Wesley Chu at the Sasquan 2015 Hugo Awards Ceremony. via JohnO
We’re officially more than three-quarters of the way to CONvergence 2016! As we solidify exciting plans, panels, musical acts, artists, and our own cosplays, we’re conjuring up fond memories of last year’s convention and thought we’d check in with the CONvergence 2015 guests of honor to see what’s kept them busy since last July.
Science fiction author Wesley Chu’s anticipated novel Time Salvager was released just two days after CONvergence 2015 came to an end. The story about a doomed planet and an energy-stealing time traveler who struggles with addiction received stellar reviews. During the 2015 Hugo Award ceremony in August, Chu was awarded the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He was interviewed by the Taipei Times shortly before the new year.
Animation writer Nicole Dubuc was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in a Children’s or Pre-School Children’s Series for her writing in Spooksville. Recently, Nicole has been busy with her co-created series Transformers: Rescue Bots and was also recently elected as a trustee and secretary of The Animation Guild, I.A.T.S.E. Local 839.
Wasting no time, set designer Chad Frey spent the rest of 2015 working on the design side of an upcoming film for Open Road Productions called Sleepless Night. Starring actor Jamie Foxx and hip hop artist T.I., the movie is a remake of the French thriller Nuit Blanche and Kamal Hassan’s Thoongaa Vanam. Chad has also been working on Season 7 of The Vampire Diaries.
Charlotte Fullerton at CONvergence 2015
Writer and story editor Charlotte Fullerton jumped right from CONvergence last July over to San Diego Comic Con, where she was a panelist in a session about TV animation story editors and head writers. Since then, she’s kept busy co-writing episodes of the animated series Thunderbirds Are Go and My Little Pony, worked Long Beach Comic Con and Baltimore BronyCon, and helped solicit applications to the second annual Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics.
Speculative fiction editor Lee Harris oversaw the Tor.com: The Imprint publication of a few particularly gripping editorials, including the announcement of a forthcoming novel by urban fantasy author and fellow past CONvergence Guest of Honor Paul Cornell, and a review of The Good Dinosaur as delivered by an eight-year-old.
Gordon Smuder with a rat puppet at CONvergence 2015
Puppet creator and writer Gordon Smuder launched a successful kickstarter campaign at CONvergence 2015 to fund the new puppet web series Vermin starring MST3K puppeteer and fellow past CONvergence Guest of Honor Trace Beaulieu. (And rats. Lots of puppet rats.) Vermin is now well into production and you can see some of the production photos on the Vermin Facebook Page. Smuder also supplied Stages Theater in Hopkins with a custom Woodstock puppet for their production of A Charlie Brown Christmas, and continues work on several other commission puppets.
Bryan Thao Worra at CONvergence 2015
Science writer Jennifer Ouellette has started up an exciting new chapter of her life since last summer: She’s now senior science editor for Gizmodo. She recently tweeted this Gizmodo article about the science fiction that inspired some of the world’s most well-known scientists.
Baen Books Editor Toni Weisskopf won the 2015 Neffy Award for Best Editor in October. She also contributed to a David Drake tribute collection of stories and essays by top science fiction authors. Drake is one the most renowned science fiction military authors.
Laotian American speculative fiction poet Bryan Thao Worra hasn’t slowed down at all since CONvergence 2015. In a single month alone, he published poems in Lontar: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction, Cthulhusattva and Strange Horizons as well as interviews with fiction and poetry writer Nancy Hightower and Russian poet Roman Lyakhovetsky. He’s publishing updates nearly daily to his blog.
That wraps up our overview of what the CONvergence 2015 guests have been up to since last July. We’re definitely looking forward to having Lee Harris, Gordon Smuder, and Bryan Thao Worra join us again this year!
Now that you’ve caught up with all of the CONvergence 2015 guests, why not check out our exciting slate of CONvergence 2016 guests?
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