Elections were held for the officers of Norwescon 36 (2013) on Saturday May 12th with Keith Johnson, LouAnna Valentine, and Doug Booze on this year’s election committee.

In brief: Your Norwescon 36 Executive Team will be headed by Chair Peggy Stewart and Vice-Chair Brad Nelson, with Sunny Jim Morgan and Pearl Young on the Guest of Honor Selection Committee wrangling more top-notch GOHs for future Norwescons! Both bylaw changes were approved as well. Click on through for the full numbers breakdown.

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Did you help plan, organize, and create the Pacific Northwest’s premier science-fiction and fantasy convention? It’s time for our final Norwescon 35 ConCom meeting!

May’s Norwescon 35 post-con wrap-up meeting will be held:

DATE

Saturday, May 12th, 2012

TIME

12:30 p.m.–1:00 p.m.: Q&A with the candidates for NWC36 positions
1:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m.: Postcon meeting (onions and roses/after-action reports)
30 minutes after the meeting ends: Pizza social at nearby private residence (directions available at the meeting, contact chair@norwescon.org if you want to bring something)

PLACE

Doubletree by Hilton Hotel Seattle Airport
18740 Pacific Highway South
SeaTac, WA 98188
206-246-8600

For directions and a map, please see the hotel’s website.

NOTE: There is a discounted charge of $8.00 for parking.

Please consult the hotel readerboard when you arrive for the location of the meeting room.

Each year, Norwescon presents a number of awards to its attendees, costumers, and exhibiting artists. Here are this year’s winners — congratulations to all of you!

Masquerade

Norwescon 35′s Masquerade had many amazing entries. Kudos go out to everyone who participated–we look forward to seeing your work in the future. Many thanks also to the staff and volunteers behind the scenes who worked hard to put on a great show. Thanks!

Art Show

Norwescon’s Art Show was a hotbed of activity with a small bidding war happening right before close. The sold stamps almost dried out. Our Judges worked hard to decide who should be honored this year. The art quality was some of the best that we have had. But, after much hair pulling, wrestling in the aisles and clipboard swings the honorees are:

Judges Choice:

People’s Choice Awards

Many thanks to Norwescon’s Art Show members who voted for their favorite artists in many different categories. The judges were forced to make tie breaking decisions in two categories, Fantasy and Horror.

We would also like to congratulate Leanne Dunn for receiving this year’s NWC Raising Artist Scholarship for “Vulture Girl”. The scholarship will be applied to her education at the Northwest College of Art.

A big thanks to our judges Don Lackey, Caroline Westra, and Mac Oros for their hard work and interesting wrestling moves.

Single Pattern Contest

This year’s Single Pattern Contest used the Butterick B5646 pattern.

Volunteers

Finally, four volunteers (one per day, plus a fourth for overall productivity and great attitude) won memberships to Norwescon 36. Congratulations to Michael McSweeney, Ray Seredin, Shaylee Bell, and Conde Holt!

We are thrilled to announce that Catherine Asaro will be our Writer Guest of Honor for Norwescon 36!

With our already announced guests, here’s the current Guest of Honor lineup:

• Writer Guest of Honor Catherine Asaro. “Catherine Asaro is an American science fiction and fantasy author. She is best known for her books about the Ruby Dynasty, called the Saga of the Skolian Empire.” —Wikipedia
• Artist Guest of Honor Stephan Martinière. “Stephan Martinière (born May 3, 1962) is an award-winning French science fiction and fantasy artist, using his experience to morph from cartoonist to concept illustrator to art director.” —Wikipedia
• Science Guest of Honor Edward Tenner. “Edward Tenner is a historian of technology and culture. He was a founding advisor of Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center and holds a Ph.D in European history.” —The Atlantic
• Special Guest of Honor Gardner Dozois. “Gardner Raymond Dozois (born July 23, 1947) is an American science fiction author and editor. He was editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine from 1984 to 2004. He has won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards, both as an editor and a writer of short fiction.” —Wikipedia

And speaking of Norwescon 36…

We’ll be rolling our website over to Norwescon 36 information over the coming weeks. In the meantime, here’s a taste of what’s to come next year!

Easter weekend comes a little earlier next year, so Norwescon 36 is already less than a year away! We’ll be back for another year of fannish fun and frivolity March 28–31, 2013, once again at the Doubletree by Hilton Seattle Airport.

