After the two Founding Mothers, perhaps no one has been more important to the success and identity of the Tiptree Award than Ellen Klages, whose legendary auctions gave the Award much of its visibility, character, and flair (not to mention raising enough money to keep us going as a stable organization for over 20 years).

Ellen retired from her auctioneer role in 2015. Now she is taking an open-ended leave of absence from the Tiptree Motherboard.

If you only know Ellen as our take-no-prisoners fundraiser, you’re missing out on some great writing, including her award-winning story “Basement Magic” and her wonderful middle-grade historical novel, The Green Glass Sea. We can’t be too sad about losing Ellen from the Motherboard, since her plan is to concentrate on her own career. That includes a new novella, Passing Strange (tor.com, January 2017), a collection of her recent short fiction, Wicked Wonders (Tachyon, May 2017), and a novel-in-progress. We can’t wait.

Ellen says:

The Tiptree Award changed my life, and brought me friends and a community that I will cherish forever. Don’t think of this as goodbye; I’m not moving on, just shifting a little sideways to focus on my own work. I will continue to offer advice and opinions to the Motherboard, if called upon; to add Tiptree winners to my teetering to-read pile; and even manage to make a few magic objects for the auction!

Ellen, we’ll miss you, but we’re glad you’ll still be around!

Space Babe is thrilled to announce that you can now show your support for the Tiptree Award in the latest of fashion style. Or with your morning coffee! Space Babe t-shirts, hoodies and coffee mugs available through Teespring. Get your SpaceBabe style on!

Everything is available in light color (pictured above) and black. Shirts are $23-$26, hoodies $38-$46, mugs $15.All proceeds go to the Tiptree Award.

Look great, feel great!

Find and send us photos (good quality resolution preferred) taken at any of these Tiptree Award ceremonies, or of these missing items, and Space Babe will send you a personal thank you card via email or snailmail, your choice.

We are looking for photos from Tiptree Award ceremonies that did not take place at WisCon, specifically these conventions:

Readercon 7, Worcester, MA, 1994: Photos of the Tiptree ceremony, especially of winner, Nicola Griffith. We already have excellent images of the art award, but we would love to have photos of the Tiptree auction — since it was the historic, first auction featuring Ellen Klages as auctioneer. We’d also want a photo of Nicola being serenaded by the Tiptree Chorus.

• Potlatch 4, Oakland, CA, 1995: Photos of the Tiptree ceremony, especially of winner, Nancy Springer and the art award she received — a feathered mask created by Michaela Roessner.
• Readercon 10, Westborough, MA, 1998: Photos of the Tiptree ceremony, especially of winners, Candas Jane Dorsey and Kelly Link and the art awards they received — a painted silk scarf with images from Black Wine (Candas), and a snowglobe (Kelly). Both art awards were created by Ellen Klages. We’d also love a photo of the winners being serenaded by the Tiptree chorus.
• International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA) 20, Ft. Lauderdale FL, 1999. Photos of the Tiptree ceremony, especially of winner, Raphael Carter and the art award Raphael received — an intersex doll created by Melissa M. O’Grady. We have no record as to whether Raphael was serenaded by the Tiptree Chorus, but if that did happen, we would love to have some visual evidence.
• Readercon 14, Boston, MA, 2001. Photos of the Tiptree ceremony, especially of winner, Hiromi Goto, including any of Hiromi being serenaded by the Tiptree chorus. (We already have excellent images of the art award.)
• Gaylaxicon, Boston, MA. Photos of the Tiptree ceremony, especially of winners, Johanna Sinisalo and Joe Haldeman, including any of the winners being serenaded by the Tiptree chorus. (We already have excellent images of the art awards.)

Thank you!

Sheri S. Tepper died over this past weekend,  She was an incredibly prolific SF author, with more than 25 novels to her credit. She also wrote as E. E. Horlak, B. J. Oliphant, and A. J. Orde.

Her books appeared on the Tiptree Award Honor List twice:

• 2007 for The Margarets
• 2001 for The Fresco

and on the Long list four times:

• 1999 for Singer from the Sea
• 1998 for Six Moon Dance
• 1994 for Shadow’s End
• 1993 for A Plague of Angels 

She was also a guest of honor at WisCon 22, where she delivered a fiery, radical speech on the subject of birth control, women’s health and population, drawing upon her 1970s activism and work with Planned Parenthood. She will be remembered for the feminist and ecological themes of her work.

We have excellent applications for this year’s Tiptree Fellowships — but we still have time for a few more.

The Tiptree Fellows can be writers, artists, scholars, media makers, remix artists, performers, musicians, or something else entirely. If you are doing work that is changing the way we think about gender through speculative narrative – maybe in a form we would recognize as the science fiction or fantasy genre, maybe in some other way – you will be eligible for a Fellowship. You won’t have to be a professional or have an institutional affiliation, as we hope to support emerging creators who don’t already have institutional support for their work.

Fellowship winners receive $500 grants. If you were wishing you had time to apply but missed yesterday’s cut-off, now is your chance. Applications will be open until September 15, 2016.

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.

We are delighted to announce that MidAmericon II has graciously agreed to host a special brief Tiptree Award charity auction. The convention is in Kansas City, and the auction will be on Friday, August 19 at noon in the Auction Space in the exhibits gallery. Auctioneer extraordinaire Sumana Harihareswara will be there to persuade you to open your wallet.

Unlike the longer WisCon auctions, this one has a fixed set of items being auctioned, all of which are pictured above. (Unless we decide to slip in a surprise or two at the last minute …)

Start thinking now about what you want to take home from Kansas City. Your options are:

• A signed first edition of Kindred, by Octavia Butler.
• Your very own Space Babe Hoodie.
• Weird Tales #2, Winter 1985. Contributor Terry Garey says: “The [magazine] went under right after [this issue] was printed, and the editor sent us all extra contributors’ copies, since the company couldn’t pay us. Very few other copies were distributed, and most were destroyed. The cover art was a rip off of a Victoria’s Secret cover, which didn’t help matters.”
• Cooking Out of This World, edited by Anne McCaffrey. Mass market paperback, containing recipes from dozens of famous science fiction writers from the 1980s
• Mythologies, A suite of six miniatures for string quartet, by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. Photocopy. No performance rights included. Includes program from piano performance at WisCon 10.
• Exploring the Solar System, Children’s Book by Fabric (Do-it-yourself fabric book, made by cutting fabric and stitching seams)
• A set of the 2015 Tiptree winners: a signed first edition of Lizard Radio, by Pat Schmatz and a signed copy of the April-May 2015 Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine containing “The New Mother,” by Eugene Fischer

The cookbooks and t-shirts at the bottom of the illustration will be available for direct sale.

Even if you don’t intend to buy anything, the Tiptree Auction is the best entertainment value you’re likely to find on Friday afternoon at Worldcon, so we hope to see you there!