2023 JUDGES

HOUSTON/NAIROBI, January 18, 2022 – 100 Year Starship (100YSS) today announced the slate of judges for the 2023 Canopus Award, a writing prize recognizing the finest fiction and non-fiction works that contribute to the excitement, knowledge, and understanding of interstellar space exploration and travel.

The judges include writer Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grandmaster Nalo Hopkinson, writer of Marvel’s Iron Heart and University of Chicago Professor Dr. Eve Ewing, 100YSS Principal and former astronaut Mae Jemison, M.D., writer Tlotlo Tsamaase, writer Mame Bougouma Diene, writer and 100YSS Creative and Editorial director Jason Batt, writer and director Mickey Fisher, actress and musician Helen Slater, editor Steven H. Silver, editor Arley Song, editor Lynne M. Thomas, Professor Janet de Vigne, editor and writer Jaym Gates, writer and former Canopus Award winner Edward M. Lerner, and many more.

Winners will be announced during a special Canopus Award ceremony on Thursday, February 2, 2023 during the 100YSS Nexus 2023 held in Nairobi, Kenya, January 31-February 4 2023  (NexusNairobi.org).

With the theme “When Space, Purpose, and Culture Collide,” Nexus Nairobi is “THE space gathering” to experience, connect, contribute to, envision, inspire & be inspired, create, share, explore, learn and foster an extraordinary future while building a better world, here and now.  Nexus brings together the range of human experience, skills, knowledge, creativity, passion, commitment, resources, cultures, technologies, policy, investment, education, art, perspectives, and motivation needed to achieve such an extraordinary future.  Nexus 2023 is an in-person and virtual live-streamed engaging participants across the globe.

 

The Judges

OGHENECHOVWE DONALD EKPEKI is an African speculative fiction writer, editor & publisher from Nigeria. He has won the Nebula, Otherwise, Nommo, British & World Fantasy awards and been a finalist in the Hugo, Locus, Sturgeon and British Science Fiction awards. His works have appeared in Asimov’s, Uncanny Magazine, Tordotcom, Apex, Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons and others and he edited the Bridging Worlds, Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction anthology and co-edited the Africa Risen anthology. He was a CanCon goh and will be the ICFA 44 guest of honour. You can see his latest works here: https://odekpeki.com/2022/09/11/2022-awards-eligibility-post-list/

STEVEN H SILVER is a nineteen-time Hugo Award nominee and was the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years.  He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB Books.  He began publishing short fiction in 2008, his most recently published story is “Best Policy,” and his most recent anthology is Alternate Peace.  His debut novel, After Hastings, was published in 2020. In 1995, he created the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, and he is also currently a judge for the Cordwainer Smith Award.

TLOTLO TSAMAASE is a Motswana writer (xe/xem/xer or she/her pronouns). Tsamaase’s debut adult novel, Womb City, comes out in 2023 from Erewhon Books. Tsamaase’s novella, The Silence of the Wilting Skin, is a 2021 Lambda Literary Award finalist and was shortlisted for a 2021 Nommo Award. Tsamaase has received support from the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Xer short story “Behind Our Irises” is the joint winner of the Nommo Award (2021). Tsamaase’s short fiction has appeared in The Best of World SF Volume 1, Africa Risen, Clarkesworld, Africanfuturism Anthology, and other publications. You can find xem at tlotlotsamaase.com

JEFF NOSANOV spent ten years in and around NASA in a unique career spanning the radioisotope power systems program, interstellar mission concept development, and life-detection mission proposals. He also won three NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts grants to develop revolutionary mission concepts. Formally trained as a space lawyer, he shifted to project and proposal management while at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He later managed mission proposals for other NASA centers and space startup companies. He recently self-published a book about how NASA selects which missions to fund and fly. (Include link please) https://www.amazon.com/How-Things-Work-NASA-Exploration/dp/B09GXMJ5BV

ALIRES ALMON An innovator and orchestrator connecting cross-disciplinary ideas, Alires Almon fuses a deep passion for science’s opportunities with the emerging pathways delivered by technological progression.  As one of the co-authors of the award-winning response to the DARPA/NASA RFP for the 100 Year Starship Project, Alires focused her contributions on the psychological impacts of long-term space travel. Alires also serves as Partner Director of the Artificial Intelligence Institute at the Iliff School of Theology. Alires most recently chaired the Colorado Space Business Roundtable for three terms and now serves as the chair of the CSBR J.E.D.I. (Justice, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion) Space Council.  

