2021 Damon Knight Grand Memorial Award

I’m been sitting on this news for weeks and weeks, now I finally get to reveal it. I’m to receive the 2021 Damon Knight Grand Memorial Award! It was formerly and is still informally known as the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) Grand Master Award. The Grand Master Award was inaugurated in 1975. Author Robert Heinlein was the first SFWA Grand Master. The award was renamed in 2002 in recognition of author Damon Knight, who founded SFWA, and who passed away in 2002.

I was so thrilled to get the phone call! It was the last thing I saw coming. At 60 years old, I’ll be the youngest Grand Master to date. The amazing Samuel R. Delany was the first man of African descent to receive it, in 2014. I’m pretty sure I’m the first woman of African descent to receive it, and the first Caribbean person.

The award will be presented at the 2021 Nebula Ceremony, organized by SFWA. I was at the 2014 Nebs when Chip (Samuel Delany) received his. It was a wonderful moment, to see on that podium a Black, gay man who is one of the authors I revere the most. It was a first. And now I’ll get to make another.

Best of all, the news was released today, Dec 1, 2020, which is my mother’s 80th birthday.

Deconstructed children’s wooden blocks: wood, ink, paper