Joan Hanke-Woods. Copyright © 2013 Andrew I. Porter; all rights reserved.

Award-winning artist Joan Hanke-Woods, also known as Delphyne Woods, died of unknown causes in early September reports SF Site News. She was 67.

“In 1949 my paternal grandfather taught me to read using his son’s science fiction pulp magazines stored in the attic of the family bungalow in Chicago’s Ravenswood neighborhood,” she said in her artist’s bio for Chicon 7.

She discovered sf fandom at Windycon in 1978 and soon became one of the leading fanartists, sending portfolios of her photocopied work to several editors at a time. File 770 ran quite a few of her full-page illustrations as covers. She created the centerpiece/centerfold and other art for Bill Bowers’ live performance Outworlds 50 in 1987.

Hanke-Woods won the Fanzine Activity Achievement Awards (FAAns) Best Serious Artist category in 1979 and 1980. After being nominated six times for the Best Fan Artist Hugo, she finally won in 1986, her last year on the ballot. Then she gafiated. But just recently she became active in fandom again.

While providing art for fanzines, she was also making sales to prozines and book publishers. Her art appeared in Galaxy, Fantastic Films, and The Comics Journal and in books by R.A. Lafferty and Joan D. Vinge.

She was Fan Guest of Honor at the 1984 WindyCon in Chicago.

Delphyne Woods. From Chicon 7 website.

 [Thanks to Steven H Silver and Andrew Porter for the story.]