Officers reporting to the Executive Board are appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Executive Board. You can find the Executive Board here and the Conference Division Heads here. Prerequisites received by board members, other officers, and division heads are listed here.  

Principal Technology Officer

Michael A. Smith
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
iafa.techofficer@fantastic-arts.org

Michael Smith is a full-time senior lecturer in Information Technology Management in the Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech. He holds the BS in Computer Science, the MS in Management and the PhD from the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research has appeared in journals including the Communications of the ACM, the Journal of MIS, The European Journal of Operations and Production Management, Database, and Information & Management.

He has been an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy since he bought a copy of Poul Anderson’s The High Crusade at a department store in Atlanta in the summer of 1973. With pretensions of a literary nature, he attended OSC’s Literary Bootcamp in 2011.

On-site Technology Officer

Carol McMullen-Pettit

Hollywood, Florida, USA

Carol McMullen-Pettit has been attending and volunteering for ICFA since she was a tenth-grade high school student in Boca Raton. Carol attended the University of Florida while the conference was in Texas but resumed her attendance at the conference with its return to Fort Lauderdale (and her transfer to FAU). Carol finished her BA in Anthropology, and then her subsequent certification in Secondary Social Sciences in Education, all while married and producing the first two of her three children. She has held a variety of teaching positions, culminating in more than ten years of working as a Social Studies and Reading teacher for At-Risk Youth, and for nearly the last twelve years, with The Princeton Review as a test preparation instructor, tutor, and presenter. She lives in Hollywood, FL with her husband, two dogs, two cats, and a hedgehog. 

The JFA Editorial Collective


Managing Editor-in-Chief

Jude Wright
Peru State College, Peru, Nebraska, USA

jfa.editor@fantastic-arts.org


Jude Wright is an Assistant Professor of English at Peru State College in Peru, Nebraska, where he teaches courses on writing, British literature, Science Fiction, and comic books. His research focuses on the relationship between realism and the fantastic in nineteenth-century British literature, the Gothic, and adaptation theory. He has recently published on Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, adaptations of Frankenstein, J. Sheridan LeFanu, and Walter Pater. His current project is a long-form extension of his work on Frankenstein adaptations, parts of which he has presented at ICFA.





Acquisitions Editor-in-Chief

Novella Brooks de Vita

Houston Community College, Houston, Texas, USA

jfa.editor@fantastic-arts.org 


Novella Brooks de Vita has adored her involvement with ICFA since she first attended the conference in 2008.  She is currently at the fairly-end-stages of her Ed.D. in Curriculum & Instruction and Higher Education Administration while adjunct teaching developmental reading and writing at Houston Community College.  Novella has made extensive presentations on literature including comics, film, theatre, literacy, and pedagogy.  Her published book scholarly chapter and essays include "Wiz Kids: An Exploration of Pedagogy in the World of Harry Potter” in Palgrave-Macmillan’s Teaching and Learning on Screen: Mediated Pedagogies, “Made into Nothing: Surviving Multifaceted Vulnerability” in The Maroon, “’You Have Forever Changed My Life’: The Need for Academic Rigor in Teaching Humanities in a Global Society” in Humanities Bulletin, and "African American College Preparation through Reading in Secondary Schools," "Beloved and Betrayed: Survival and Authority in Kindred" and "Abiku Babies: Spirit Children and Human Bonding” in The Griot.  In addition to scholarly publications, Novella has published poetry in the Guild Press anthologies Forced from the Garden: Poetry and Short Prose by Women, Full Circle Twenty-Two and Full Circle Twenty-Three. Her previously published short fiction includes the speculative "Cacie's Prism" in Love and Darker Passions and horror-sci fi "My Bogeyman" in Tales in Firelight and Shadow, anthologies published by Double Dragon.  In addition to administrative educational support roles as a graduate student for TSU’s Student Academic Support Services and the Thurgood Marshall School of Law’s Center for Legal Pedagogy and behind-the-scenes work in various creative productions throughout the years, Novella has engaged in research, planning, logistics, outreach, and event management for a range of scholarly and creative engagements, including Texas Southern University’s “Incarceration Patterns of African and Latino America” conference, “Addressing the Tex-Book Controversy” community forum with Texas State Representatives, “Identity Crisis/ Mission Statement: Are We an Urban Learning University?” faculty symposium, Before They Die! documentary screenings and panel, “A Discussion of the DREAM Act with Gaby Pacheco,” a Gloria Rolando film festival featuring the Cuban filmmaker at TSU, as well as planning and producing Mystery Monday Movies, Knit Wits, Kitchen Capers Readers’ Circle, River Park Riverside Shakespeare Workshop, Youth Arts Festival, Wabruda Hidden History Quiz Bowl, Dance Dance Revolution Branch Tournament, Dead Man’s Chest Pirate Party, a Fruits Basket program, and AniméAfternoon while working in a county library system.  Novella has worked on making experiences accessible and relevant to those she has served in previous roles and hopes to support such goals' success in her current role.


