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 OfficerEmily Midkiff
Emily Midkiff (she/her) is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Dakota, where she teaches courses on children’s literature and literacy. She is also the Managing Editor of Climate Lit, the flagship initiative of the Center for Climate Literacy. Her research focuses on science fiction and fantasy for children, with attention to what children have to say for themselves. She is the author of Equipping Space Cadets: Primary Science Fiction for Young Children, an interdisciplinary case study of science fiction for children that won the Science Fiction Research Association’s New Book Award. She has previously served as the Registration and Membership Coordinator for the IAFA. |
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, and two cats. |
The JFA Editorial CollectiveManaging Editor-in-Chief Jude Wright
Acquisitions Editor-in-Chief Novella Brooks de Vita Houston Community College, Houston, Texas, USA
Project Editor-in-Chief Cat Ashton Northern Ontario, Canada 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 Tedd Hawks
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Crawford Award Director Kelly Robson is a Nebula Award winning writer of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. She’s been a finalist for many of the major SFF awards, including the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. Her first short fiction collection Alias Space and Other Stories was published by Subterranean Press, and she has two books from Tordotcom Publishing, Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach and High Times in the Low Parliament. Kelly has served as Administrator of the Crawford Award since 2025. She lives in Toronto, Canada.
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Program Book EditorLauren Crawford
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 AwardRick Wilber
Rick Wilber is a visiting assistant professor in the low-residency MA/MFA Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Western Colorado University in Gunnison, CO., where he teaches in the genre fiction concentration. He 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 awards banquet at ICFA. Rick has published several short-story collections, several college textbooks on writing and the mass media, and some seventy short stories in magazines and anthologies, including the Sidewise Award-winning story, “Something Real,” and both the Asimov’s Readers’ Award and the Canopus Award for Interstellar fiction for the novelette, “The Hind,” (co-authored with Kevin J. Anderson, also published in Asimov’s. He is the editor of several anthologies, including “Future Media” for Tachyon Publishing and “Making History: Classic Alternate History Stories,” for New Word City. His novel, Alien Morning (Tor, 2016), was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best Science Fiction Novel of 2016. |
Book Room LiaisonMark Wingenfeld
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Jude Wright is an Assistant Professor of English at Mount Wachusett Community College in Gardner, Massachusetts. He teaches courses in writing, research and upper-level courses in the Gothic, Horror Fiction, and Speculative Fiction. 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 Thomas Hardy, 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. He currently serves on the Editorial Collective of the Journal for the Fantastic in the Arts. Dr. Wright received his BA in English and Philosophy/Religion from Flagler College, and his MA in English from Boston College. He received his Ph.D. in English from the University of South Florida.
Novella Brooks de Vita has adored her involvement with IAFA since she attended her first ICFA conference in 2008. Her doctoral studies focus on teaching and learning, particularly in higher education, and on educational administration. Novella has made extensive presentations on literature including comics, film, theatre, literacy, and pedagogy. She has published scholarly book chapters, academic essays, poetry, and short fiction. In addition to teaching, administrative educational support roles and behind-the-scenes work in various creative productions throughout the years, she has engaged in research, planning, logistics, outreach, and event management for a range of scholarly and creative engagements. 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.
Tedd Hawks is a writer, editor, book coach, and instructional designer based in Chicago. He has a Master of Fine Arts from Northwestern University but has been writing since his primary tools were crayons and notebook paper. His writing crosses numerous genres, including LGBTQ+, young adult, science-fiction, mystery, and literary fiction. He has been very lucky to be a part of the IAFA for the past few years and has loved helping writers bring their brilliant work on the fantastic into the world as a staff member of the JFA.
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.