Hugo Win Makes Weird Tales Editor a Local Celeb

Weird Tales’ winning the Best Semiprozine Hugo made a splash in editor Ann VanderMeer’s hometown paper, the Tallahassee (FL) Democrat:

She was all glammed-up for this year’s tony World Science Fiction Convention, attended by roughly 5,000 fans and industry people and known as a Really Big Deal in the sci-fi world. Decked out in a new ankle-length, pink-and-white flowered dress and pink shoes, VanderMeer was there as the fiction editor for Weird Tales, a dark-fantasy and sci-fi magazine first published in 1923. The magazine had been nominated for a Hugo Award.

But neither she nor the magazine’s editorial and creative director, 34-year-old Stephen Segal of Rockville, Md., thought they had much of a chance to win the “Best Semiprozine” award. Weird Tales (which has a circulation of 5,000 to 8,000, VanderMeer said) had never won – or even been nominated – for the award, which is given to the best small-press magazine with part-time staff.

***

Many people in Tallahassee link science fiction and the name VanderMeer with Ann’s husband, Jeff, a sci-fi writer. They’ve been married for seven years. Ann was married before, and has two grown children and a grandson. Ann and Jeff were long-time friends who shared a love of sci-fi and fantasy.

Since marrying, they’ve edited several anthologies together, including two “Best American Fantasy” collections from Prime Books.

For Ann, finding small fantasy-story gems has long been a passion. She started her own magazine, Silver Web, in 1988 in order to publish good sci-fi and fantasy. (Her last edition – she generally printed from 500 to 2,000 issues – came out in 2002.) And though she earns a small paycheck now for her work as a fiction editor at Weird Tales, it continues to be primarily a labor of love.

[Thanks to Michael Walsh for the link.]