Chelsea Mueller today resigned as Interim President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. Mueller had been in office only since the beginning of August, having as SFWA’s VP become the organization’s Interim President following the resignation of SFWA President Jeffe Kennedy on August 1.
Anthony W. Eichenlaub, SFWA Secretary, has stepped up as Interim President. He says there will still be a Town Hall for members on September 10. And SFWA’s Board will be sticking to the agenda topics that were previously scheduled.
Chelsea Mueller sent a statement to SFWA members today that said in part:
…With the immense change happening in our organization right now and the need to respond swiftly, thoughtfully, and with full attention, I’d be doing a disservice to SFWA by remaining in a key role that could cause lag in acting quickly and appropriately.
Burnout is a constant refrain within our volunteers, and I can see why. Since taking an officer role on the board on July 1, I’ve worked nearly the hours of a full-time job. So many tasks for our officers could be off-loaded to appropriate staff members if we reviewed our structure. I have shared input with the Executive Director and the Board around what roles I think the organization may need moving forward to better balance the load and allow the Board of Directors to act as a steering governance body instead of an operational one.
One of my main initiatives for this term was to see our official website overhauled to improve navigation and discoverability. I have already prepared a document for a Request for Proposal (RFP) to begin that process (though it needs input and validation from the InfoSys and Accessibility committees). If the continuing board wants to move forward with the RFP, I am willing to advise on the process to select a vendor and negotiate pricing.
Also, because it feels inappropriate to leave during this time and ignore the current situation, I will depart by saying that I believe our staff—current and past—care deeply about SFWA and deserve respect, kindness, and fairness. I will debrief with whomever I need on the board in order to pass on the limited knowledge I’ve gained in these last few weeks on the priority matters at hand.
I thank you all for your trust in me, the stories you write, and the expertise you share. I’ve learned so much from our members, and it’s been an honor to serve you on the board the last year.
New Interim President Anthony W. Eichenlaub followed with a statement of his own:
Dear SFWA Membership,
In the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams wrote “A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.” The towel is there to protect from panic and ease anxiety during an adventure. I realize that this is a challenging time. We have our towels and are preparing.
Our president and vice president have both stepped down. Most of our employees have resigned.
SFWA is at a critical moment.
I hope you’ll take a pause to go through all of the emotions you are feeling because you’re right. Whatever you are feeling right now is appropriate because something you deeply care about is threatened. And many of us do love this organization. When it is functioning well, SFWA is truly a force for good, and it is unique in this industry.
Now let’s take a deep breath, in fact several breaths.
I ask that you think of one thing that you can do to help SFWA move forward. Not one hundred things that someone else can do, but one thing that you can do. Maybe you can think of a way to improve communication on a committee that you are on. Maybe you can lend your unique expertise when the next volunteer call comes out for a targeted task force. Maybe the only thing you can do is vote in the upcoming special election. On that note, we will be sending more information on this election in the coming weeks, and we ask that you please vote.
Don’t get me wrong, though. I still want that list of a hundred things that we can do. I’ve seen dozens of great suggestions in the past few weeks, and I do not want that to stop.
Because I have stepped into the interim President role and was not elected on a platform, I feel like it might be good if I share a little bit about my philosophy for the Board. I believe that the Board’s duty is to provide direction, both ethical and strategic. I believe that the Board should rely heavily on the expertise and efforts of employees and volunteers to accomplish the organization’s mission. In its current state, Board members take on too much. This leads to Board member burnout and it leads to reduced involvement in member volunteers. It also takes autonomy away from the volunteers still involved, which I believe is one of several causes for volunteer burnout. This is a vicious cycle that we need to break.
That said, I am treating this short-term position as my primary job. I currently have the privilege of financial security and a lack of hard deadlines. I do not expect your next elected President to follow suit, but I do believe that at this critical point the extra attention will benefit SFWA.
I believe in transparency. There are limits, of course, but I believe that when we hit a limit to what can be ethically, legally, or safely disclosed, I at least owe you a reason. Please hold me to that.
The Board will be sticking to the agenda topics that were previously scheduled, and I am looking forward to the upcoming Town Hall on September 10th. I’m also planning to write more letters to the membership with updates on what SFWA is currently doing.
Still processing all of this? Me too.
The only way that I know of to move forward in a constructive and productive way is to find that one thing that might make things better. My one thing is accepting this position as interim President. It’s a big one, but yours doesn’t have to be. I’m going to need all the help I can get.
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For clarity, Anthony has been the Secretary since July 1; prior to that, he was a Director-at-Large.
So do we know what’s the cause of all this? I feel like I picked up an issue of a comic book I used to read but all the characters have changed and I’m missing the issue when the current plot was explained [not a criticism of this post – I mean in general with the SFWA]
Thank you. I even reported that. Should have scrolled down farther in my election post when I reread it today.