NALO HOPKINSON (Locus Award for Best First Novel; 2021 SFWA Grandmaster) has gained universal acclaim as one of the most impressively original authors to emerge in years. Her debut novel, Brown Girl in the Ring, won the Locus Award for Best First Novel, became a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award, and garnered Hopkinson the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Her second novel, Midnight Robber, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

FATOUMATA KEBE has completed a Ph.D. in Astronomy at Sorbonne Université on space debris which are the remains of human activity in Space accumulated over time. She was trained in Space Engineering for a year at the University of Tokyo and is passionate about Astronomy, she has also completed internships at the European Space Agency and other institutions specialized in the space sector. Fatoumata Kebe has authored two books, “The Moon is a Novel” and “Letters to the Moon”. These books introduce different aspects of our unique satellite. Fatoumata Kebe also dedicates her energy to inspire vocations through “Ephemerides”, an association she founded 8 years ago which provides Astronomy activities to people living in the disadvantaged areas of both Paris and Bamako region. Her main goal through her association is to help young people embrace their ambitions and accomplish their dreams.

ARLEY SORG is co-Editor-in-Chief at Fantasy Magazine. He is a 2022 Solstice Award recipient, 2021 and 2022 World Fantasy Award Finalist, 2022 Locus Award Finalist, and finalist for two 2022 Ignyte Awards. Arley is senior editor at Locus, associate editor at Lightspeed & Nightmare, and columnist for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He is also a film and book reviewer, and interviewer for Clarkesworld plus his site: arleysorg.com. He has taught classes, run workshops, and been a guest for Odyssey, Cascade, and more, and is the week five instructor for Clarion West 2023. Arley is a 2014 Odyssey Workshop graduate. Twitter @arleysorg. 

MAME BOUGOUMA DIENE is a Franco –Senegalese American humanitarian, the francophone spokesperson for the African Speculative Fiction Society (http://www.africansfs.com/), the French language editor for Omenana Magazine, and a regular columnist at Strange Horizons. You can find his fiction and nonfiction work in Omenana, Galaxies SF, Edilivres, Fiyah! Truancy Magazine, EscapePod, Mythaxis, Apex Magazine and TorDotCom; and in anthologies such as AfroSFv2 & V3 (Storytime), Myriad Lands (Guardbridge Books), You Left Your Biscuit Behind (Fox Spirit Books), This Book Ain’t Nuttin to Fuck Wit (Clash Media), Africanfuturism (Brittle Paper), Dominion (Aurelia Leo), Meteotopia (Future Fiction/Co-Futures in English and Italian), Bridging Worlds (Jembefola Press) and Africa Risen (TorDotCom). His novelette The Satellite Charmer is translated in Italian by Moscabianca Edizioni and his debut collection “Dark Moons Rising on a Starless Night” (Clash Books). He was nominated for several Nommo Awards and was nominated for the 2019 Splatterpunk Award.

BOBBY FARLICE-RUBIO is a science and culture educator with more than two decades of teaching experience working in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. He was recently elected to the Vermont House of Representatives, Caledonia One District, which encompasses the towns of Barnet, Ryegate, and Waterford. For eight years, Mr. Farlice-Rubio was regularly seen in his monthly “Star Struck” segments on Channel 3 WCAX-TV’s 6:30pm news show, on which he presented the latest happenings in the field of Astronomy. During his 18-year tenure at St. Johnsbury’s Fairbanks Museum, Bobby was the teacher for the Guinness World Record: “Largest Astronomy Lesson.” Raised in Hialeah, Florida from Cuban and African-American roots, Bobby is also an avid musician who plays in the local band Tritium Well, as well as his solo musical endeavor, Bobby & The Isotopes. He currently resides in Barnet, Vermont.

HELEN SLATER is an American actress and songwriter. She starred in the 1984 movie, Supergirl, and has appeared in over 70 television shows and films. Over the last decade, she has composed six albums, three of which are based on myth and fairytale. She has been part of the Los Angeles independent theatre scene for thirty years and is a founding member of The Bubalaires and the non-profit Turbine Arts Collective. Born and raised in New York, she attended the famed High School for Performing A,rts where she wrote original bus and truck musicals. She is also a founding member of Naked Angels, the New York City theatre company. In 2019 she returned to graduate school at Pacifica Graduate Institute in the PhD program, Mythological Studies with an Emphasis in Depth Psychology.  She is currently writing her dissertation on refuge practice in myth.

