Call for GaH Division Head Applications

The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts is accepting applications for the position of Gothic and Horror Literature Division Head.  IAFA Division Heads are appointed by the IAFA president, on the recommendation of the first vice-president, after formal discussion and majority vote by the Board. The term for a division head is three (3) years, with the possibility to renew once. The deadline for applications is 30 September, 2025, 11:59 p.m. US Eastern/3:59 a.m. UTC.

Each division head organizes and supervises all conference activity within a subdivision of fantastic scholarship. Division heads work under the guidance of the first vice-president and are responsible for recruiting session proposals, formatting these to specified requirements, and for forwarding all information to and from the first vice-president in accordance with agreed deadlines. Division Heads are expected to liaise with other division heads and the first vice-president and have the responsibility to check the draft program for accuracy and A/V needs. At the conference, the division heads oversee sessions in their respective divisions and collect suggestions including concerns, future topics, and potential special guests.

The Gothic and Horror Literature Division welcomes critical scholarship focused on the inter-related modes of Gothic literature and horror literature, as well as closely related modes such as the weird and the grotesque. Papers may explore any aspect of literary horror or the Gothic, including but not limited to the evolution, cultural significance, and theory of these modalities, as well as specific types and typologies, for example: body horror, psychological horror, and philosophical horror. Papers exploring related topics, such as the role of the supernatural, the sublime, monstrosity, or affects including horror, terror, dread or anxiety, as well as interconnections between Gothic and horror literature and other media, including film, comics and games, are also welcome.

Individuals interested in the position should send a cover letter expressing interest in the position that identifies qualifications for the position, briefly addresses how you intend to expand inclusion and representation in your division, and explains what impact you hope to have on the GaH Division. Please include a CV with the application to First Vice President Novella Brooks de Vita (iafa.1vp@fantastic-arts.org) and the outgoing GaH Division Head i(afa.div.gah@fantastic-arts.org).

Want to play a game and support a worthy cause? Join authors C.S.E. Cooney and Carlos Hernandez as they lead an Infernal Creative Salon at 7:30pm EST on 9/17 as a fundraiser for the BIPOC Caucus. Enter a secret underground Zoom room for an hour of imaginative fun.

What is an Infernal Salon? It’s a fun, low-stakes writing workshop, high on community, ix-nay on the essure-pray. Each participant is given a prompt of one or more cards from the very spooky deck that C. S. E. Cooney, Carlos Hernandez, and artist Rebecca Huston invented for their TTRPG “Negocios Infernales.”

To join the fun, log into your IAFA account, go to the ICFA store (under the Member Area dropdown), and purchase a ticket for ten dollars. You will automatically receive an email with instructions to the secret underground Zoom space (aka, The Wormhole). All donations will benefit efforts to serve underrepresented and underfunded groups within the IAFA, so help us get the word out! Members can also gift tickets to non-conference-goers, so you don’t have to be signed up for the conference to join. Please email the BIPOC Caucus representative, Joy Sanchez-Taylor, at jsanchez-taylor@lagcc.cuny.edu with any questions.

We hope to see you in the Wormhole!

• The IAFA is delighted to announce that Ann Leckie, author of the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel Ancillary Justice, will be a Guest of Honor at ICFA 47: (Meta)Cognition in 2026, in Orlando! With Guests of Honor Ted Chiang and Ann Leckie and Guest Scholar Sherryl Vint, ICFA 47 will certainly give us all plenty to think about!

• There will be an exploratory session during VICFA 4 to discuss the potential formation of a queer caucus. Please join us to share your interest in an IAFA queer caucus, as well as how it might serve the IAFA's queer communities. Keep an eye out for this listing in the VICFA program!

• The VICFA 4 program schedule will be released in early September.

• The IAFA Executive Board is in the process of reviewing the responses to the recent referendum on the future of the ICFA. Once the review process is completed,  the board will share the anonymized results.

