Back to Top

Jurors for the 2002 Sunburst Award

Photo of Douglas Barbour

DOUGLAS BARBOUR

Douglas Barbour has been reading fantastic literature since he was in grade school (and takes pride in the fact that by the time he was 14, way back in 1954, his favourite authors were Alfred Bester and Theodore Sturgeon). After taking time out studying English literature all the way to the Ph.D. level, he finally got to read The Lord of the Rings and began his long return to the varied fields of genre. While working on his dissertation, which turned out to be on Samuel R. Delany, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Joanna Russ, he also discovered fandom, especially fanzines with a certain sercon sensibility, where he published reviews and articles. His first critical work was Worlds Out of Words: The SF Novels of Samuel R. Delany (1979). Other books of criticism, mostly on poetry, include monographs on Daphne Marlatt, John Newlove, and bpNichol, a full-length study of Michael Ondaatje (Twayne, 1993), and his most recent book, Lyric / Anti-lyric: Essays on Contemporary Poetry (NeWest, 2001). Over the past 30 years or so, he has published essays and reviews of SF in various journals in Australia, Britain, Canada and the US. With Phyllis Gotlieb, he edited Tesseracts2 (1989). His many books of poetry include Story for a Saskatchewan Night (1989), which includes a sequence, "These for Those from Whom," with SF associations, Fragmenting Body etc (NeWest Press, 2000), and Breath Takes (Wolsak & Wynn, 2001). A professor in the Department of English at the University of Alberta, he has taught senior courses on Science Fiction and Postmodernism and Modern Fantasy. Photo of Nalo Hopkinson

 

NALO HOPKINSON

Nalo Hopkinson, recipient of the Ontario Arts Council Foundation Award for Emerging Writers, had her first novel published when it won the Warner Aspect First Novel Contest (Brown Girl in the Ring, Warner Books, 1998). Since then she's published novel Midnight Robber (Warner Books, 2000), a short-story collection (Skin Folk, Warner Books, 2001) and edited an anthology of short fiction (Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction (Invisible Cities Press, 2000). She has been a juror for Canada's Maclennan Award for fiction, the Short Prose Competition for Developing Writers sponsored by the Writer's Union of Canada, and the James R. Tiptree Jr. Award. She has been a Writer in Residence for WIER (Writers in Electronic Residence) and for the Clarion West Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop. Her work has received the Locus Award and the Vermont Book Professionals Association Award. She is currently working on her third novel. Nalo lives in Toronto. Photo of Tanya Huff

 

 

TANYA HUFF

Tanya Huff lives and writes in rural Ontario with her partner Fiona Patton. She has a degree in Radio and Television Arts from Ryerson Polytechnic. She's written 17 novels for DAW (number 17, The Better Part of Valor, will be out spring of 2002) a Ravensloft book for TSR, and has two collections of short stories. Except for the Ravensloft book (Scholar of Decay), all her books are still in print and available—don't let bookstores tell you they aren't. Several of her works have been nominated for the Aurora Award. She was on the jury for the 2000 Philip K. Dick Award. For eight years (1984-92) she worked at Bakka, North America's oldest SF bookstore, managing it for part of that time. She writes the occasional book review for Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper, not minding the fact it's only occasional because she's just so damned pleased they're reviewing genre books at all. During 2000, she wrote regular columns for the Toronto magazine Realms. Her greatest claim to fame is that she makes her living, with mortgage, cars and cats, totally from writing and does no other work and has never received any kind of a grant—although she will admit to cashing the Public Lending Rights check every year, so it's not like she has any moral objections to taking government money. It's a great life. Photo of Hazel Hutchins

 

 

HAZEL HUTCHINS

Hazel Hutchins is the author of numerous middle reader novels delighting in the intriguing mixture of magic and real life as well as a wide assortment of picture books that often dip into the fantastic—over 26 titles in all, published in Canada, the U.S. and Great Britain. Her books have twice won The Writers Guild of Alberta Award for Children's Literature. They have been shortlisted for the Governor General's Children's Literature Award and the Mr. Christie Award and selected for the White Raven International Youth Library in Munich as well as Parenting Magazine's Reading Magic List. She occasionally strays into adult worlds with short stories (at widely spaced intervals) in On Spec and Fiddlehead. She is asked on a regular basis to present at schools, libraries and conferences across Canada and into the United States. Hazel's most recent creations are One Dark Night (Viking), illustrations by Susan Kathleen Hartung, and Robyn's Best Idea (first novels series, Formac). Forthcoming for 2002 are I'd Know You Anywhere (Annick Press), illustrations by Ruth Ohi, and T. J. and the Cats (Orca). Hazel lives in Canmore, Alberta. Photo of Don Hutchison

 

 

DON HUTCHISON

Toronto resident Don Hutchison is creator and editor of Canada's internationally acclaimed Northern Frights anthology series. He is widely acknowledged as a leading authority on the history of pulp fiction and has published over 100 articles and five books on the subject, including his multi-award-nominated The Great Pulp Heroes, now in its third printing. Canadian by birth, Don is a graduate of The New York Institute of Photography and Brooks Institute of Photography, Santa Barbara, California, where he majored in motion picture production. In a career spanning more than 30 years, he worked as cinematographer and director on hundreds of films ranging from documentaries to dramas to films on science, art and geography. In 1983 he was honoured as a guest director at the Toronto International Film Festival, where he introduced his award-winning film Alex Colville: The Splendour of Order. His films have garnered several Ohio State Awards, two Canadian "Genie" awards and international awards from such organizations as the Chicago International Film Festival, the Columbia International Film Festival, the International Film and Television Festival of New York, and The Association for Media and Technology in Education for Canada. In addition to a successful film career, Don's not-so-secret passion has been his lifelong affair with literature of the fantastic. Over the years he has had published numerous magazine articles and book reviews relating to fantastic and popular literature. In the mid 1980s, Don served as associate editor and columnist for BorderLand, Canada's first professional magazine of dark fantasy. With Peter Halasz, he wrote Blood on the Snow: a Survey of Canadian Horror Fiction and an encyclopaedia entry on the sf and fantasy output of H. Bedford-Jones, Canada's prolific "King of the Pulps." He has been nominated three times for the World Fantasy Award and is twice winner of Canada's Aurora Award. In 1990 he received The Lamont Award "for outstanding effort in keeping alive the memory and spirit of the pulp magazine era." In 1999 he served double duty as a judge for The World Fantasy Award as well as The Crime Writers of Canada's Arthur Ellis Award. 2002 SHORTLIST CHOSEN BY THIS JURY