JASON D. BATT: mythologist, futurist, artist, writer, and former teacher, Jason D. Batt (MFA, Creative Writing; MA, Mythological Studies) is a PhD candidate finishing his dissertation on the mythologies of the future, in particular those of interstellar travel. He is a co-founder of Deep Space Predictive Research Group and of Project Lodestar. He serves as the senior editor of the Mythological Studies Journal—a peer-reviewed academic journal focused on the intersection of mythology and depth psychology. He has edited the anthologies Strange California and Visions of the Future and written the novels The Tales of Dreamside, Young Gods, and Onliest. His short fiction has appeared in Perihelion, Bastion, Bewildering Stories, A Story Goes On, and other periodicals.

MAE JEMISON, M.D. physician, engineer, educator, and entrepreneur, was the first woman of color in the world to go into space aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour and was a NASA astronaut for six years. Jemison joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 1987 and was selected to serve for the STS-47 mission, during which she orbited the Earth for nearly eight days. Born in Alabama and raised in Chicago, Jemison graduated from Stanford University with degrees in chemical engineering as well as African and African-American studies. She then earned her medical degree from Cornell University. Jemison was a doctor for the Peace Corps in Liberia and Sierra Leone from 1983 until 1985 and worked as a general practitioner. In pursuit of becoming an astronaut, she applied to NASA. Jemison left NASA in 1993 and founded a technology research company. Jemison also wrote several books for children and appeared on television several times, including an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. She holds several honorary doctorates and has been inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the International Space Hall of Fame. Today, Dr. Mae Jemison is at the forefront of integrating the physical and social sciences with art and culture to solve problems and foster innovation. She is a worldwide respected voice in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education and is founder of the non-profit Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence. She startednbsp;The Earth We Share(tm), a unique international science literacy curriculum and program that builds student critical thinking and problem-solving skills as they gain science knowledge and skills, and trains middle and secondary school teachers in experiential education. Jemison leads 100 Year Starship® global initiative to ensure the capabilities exist for human interstellar travel within the next 100 years while every step of the way enhancing life on Earth.

PAUL WEIMER: An expat New Yorker who has inexplicably found himself living in Minnesota in the United States for the last 17 years, Paul Weimer counters the banal mundanity of his normal life with a
love of science fiction and fantasy. He pairs this with a strong interest in photography. He is a three time nominee for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer and a two time nominee for Best Fancast (The Skiffy and Fanty Show). His work can be found in many venues across the internet, and he himself, as “Princejvstin.”

EVE L. EWING is a sociologist of education and a writer from Chicago. She is the award-winning author of four books: the poetry collections Electric Arches and 1919, the nonfiction work Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side, and most recently a novel for young readers, Maya and the Robot. She is the co-author (with Nate Marshall) of the play No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks. She has written several projects for Marvel Comics, most notably the Ironheart series. Ewing is an associate professor in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and many other venues. Currently she is working on her next book, Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism, which will be published by One World.

EDWARD M. LERNER worked in high tech and aerospace for thirty years, as everything from engineer to senior vice president, for much of that time writing science fiction as his hobby. He is the author of sixteen science-fiction novels (five of them collaborations with Larry Niven) and dozens of shorter works. The third and final novel in his InterstellarNet series won the inaugural Canopus Award for fiction “honoring excellence in interstellar writing,” while other stories have been nominated for Locus, Prometheus, and Hugo awards. You can read much more about him at edwardmlerner.com.

DAVID ORBAN, http://davidorban.com, is an investor, entrepreneur, author, keynote speaker, and thought leader of the global technology landscape. An early adopter of blockchain technologies and an active Bitcoin investor since 2010, he led the adoption of Bitcoin and blockchain in numerous startups. He is the Managing Advisor of Beyond Enterprizes, http://beyondenterprizes.com, an advisory company that offers strategic and technical leadership, advisory, and support capabilities to projects in all stages of blockchain and new technology implementation and development. He is the author of Something New about the role of artificial intelligence in our society.

JANET DE VIGNE is an actor, singer and academic based at the University of Edinburgh, where she teaches language and drama pedagogies. Janet writes about human interaction in space, placing education and behavior in the imaginary in order to examine contemporary challenges. She has been reading science fiction since childhood and it remains her favorite literary (and multimodal) genre for the expression of ideas. What we imagine, we are. Janet is very pleased to be a judge in this year’s Canopus awards.

