SFPA’s 2018 Grand Master Nominees

Voting continues as Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) members decide who will be honored as Grand Master this year. Three candidates are under consideration: Ann K. Schwader, David Lunde, and LeRoy Gorman.

  • Ann K. Schwader is a two-time Rhysling Award winner (short form 2010, long form 2016) and a two-time Bram Stoker Award Finalist for her weird/dark SF poetry collections Dark Energies (P’rea Press 2015) andWild Hunt of the Stars (Sam’s Dot Publishing, 2010. Her other poetry collections include Twisted in Dream (Hippocampus Press, 2011), the SF/Lovecraftian sonnet sequence In the Yaddith Time (Mythos Books, 2007), Architectures of Night (Dark Regions Press, 2003), The Worms Remember (Hive Press, 2001), and Werewoman (Nocturnal Publications, 1990). In company with Keith Allen Daniels and Jerry H. Jenkins, she made up one-third of The Weird Sonneteers (Anamnesis Press, 2000). A selection of her SF verse also appeared in Time Frames (Rune Press, 1991). She has contributed dark verse to several Chaosium Press anthologies — Mark of the Beast, The Nyarlathotep Cycle, The Innsmouth Cycle, and The Book of Eibon — as well as to She Walks in Shadows (Innsmouth Free Press, 2015), Tales of Jack the Ripper (Word Horde, 2013), Deepest Darkest Eden (Miskatonic River Press, 2013), A Season in Carcosa (Miskatonic River Press, 2012), Fungi (Innsmouth Free Press, 2012), Horror for the Holidays (Miskatonic River Press, 2011), Candle in the Attic Window (Innsmouth Free Press, 2011), and Future Lovecraft (Innsmouth FreePress, 2011). She was also Poet Laureate for NecronomiCon Providence(2015).

Her most recent weird fiction collection is Dark Equinox & Other Tales of Lovecraftian Horror (Hippocampus Press, 2015). An earlier collection, Strange Stars & Alien Shadows (Lindisfarne Press) appeared in 2003.

Her mainstream haiku have also appeared in several anthologies, including Haiku 2015 (Modern Haiku Press, 2015), Haiku in English (Norton, 2013), and Haiku 21 (Modern Haiku Press, 2011).

A lifelong resident of the Rocky Mountains, Ann lives, writes, and volunteers at her local branch library in Westminster, CO.

  • LeRoy Gorman lives in Napanee, Ontario, Canada. He was born in Smiths Falls, Ontario in 1949 and raised on a farm near Merrickville. After graduating from Carleton and Queen’s universities, he embarked on a 38-year teaching career, beginning with the Ontario Ministry of Correctional Services and ending with the Algonquin and Lakeshore Catholic District School Board. His poetry, much of it visual (mostly minimalist and haiku, or haiku-like), has appeared in print since 1976 in various presentations worldwide, and has garnered numerous awards. His visual poetry has also been displayed in exhibitions, internationally. A few of his two dozen published poetry books and chapbooks include: whose smile the ripple warps, wind in the keys, heart’s garden, and fast enough to leave this world. He is also past editor of Haiku Canada Publications (Haiku Canada Newsletter 1995 to 2006, Haiku Canada Review 2007 to 2017, various annual anthologies and broadsides). Since 1998, he has published poetry leaflets and postcards under his PawEpress imprint. In addition to writing under his own name, he has published under at least 50 pseudonyms. He is a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, the Haiku Society of America, and a life member of Haiku Canada. In 2012-2013, LeRoy Gorman was appointed honorary curator of the American Haiku Archives at the California State Library in Sacramento ”in recognition of his devotion to and enthusiasm for haiku development and exploration in Canada, with exemplary influence upon all English-language haiku across North America and abroad through his publications and editing, and his decades-long support of the Haiku Canada organization. His poetry consistently shows admirable creativity, courage, and range, embracing both traditional and visual/minimalist approaches to haiku and related genres of poetry.”
  • David Lunde was born in Berkeley, California in 1941 and raised in Saudi Arabia, where his father was an engineer with the Arabian American Oil Co. After graduating from Knox College in 1963, he attended the Iowa Writer’s Workshop on the recommendation of Archibald MacLeish, where he studied poetry, fiction writing and translation and received his M.F.A. in 1967. In his second year, he was awarded the Old Gold Fellowship in Writing, which paid his tuition for a year. After that, he supported himself by inking charts and graphs of satellite data for Dr. James A. Van Allen in the Physics and Astronomy Department, and occasionally babysitting for Kurt Vonnegut. After graduation, he taught English literature and creative writing, and directed the creative writing program at SUNY @ Fredonia. While there, he and Theodore Burtt, Jr. founded The Basilisk Press, which published 13 books of poetry by authors from all over the United States. He was also Managing Editor of Drama and Theater magazine, Poetry Editor of The Riverside Quarterly and Contributing Editor of Escarpments. Upon retiring in 2001, he moved to North Bend, Oregon with his wife, fantasy novelist Patricia A. McKillip.

Approximately 1,000 of Lunde’s poems, stories, articles and translations have appeared internationally in more than 250 periodicals, and 40 anthologies. He has published eight books of poems, and in collaboration with Prof. Mary M.Y. Fung, The Carving of Insects, a translation of the collected poems of the 20th C. Chinese poet Bian Zhilin, which won the 2007 PEN USA Translation Award. Past awards include the Academy of American Poets Prize, and two Rhysling Awards for Best Science Fiction Poem of the Year. Another collection of Lunde’s Chinese translations, Breaking the Willow, was published in fall 2008, and in 2011 he and two fellow translators, Geoffrey Waters and Michael Farman, published a new translation of the classic Chinese anthology 300 Tang Poems.

David’s published books include Ironic Holidays (Sariya Press, 1965, chapbook, hand printed by author); Les Papillons (Lupo Press, 1965, chapbook illustrated and hand printed by Philip Powell); Sludge Gulper 1 (The Basilisk Press, 1971); Calibrations (Allegany Mountain Press, 1981); Blues for Port City (Mayapple Press, 1995,(chapbook of SF poetry); Heart Transplants & Other Misappropriations (Mellen Poetry Press, 1996); Nightfishing in Great Sky River: poems of inner and outer space (Anamnesis Press, 1999); The Carving of Insects (by Bian Zhilin, 2006; translated by Mary M.Y. Fung and David Lunde); Instead: Poems by David Lunde (Mayapple Press, 2007); Breaking the Willow: Poems of Parting, Exile, Separation & Reunion (White Pine Press, 2008. Translated by David Lunde); plus 300 Tang Poems (White Pine Press, 2011; co-translated by Geoffrey Waters, Michael Farman and David Lunde). Forthcoming novels are The Grandson of Heinrich Schliemann & Other Truths and Fictions, a collection of prose, poems and flash fiction (Mayapple Press, Spring 2014) and A Full Load of Moonlight, a collection of Chan (Zen) Buddhist poetry translated by Mary M.Y. Fung and David Lunde (Musical Stones Culture, Ltd., publication date uncertain).

An SFPA Grand Master designation may be conferred by the SFPA President with consensus of the membership to an individual living at the time of selection whose body of work shall reflect the highest artistic goals of the SFPA, who shall have been actively publishing within the target genres of Science Fiction and Fantasy for a period of no fewer than 20 years, and whose poetry has been noted to be exceptional in merit, scope, vision and innovation.

To date, the SFPA has conferred seven Grand Master Awards, to David C. Kopaska Merkel (2017), Steve Sneyd and Marge Simon (2015), Jane Yolen (2010), Ray Bradbury (2008), Robert Frazier (2005) and Bruce Boston (1999).