Project Editor-in-Chief

Cat Ashton

Northern Ontario, Canada

jfa.editor@fantastic-arts.org


Cat Ashton has a BA in Creative Writing and a Masters in Interdisciplinary Studies. She received her PhD from York University in 2018, for her dissertation “Sympathy for the Orcs: Evil in Urban Fantasy.” Currently she lives in Northern Ontario with her partner, as a white settler on Anishinaabek land governed by the Robinson Huron Treaty of 1850. In addition to her position at JFA, she works with Rainbow Community Non-Profit Housing and Peeps Magazine. Her next project is about information protocols and decision-making in American evangelical Christian fantastic literature.  


Reviews Editor-in-Chief

Mailyn Abreu Toribio

University of South Florida, Florida, USA

jfa.editor@fantastic-arts.org


Mailyn Abreu Toribio is a Literature PhD student and Graduate Assistant at the University of South Florida. She is also an Adjunct Instructor at Palm Beach State College as well as a reading and writing tutor at their Student Learning Center. She received her Master of Arts in Multicultural and World Literatures with a concentration in Science Fiction from Florida Atlantic University in 2019 and has previously taught English composition there. Her research interests currently include Magical Realism, Afro-Caribbean Literatures, Postcolonial Theory, and Speculative Fiction. She specializes in climate change issues and loves music, coffee, and the outdoors.

Crawford Award Director

Farah Mendlesohn

Program Book Editor

Lauren Crawford
Michigan State University

crawf328@msu.edu



Lauren Crawford is a doctoral student and instructor at Michigan State University. Her research interests include speculative fiction and its fandoms; digital media and culture; and critical theory. More specifically, her work has explored speculative-fictional narratology as it relates to and is coopted by conspiracism, disinformation, and digital fascism.

Director of the Dell Award

Rick Wilber
Western Colorado University, Gunnison, Colorado, USA
rickwilber@tampabay.rr.com

Rick Wilber is a visiting assistant professor in the low-residency MA/MFA genre-fiction program at Western Colorado University in Gunnison, CO., and is co-founder and co-judge with Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine editor Sheila Williams of the Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing, presented annually at the Conference on the Fantastic. Rick has published a memoir, several collections, several college textbooks on writing and the mass media, and some fifty short stories in magazines and anthologies, including the Sidewise Award-winning story, “Something Real,” in Asimov’s. He is the editor of several anthologies, including “Future Media” for Tachyon Publishing and the recent “Making History: Classic Alternate History Stories,” for New Word City. His most recent novel, Alien Morning, (Tor, 2016) was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best Science Fiction Novel of 2016. The sequel, Alien Day: Notes from Holmanville, will be out in 2020.

Book Room Liaison

Mark Wingenfeld
Orlando, Florida, USA
info@kathmandubooks.com

Mark Wingenfeld has been a reader for as long as he can remember, but his lifelong love of genre started when he discovered both Asimov and Tolkien at the golden age of 12. Being practical, he studied engineering while attending the University of Central Florida, and currently works for a large corporation building gas turbine power plants that electrify our modern world. Meanwhile, he is a book dealer in his spare time and continues to assemble an ever-increasing personal collection that is slowly consuming his house and his reading time.

Director of Creative Programming


Samantha Baugus
Springfield, MO, USA

Samantha Baugus is an English Editor for MDPI and holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Florida. Her research focuses on nonhuman beings of all kinds and their positionality in American culture as seen in contemporary science fiction and fantasy literature and other media. 







Registration Assistant


Forthcoming


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