MICKEY FISHER is the creator of the CBS television series EXTANT, Executive Produced by Steven Spielberg and Amblin Television, starring Halle Berry, and the NBC series REVERIE, Executive Produced by Amblin Television, starring Sarah Shahi. He has also worked on THE STRAIN (FX), MARS (NatGeo), and JACK RYAN (Amazon). In 2018 his play REPLICA received its world premiere at Stages Repertory Theatre in Houston. He attended the College Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati for Musical Theater. 

LYNNE M. THOMAS Ten-time Hugo Award winner Lynne M. Thomas is the Head of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library and Juanita J. and Robert E. Simpson Rare Book and Manuscript Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, one of the largest public university rare book collections in the country. She previously served as Head of Distinctive Collections and Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University. She co-authored Special Collections 2.0, (Libraries Unlimited, 2009) and co-edited  New Directions for Special Collections: An Anthology of Practice, both with Beth Whittaker (ABC-CLIO, 2016), and is a founding member of the Digital POWRR project. An alumna of Smith College with a degree in French and Comparative Literature, she also holds an MS in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an MA in English and American Literature from Northern Illinois University.

JAYM GATES is an editor, author, and consultant who specializes in narrative influence and development. Her anthologies include War Stories, Strategy Strikes Back, Winning Westeros, and Strange California. With nearly fifteen years of experience in the creative and consulting fields, she is the former Communications Director for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association and is one of the founders of Falstaff Books. She is currently involved with Project Lodestar, 100 Year Starship Nexus (Canopus Awards), and serves on the Snohomish County Arts Council. She lives in the Seattle area with her partner and a small pack of rescue horses and dogs. Her website is jaymgates.com.

ANTOINE FADDOUL is a designer, artist, futurist, and storyteller, with a multidisciplinary approach combining elements of architecture, astronomy, science, history, archaeology, ancient mythology, art, and linguistics. He has lectured, written, and published papers, articles, and books covering such areas.
Faddoul is an advocate of revolutionizing space travel through integrated space architecture, innovative space economy, and contemplated novel technology. He compiled the one hundred design aspects required for human space travel from low Earth Orbit (LOE) to interstellar, assessing current and future technology developments. In addition to space architecture, his space travel assessments involve technology, human factors, infrastructure, and economy platforms. Faddoul holds a degree in architecture, MS in project management, and is working on his doctorate degree researching the design and construction of extraordinary projects on Earth and in space.

TODD WALTON is a premiere (Social) Entrepreneur, Brand/Business Development Professional, Innovator, and Thought Leader. Todd has served the business community focusing on equity-based development partnerships with clients across multiple verticals from Fortune 100 companies to Cultural Icons, including Dr. Mae Jemison. Todd has also served the philanthropic community through multiple service roles including that as a member of the Board of Directors for Art of Culture (formerly Donda’s House) and the associate board of the Art Institute of Chicago. Currently, Todd serves as Co-Founder of Signal Hill Road a publishing and entertainment company dedicated to amplifying voices of color and promoting dynamic and diverse stories.

NITA HOWARD’s career is diverse: from Oakland police officer to fashion model to event planner.  She has been passionate about style, homes, and bringing happiness into people’s lives for her entire career.  She made the leap from managing commercial real estate, selling new construction homes, and finally creating a venue that promotes beauty, style, comfort, sustainability, and community. She found her calling, a profession that pulls all her talents together. Her creativeness, willingness to do whatever it takes to get the job done and tenacity serves her clients well. She loves celebrating life with friends. Enjoying fine wine, dining, music, staying fit, laughing, and fashion (in no particular order). However, she still feels like her most important accomplishment is raising two incredible sons, Hunter and Colton.

 

About the Canopus Awards for Excellence in Interstellar Writing

A key initiative of 100YSS, the Canopus Awards are named after the second-brightest star in the night sky.  Canopus occupies a central role in the human journey over millennia – from heralding of planting seasons to a major navigation star for Bedouin and deep space probes like Voyager to the star around which Arrakis, the Spcie planet science fiction classic Dune, orbits.  The Canopus Awards recognize the finest fiction and non-fiction works that engage broad audiences and enhance the understanding, excitement, and knowledge of interstellar space exploration and travel.

 

For more information on Nexus Nairobi 2023, visit NexusNairobi.org.

For more information on 100 Year Starship, visit 100YSS.org.