It’s Alice Sheldon’s 101st birthday! We don’t have a special birthday cake for her, so we’re re-giving Georgie Schnobrich’s beautiful cake celebrating this year’s Tiptree Award winners.

As a birthday present, all three of WisCon 40’s guests of honor are posting their superb guest of honor speeches today. Justine Larbalestier’s moving speech was largely about the rights of young people, and especially young people of color. Sofia Samatar spoke eloquently about writing and flight. And Nalo Hopkinson announced the Lemonade Award, a kindness award for people who foster positive change in the science fiction community

These three speeches made for an amazing evening, capped by the Tiptree Award ceremony. If you were there, reading the speeches will bring it back for you. If you couldn’t be there, reading the speeches will give you something of the flavor. Also, Tiptree Award winner Eugene Fischer has posted an excellent summary of the speeches, with long quotations.

And, of course, we believe that Ally/Tip would be delighted if you felt like marking her birthday by donating to the award that preserves her legacy of exploring and expanding gender in speculative fiction.