Guests of Honor

We are thrilled to announce our guests of honor for Norwescon 46!

Jim Butcher, a white man with dark hair and greying beard, raising one eyebrow, wearing a brown leather jacket over a white shirt, blue-grey vest, and blue jeans, standing in a living room.

Writer Guest of Honor – Jim Butcher

Jim Butcher is the author of The Dresden Files, Codex Alera, and a new steampunk series, The Cinder Spires. His resume includes a laundry list of skills which were useful a couple centuries ago, and he plays guitar quite badly. An avid gamer, he plays tabletop games in varying systems, a variety of video games on PC and console, and LARPs whenever he can make time for it.

Jim goes by the moniker Longshot in a number of online locales. He came by this name in the early 1990s when he decided he would become a published author. Usually only three in 1000 who make such an attempt actually manage to become published; of those, only one in 10 make enough money to call it a living. The sale of a second series was the breakthrough that allowed him beat the long odds against attaining a career as a novelist.

All the same, he refuses to change his nickname.

A white man with long, wavy grey hair and glasses, wearing a black sweatshirt and jeans, standing with his arms crossed outdoors on a grassy hilltop in front of a large grey standing stone, with a lake and mountains visible in the distance.

Artist Guest of Honor – Charles Vess

Charles Vess has been drawing ever since he could hold a crayon and crawl to the nearest wall. His long list of accomplishments includes cover and interior art for Marvel, DC, Tor, Harper, Abrams, and Subterranean Press, as well as many illustrated books and graphic novels. He has won two Hugo, four World Fantasy, three Chesley, five Locus, a Mythopoeic, and two Will Eisner awards.

Charles’ art has been featured in many gallery and museum exhibitions across the nation, including Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art at the Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators, and Enchanted, A History of Fantasy Illustration at the Norman Rockwell Museum. His work has been shown in Paris, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

His four-year collaboration with Ursula K. Le Guin resulted in a fully illustrated edition of all her Earthsea stories. Published by Saga Press, The Books of Earthsea garnered many awards. 2021 saw the release of Honeycomb (Saga), written by Joanne M. Harris, with color and black and white illustrations by Charles, and The Art of Stardust (Titan), an informal history written by Charles and with an introduction by Neil Gaiman.

In September 2022 his first novel, The Queen of Summer’s Twilight, was published by NewCon Press.

Charles lives in a house on the North Fork River in Southwestern Virginia, where he works diligently from his studio, Green Man Press.

Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine

A white man with short-cropped slightly curly grey hair, wearing a white flannel shirt over a black t-shirt, in front of evergreen tree branches, looking at the camera and smiling slightly.

Spotlight Publisher – Clarkesworld Magazine

Since launching in 2006, Clarkesworld rapidly became one of the leading English language science fiction and fantasy magazines. Each monthly issue features six-to-eight works of original fiction by new and established authors, thought-provoking articles, interviews, eye-catching cover art, and an editorial. They are also known for taking a more global approach to science fiction, with almost every issue featuring at least one work in translation. Clarkesworld has been recognized with a World Fantasy Award, three Hugo Awards, and a British Fantasy Award. Their fiction has been nominated for or won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, BSFA, Sturgeon, Locus, Shirley Jackson, Ditmar, Aurora, Aurealis, Ignyte, Eugie Foster, Utopia, WSFA Small Press, and Stoker Awards. Clarkesworld is available in ebook, online, and print editions. Their fiction is also available via podcast.

Representative Neil Clarke

Neil Clarke is the multi-award-winning editor of Clarkesworld Magazine and over a dozen anthologies, including the Best Science Fiction of the Year series. An 11-time finalist and the 2022 winner of the Hugo Award for best editor short form, he is also the three-time winner of the Chesley Award for best art director. In 2019, Clarke received the SFWA Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award for distinguished contributions to the science fiction and fantasy community. He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and two sons.

More Guest of Honor Announcements Coming Soon!

We will announce the rest of this coming year’s Guests of Honor as soon as we have them confirmed. If you have suggestions for guests you would like to see in the future, you can always send your ideas to our Guest of Honor Selection Committee. For more information on how we choose our Guests of Honor, see our FAQ entry “How are the Guests of Honor chosen?”

Thank you for your patience!

Do you have suggestions for people you’d like to see as future Norwescon Guests of Honor? We’d love to hear from you about who you’d like us to invite. You can check out the guidelines we use on our FAQ page, and at any time during the year, you can contact our Guest of Honor Committee to send in your suggestions!