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!

We are in the middle of WisCon, and so far the convention itself, and the Tiptree Award presence here, have been a huge success.

Eleanor Arnason, co-winner of the very first Tiptree Award, crowned Tiptree winner Eugene Fischer with the beautiful tiara which Elise Matthesen donated to the award on Friday night. We think he once again proves the dictum that every winner looks magnificent in the tiara.

Last night’s auction, hosted by the amazing Sumana Harihareswara (aka brainwane) was a financial success, but if you could measure the success in laughter, we’d be in the one percent. If you were there, you would have seen Sumana in a bustier, in King George’s crown, and in other guises, but here she is modeling the Superman (Supergirl?) pants which were auctioned off and donated to the fabulous women who struggled to provide closed captioned versions of Sumana’s fast patter.

Our undying thanks to Sumana, the captioners, all the volunteers (set-up, tear-down, at-auction helpers, tweeter, cashiers and more) and to the audience and bidders!

Tonight Eugene Fischer gets officially honored and gets his check, original artwork, chocolate, and more!