Please remember that you can follow all IAFA-related news here, as well as on Facebook and Bluesky.

We hope to see you at VICFA 4, and we wish you a great day!

Submission period for Speculative Literature Foundation 2025 Working Class Writers

Grant opens Sept. 1, 2025

September 2025 - The Speculative Literature Foundation will be accepting applications for the

2025 Working Class Writers Grant from September 1 through September 30, 2025.

Since 2013, the $1,000 Working Class Writers Grant has been awarded annually to speculative

fiction writers who are working class, blue-collar, financially disadvantaged, or homeless, who

have been historically underrepresented in speculative fiction due to financial barriers which

make it hard to access the writing world. Such lack of access might include an inability to

purchase a computer, books, and tuition, or to attend conventions or workshops. Often, these

writers, many of whom work more than one job, have less time to write. The SLF seeks to bring

more of these marginalized voices into speculative fiction.

For more information and to apply, visit speculativeliterature.org/grants. Grant applications are

open to all: you do not need to be a member of SLF to apply for or receive a grant.

The Speculative Literature Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting

literary quality in speculative fiction by encouraging promising new writers, assisting established

writers, facilitating the work of quality magazines and small presses in the genre, and

developing a greater public appreciation of speculative fiction. For more information, visit

speculativeliterature.org.

The Speculative Literature Foundation is partially funded by the Oak Park Area Arts Council, in

partnership with the Village of Oak Park and the Illinois Arts Council; the Oak Park River Forest

Community Foundation; and The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.

Latinx Visions 2.0

ONE PLANET—MANY WORLDS

CALL FOR PAPERS

ONLINE CONFERENCE

November 3-7, 2025

Co-Organizers: Matthew David Goodwin, Cathryn Merla-Watson, Taryne Jade Taylor

We invite proposals for “Latinx Visions 2.0,” an online conference to be held November 3-7, 2025. This conference aims to generate new dialogues among scholars, artists, and community members who are engaged with Latinx speculative fiction, art, performance, and protest. To this end we invite proposals for papers, panels, roundtables, workshops, interviews or artist talks, performances or other creative projects, which join diverse Latinx visions with the speculative imagination. Proposals can focus on specific works of science fiction, fantasy, surrealism, gothic, or horror, as well as offer critical theories of the field as a whole and its unique political aesthetics. In particular we are interested in submissions that highlight speculative environmentalisms, eco-fiction and solarpunk, disaster capitalism, Indigenous and Afro-Latinx speculative ecologies, new Latinx media, global technologies and planetary consciousness. At this second Latinx Visions conference, we are going global, changing the initial direction of our gaze away from the wonders of outer space and toward the marvels, monsters, and material concerns of our home planet. How does the speculative imagination intertwine with the land that we walk upon and our intricate relationships with life on Earth, the rocks, rivers, and air? What traditional sciences and cultural practices are being recovered and revised through the speculative arts? At Latinx Visions 2.0 we will project our planetary web of humanity–technology–environment into the future to sharpen our awareness of this One Planet with Many Worlds.

Send in your proposals of 250 words along with a short bio of 200 words to the organizers by September 1, 2025: Submission Portal. Authors will be notified of the status of their submission by September 15, 2022. For more information or questions please do not hesitate to contact the organizers: latinxv...@gmail.com.

Sponsored by the Chicana/o Studies Department at the University of New Mexico

Registration for VICFA 4: Embodied Spirits, Sept. 17-21, 2025, is now live!

You can register at iaftfita.wildapricot.org/event-6255095.

Please let us know if you experience any issues with registration. We hope to see you virtually there!

A Message From the IAFA President:

The IAFA recently sent out a referendum email to everyone in our database asking for you to weigh in on our decision to remain in Florida for our annual conference or to explore the possibility of moving elsewhere. The referendum text is included below.

