" will be appearing in Claude Lalumiere's upcoming anthology, Island Dreams: Montreal Writers of the Fantastic (to be launched at TorCon3, the World Science Fiction Convention in Toronto August 28 to September 1). Mark says that although he sold a prose superhero story to a print-on-demand anthology in 2001, and has been publishing non-fiction and comics for years, he considers "Endogamy Blues" to be his first true prose science fiction sale, and, he adds, "it couldn't be in better company or with a better editor."

Ellen Datlow is giving Douglas Smith's novelette "Scream Angel" (coming out in the anthology Low Port in August) an honourable mention in the next Year's Best Fantasy & Horror (his third from Ellen Datlow).  Along with Joe Haldeman and Marty Greenberg, Doug is one of the judges for this year's Endeavor Award, given annually to a SF or fantasy novel written by a Pacific North-West writer (US or Canada).  Doug sold a story to the horror anthology, Lingering Dementia, and reprints to infinity plus; Oceans of the Mind, and "ever-so-many to foreign language markets," including China, France, Hungary, and Argentina.

Edward Willett's young adult novel, Spirit Singer (Awe-Struck E-Books/Earthling Press) has been chosen as a finalist in the young adult category of the Dream Realm Awards for best electronically published science fiction and fantasy. The Dream Realm Awards are presented annually to recognize excellence in science fiction, fantasy, and horror in electronically published books. The winners will be announced at ArmadilloCon 25, a literary science fiction convention, August 8-10 in Austin, Texas.

Ed explored both his family and his literary roots on a recent trip to Missouri:  his mother was born on a farm near the town of Butler and many of his relatives still live in the region; and famed SF writer Robert A. Heinlein was born in Butler. The house in which he was born still stands, and has been nicely marked by the city with a sign.  The Butler Public Library also boasts a new wing, the "Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Addition," made possible by a donation from the Heinlein estate. Naturally, Ed took pictures:

Edward Willett outside the birthplace and childhood home of Robert A. Heinlein, in Butler, Missouri.
The Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Addition to the Butler Public Library in Butler, Missouri. Many signed first editions and other Heinlein memorabilia are on display here.

Melissa Yuan-Innes's story  "Space and Time Books" is in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #6; "Waiting for Jenny Rex" is in Full Unit Hookup #3.  Pending stories from Melissa include "Space and Time Books" (which will be reprinted in Weird Tales), "Growing Up Sam," in the Open Space anthology; "Mrs. Cherry's House," in the Island Dreams anthology, and "Restless," appearing in Just Weird Enough and Inracities.