The Sunburst Award Society has always been proud of our amazing judges and this year is no exception. Please join us in welcoming our five judges for the 2015 Sunburst Awards.
Samantha Beiko is the author of the YA Fantasy novel, The Lake and the Library, which was nominated for the 2014 MB Book Awards Eileen Sykes McTavish Award. She also co-edited Imaginarium 2013: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing for ChiZine Publications with Sandra Kasturi.
After living in Toronto and taking a post-graduate in Canadian Book Publishing, Samantha has worked for various publishers as a managing editor, designer, publicist, and marketeer for the past 5 years. She currently edits and designs for ChiZine Publications, in addition to working on projects for independent clients. Samantha lives and works out of her home in Winnipeg.
Gerard Collins is the author of Finton Moon, which was nominated for both the 2013 Sunburst Awards and the 2014 Dublin IMPAC International Literary Award, and won the Percy Janes First Novel Award. His short story collection Moonlight Sketches won the 2012 Newfoundland and Labrador book award, while many of his stories have won individual awards. He has a Ph.D. in English literature, with a specialization in the postmodernization of ghost figures in North American fictions, including a partial focus on the fantastic. He has also written a Masters thesis on the gothic technique of Edgar Allen Poe and published a book chapter on contagion and disease in Patricia Cornwell’s Scarpetta series. He has taught at Memorial University for fifteen years and, more recently, at the University of New Brunswick. Gerard often teaches workshops in creative writing, and he is working on a new urban gothic novel entitled My Sister’s Walls.
For over twenty-five years, Paula Johanson has worked as a writer, teacher and editor. Among her twenty-nine books on science, health and literature for young adult readers the most recent are Love Poetry: How Do I Love Thee? (Enslow Publishers), Fish: The Truth About The Food Supply (Rosen Publishing), and the science fiction anthology Opus 6 (Reality Skimming Press). An accredited teacher, she has written and edited curriculum educational materials. Recently she completed an MA in Canadian Literature at the University of Victoria.
Corey Redekop’s debut novel Shelf Monkey (ECW Press, 2007), concerning a manic troupe of radical bookworms, was awarded the Gold Medal for Popular Fiction by the Independent Publishers Book Awards and was later named a Top 40 Novel of the Decade by CBC Canada Reads. His follow-up novel Husk (ECW Press, 2012), the story of a depressed zombie and his cat, was a finalist for the ReLit Award and was chosen as a Best Book of 2012 by Amazon.ca and January Magazine.
Currently, Redekop lives in Fredericton, NB, where he writes for the fun of it and works as a librarian for the cash. And also the fun of it. He occasionally blogs at www.coreyredekop.ca. Also for the fun of it.
Sherryl Vint is a Professor of Science Fiction Media Studies at the University of California, Riverside, where she co-directs the Science Fiction and Technoculture Studies program. She has published widely on science fiction, including Bodies of Tomorrow, Animal Alterity and Science Fiction: A Guide to the Perplexed. She has previously served on the Philip K. Dick Award jury, and was the VP of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts from 2010-2013. She co-edits the journals Science Fiction Studies and Science Fiction Film and Television, and is working on a book on biopolitics and science fiction. (photo: David Findlay)
