Michael Payne has been awarded the 2013 Kevin O’Donnell Jr. Service to SFWA Award for his outstanding work on behalf of the organization.

Payne has been coordinating SFWA’s Circulating Book Plan since 1992. The Circulating Book Plan is a way for SFWA members to see a fair percentage of the new SF and fantasy books being published in order to recommend the ones they like for the Nebula Awards®. There are nine groups around North America, each with four or five members mailing books one to the other and each with a repository library at the end.

An interview with the winner is posted on the SFWA blog:

How long have you been a member of SFWA?

I joined in 1992, I guess–Joe Haldeman was president, at any rate–and the first thing I saw in the old Forum was a message saying they needed someone to co-ordinate the Circulating Book Plan. “Nearly free books,” I thought to myself, and I’ve been trying to keep the thing going ever since.