The email with your link to vote has the subject line "IAFA Survey about ICFA's Geographic Future: A Referendum." If you do not have this email, and you would still like to vote, please email me directly (iafa.president@fantastic-arts.org) and I will send you the referendum survey link. Everyone who has been part of the IAFA community at any time is invited to make your voice heard in this important decision process.

Thank you!

David M. Higgins

IAFA President

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The text of the referendum email is as follows:

Dear IAFA community:

Our contracts with the Orlando Airport Marriott Lakeside continue through 2027. This means that we are committed to hosting the 2026 and 2027 conferences at the current hotel.

The purpose of this referendum is to determine whether the IAFA community would prefer that the conference stay at our current location or move elsewhere after these contracts expire.

The benefits of staying in Orlando at the Marriott include keeping our costs of attendance similar to current levels and supporting scholars and creatives in the Florida area and the southern United States. If we remain at our current hotel, we hope to continue to host the conference for a similar registration fee and hotel room night costs (though we do anticipate certain unavoidable cost increases, such as a $5–10 increase in hotel room rates, in the upcoming year).

We have an exceptionally good arrangement at the current hotel for a conference of our size, and we will likely not be able to offer the same benefits for a similar price if we move elsewhere. Such benefits include a free airport shuttle; free session rooms (based on our hotel reservation blocks); generous hotel room comps; a free pre-banquet reception; a large number of spaces for various kinds of programming; food banquets and receptions; the use of our own A/V equipment; and access to local storage for our book room, registration supplies, and equipment.

The major drawback of staying at our current location, of course, is that Florida’s reactionary politics have created a hostile environment for marginalized groups (including marginalized groups who live in the state). There are many who will not travel to Florida for ethical reasons, who do not feel safe traveling to Florida, or who cannot travel there because their home institutions have prohibited funding for travel to Florida in response to the state’s policies.

There are additional potential benefits to moving elsewhere: We might explore hosting the conference on a university campus. This is one of the few realistic ways we may be able to create hybrid/online participation options, which are prohibitively expensive at most conference hotels in our price range. We might find a location that has more affordable local food options. We could also explore the possibility of a location outside of the United States where travel might be safer and easier for international participants. We cannot guarantee, however, that any of these options are realistic or that they would be affordable enough to pursue seriously (or safely for residents of the United States at this time, particularly those in vulnerable and marginalized groups).

The significant drawbacks if we leave the Orlando Airport Marriott Lakeside are likely to be higher conference costs and fewer (or very different) amenities. We anticipate that moving elsewhere will create increases in registration fees, hotel room rates, and other costs to individual members (such as parking, transport to the hotel, internet, and potentially higher prices for flights). Our book room, of course, cannot travel with us, and we will not be able to continue to host a book room if we move.

If we decide to move, we will prioritize keeping costs as low as possible and finding a space that will support lively social interactions; alternate spaces, however, will create opportunities and challenges that we cannot yet anticipate. We will also strive to find creative ways to make the conference accessible for students, underfunded scholars, creatives, and international participants. To this end, we will continue to find ways to make online conference participation possible, as we have in recent years with the virtual conference, no matter where the physical conference occurs.

To be fully transparent, if the community expresses a desire to move elsewhere, the very earliest this can possibly occur would be 2028 (after our current contracts expire). It might also take longer than this to find an alternate location, since the IAFA will not commit to a course of action that would jeopardize our larger financial health and stability.

With all of this in mind, we offer a simple question in this non-binding referendum: Would you prefer that the conference stay at the Orlando Airport Marriott Lakeside, or would you prefer that we move elsewhere? We also invite you to submit your own additional comments to let us know how you feel and why.

Thank you very much for being part of the IAFA community, and we look forward to hearing your perspective on this important decision. This survey will close June 30, 2025.

[Email the IAFA President at iafa.president@fantastic-arts.org if you need the survey link to vote in this referendum, or search your email for a message with the subject "IAFA Survey about ICFA's Geographic Future: A Referendum."]

The IAFA Board