Our theme will be Save the World! Ecologically friendly science, superheroes fending off the dastardly schemes of some villain, wizards and heroes defending the downtrodden against the forces of evil, how future technologies will keep our habitats safe for us all (both here on Earth and beyond these blue skies), how alien invasions have been defeated by everything from everyday microbes to warriors standing firm…there’s a lot to play with, and we’re sure you’ll have plenty of ideas to keep you busy over the next year!

Our Guest of Honor lineup so far includes:

• Artist Guest of Honor Stephan Martinière. “Stephan Martinière (born May 3, 1962) is an award-winning French science fiction and fantasy artist, using his experience to morph from cartoonist to concept illustrator to art director.” —Wikipedia
• Science Guest of Honor Edward Tenner. “Edward Tenner is a historian of technology and culture. He was a founding advisor of Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center and holds a Ph.D in European history.” —The Atlantic
• Special Guest of Honor Gardner Dozois. “Gardner Raymond Dozois (born July 23, 1947) is an American science fiction author and editor. He was editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine from 1984 to 2004. He has won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards, both as an editor and a writer of short fiction.” —Wikipedia

We’ll have more announcements to come over the coming year, so be sure to keep track of us here, on Twitter, and on Facebook!

Norwescon 35 is over, and we hope you all enjoyed this year’s convention as much as we did! We are always open to your feedback on what went well or what could be improved for next year’s convention. You can send feedback to us in a number of ways:

• Leave a comment on this post,
• leave a comment on our Facebook page,
• send comments via Twitter by including the #nwconion (for improvements) or #nwcrose (for kudos) hashtags,
• use the “Feedback” link that we just added to our Guidebook app with the latest update,
• or email us directly at info@norwescon.org,

We’re on the lookout for your blog posts and write-ups about your experiences at con. We’ll be posting a selection of links in a week or so, and while we’ll do our best to find as many as we can, please feel free to get in touch with us through any of the above mentioned methods with any links you might find.

We’re also looking forward to seeing this year’s convention through your eyes! Upload your photos to Flickr and add them to this year’s Norwescon 35 photo group! Our official photographs will start to appear on our Flickr and Facebook accounts in the next few weeks, after our photography crew has had time to sort through the thousands of photos they took over the course of the weekend (not to mention catch up on sleep)!

Thanks from all of us on the Norwescon 35 ConCom to all of you who attended, our volunteers, the pros and panelists, dealers and artists, the hotel, and of course, our wonderful Guests of Honor. We’ll see you again next year for Norwescon 36!

Philip K. Dick Awards
c/o PO Box 3447
Hoboken, NJ 07030
(201) 876-2551
www.philipkdickaward.org
April 6, 2012

For Immediate Release
2012 Philip K. Dick Award Winner Announced

It was announced on Friday, April 6, at Norwescon 35, in SeaTac, Washington, that the winner for the distinguished original science fiction paperback published for the first time during 2011 in the U.S.A. is:

THE SAMUIL PETROVITCH TRILOGY by Simon Morden (Orbit)
Special citation was given to:

THE COMPANY MAN by Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit)

The Philip K. Dick Award is presented annually with the support of the Philip K. Dick Trust for distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States.

The award is sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and the Philip K. Dick Trust and the award ceremony is sponsored by the NorthWest Science Fiction Society. The 2011 award was given to THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF SPRING HEELED JACK by Mark Hodder (Pyr) with a special citation given to HARMONY by Project Itoh (Haikasoru). The 2011 judges were Scott Baker (chair), Mark Budz, Roby James, Darrell Schweitzer, and Alice K. Turner.

This year’s judges are Bruce Bethke, Sydney Duncan, Daryl Gregory, Bridget McKenna, and Paul Witcover,

For more information, contact the award administration:
Gordon Van Gelder (201) 876-2551
John Silbersack (212) 333-1513
Pat Lo Brutto (845) 516-4412

For more information about the Philip K. Dick Trust: http://www.philipkdick.com/

For more information about the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, http://www.psfs.org/:
Contact Gary Feldbaum (215) 665-5752

For more information about Norwescon: http://www.norwescon.org/:
Contact NorthWest SF Society: (425) 686-9737

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