The TransAtlantic Fan Fund (TAFF) announced Jacqueline Monahan as this year’s winner of the TAFF race to send a North American fan to Europe. Monahan, who beat out Warren Buff and Kim Kofmel in a three-way race, will attend Eastercon, to be held in Heathrow, London, April 6-9, 2012.

James Gunn’s Ad Astra, an online resource site for authors and scholars published through Kansas University’s Center for the Study of Science Fiction, has issued a call for submissions for a new fiction publication of the same name. The first issue, whose theme, according to issue editor Isaac Bell, is “communication and information,” will be released [...]

Scottish writer, critic, and translator Gilbert Adair, 66, died December 8, 2011 in London. Adair was born December 29, 1944 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is best known for his non-fiction work on contemporary culture, including books like Myths and Memories: A Dazzling Dissection of British Life and Culture (1986), The Postmodernist Always Rings Twice: Reflections on Culture [...]

New publisher John Joseph Adams announced today that he will merge Fantasy magazine into Lightspeed magazine. The number of fiction pieces from each magazine will remain the same, with four fantasy and four science fiction stories in each issue of the revamped Lightspeed. Because the number of fiction pieces is doubling, the price of the [...]

Artist Darrell K. Sweet, 77, died December 5, 2011. Sweet’s first illustrations were for Ballantine Books in 1975, and when the Del Rey imprint was formed in 1977, he produced many of their covers. Since then he has created illustrations for most of the major SF publishers, including Berkeley, Ace, and Tor. He is perhaps [...]

Fan artist D. West won the 2011 Rotsler Award for Fan Artist, sponsored by the Southern California Institute for Fan Interests and presented at Loscon 38, November 25-27, 2011 in Los Angeles. The award includes a $300 prize. West wrote a letter refusing the award, which reads, in part, Rotsler may not have meant any [...]

Irish fan John Berry (not to be confused with American editor and designer John D. Berry) died November 25, 2011 of cancer. Berry was a major figure in Irish fandom in the ’50s and early ’60s, joining organized fandom in 1954 after meeting Walt Willis. He was famed for his humorous and hyperbolic articles, and [...]

FantasyCon 2012 announced their first three guests for next year’s convention: Joe R. Lansdale (author GoH), Mary Danby (special editor guest), and Tim Lebbon (master of ceremonies). The UK convention will be held in Brighton, Sussex, September 27-30, 2012. For more information on the convention: see <www.fantasycon2012.org>.