Echoing Camestros Felapton’s comment, I’d had the impression that SFWA was, by and large, a smoothly running organization. At a guess, there was Drama happening out of the public eye that reached a critical mass? (Shades of The Worldcon That Must Not be Named….)
I hope SFWA is going to survive whatever the current crisis is.
I’m not a SFWA member so can’t read the Forum and find out. Which has the advantage that I am not having to hold any guild secrets.
As I am a full SFWA member, if not an active one, I tried logging in to the boards to ask a polite WTF?! I didn’t remember my password, so I reset it, and that said I’d succeeded.Then Iried to log on.
Nope. It gives up trying to log me in. And since we read that the staff has all quit, I expect nothing can be done until they get a new webmaster
Wonderful. Let me say appropriately, as we are in a hotel in London, having come down after Worldcon, that as the lady said, We are not amused.
So no actual information. Shocking. Maybe they’ll learn from their mistakes, but from what the new interim president is saying, they won’t.
Michael Damian Thomas has offered some details on X about what is going on and linked to the SFWA business discussion forum where members can find out more.
Thanks.
Having read it – yes, sounds bad.
So when is somebody going to finally decide that transparency is more important whatever overly broad NDA they may have signed years ago here? In some ways this is even worse than the collapse of the RWA. At least that played out in public and people have a pretty good idea of what went on. SFWA just seems to have melted down behind closed doors and nobody seems to be willing to say anything.
I couldn’t click through to the Michael’s X post. Anyone care to try to give a short characterization of what’s happening? Is it just everyone quit at the same time, or are there more problematic structural or cultural issues lurking somewhere?
That’s not at all ominous, nope.
To summarize (for my dog is named hannah):
* One employee left and was not replaced
* One employee asked for accessibility accommodations, gave 90 day notice when they didn’t get them, and was immediately locked out of SFWA email
* Multiple committees have had members forced out, and committee members say there is little/no communication from the Board
* Claims about NDAs
FYI, if you can’t see the thread because you don’t have a twitter account, one workaround is to replace x.com with xcancel.com in the URL.
Organisations established to represent member’s interests really shouldn’t be using NDAs
Thanks, Avilyn. Your explication is greatly appreciated.
I posted this a friend’s FB page, because I see a lot of people trying to make all this more nefarious that it probably is.
I’m not a member, but having been a member of the SFWA at one time, I think one point made by Eichenlaub stands out: “I currently have the privilege of financial security and a lack of hard deadlines.”
And therein lies a lot of the problem. When the SFWA was in it’s prime, authors were making living wages and could allocate time to both their work and volunteering/chairing committees of various organizations. Having served as a volunteer on the service board of a worldwide organization, I can tell you it was like having a part-job, and I was merely a committee member, not a trustee, or in any position that required me to sit on more than one committee. That experience did give me a good understanding of the time-commitment people make when volunteering for these types of positions.
Nowadays, most writers must work a full-time job, if not for income, then for health insurance (if you’re in the US), write a book, market the books you already have out there, because the publishers are only marketing for a select few. Writing novels makes you zero dollars unless you’re selling millions of books and can keep getting contracts, or if the publishers keep your work out there long enough for it to build a following.
There are a handful of authors out there with that kind of recognition and who are making that kind of money, but most aren’t going to spend time volunteering for an organization. The rest of us are slogging through full-time jobs, family issues of all shapes and varieties, and I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I don’t have the kind of income that allows me to hire landscapers, cleaners, or any other luxuries that will make my life easier. I am exceptionally fortunate that no one in family is sick, because if they were, I’d have that on my plate, too. I am EXCEPTIONALLY fortunate that my husband does the emotional labor of managing the household expenses, taxes, etc., etc., etc. I get exactly 2 days a week off to clean my house, do my laundry, deal with household issues, and if I’m really lucky, I might even get some writing in.
Do I have extra time to deal with the issues of a 501(c)(3) company on top of all of that? No. And from what I’ve seen of other authors like me, they don’t either. So I really don’t believe there is anything nefarious going on. The SFWA seems to be working to realign itself with the 21st century publishing model and the time constraints most modern authors are under. This will take reorganization and a realistic understanding of the financial instability most authors face.
A decades-long member wrote that the big problems started when small-press and self-published authors were allowed in, diluting the membership. The value of SFWA’s voice thus rendered less influential.
Damon Knight and many others apparently rolling in their graves, or so my ouija board says.
What is being diluted by allowing small press and self-published authors to join SFWA whose work has earned $1,000? Is the $100 they pay in yearly dues not worth as much as the $100 paid by a writer who sold three stories for three cents a word back in 1994?
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