GUEST BLOG: Catherine Lundoff on Organizations Building Diversity in Science Fiction and Fantasy

Science fiction and fantasy as a genre gives us the opportunity as readers and writers to explore new worlds, new futures and new concepts. As a reflection of the genre, science fiction fandom often prides itself on being very welcoming and inclusive. That said, sometimes both genre and fandom need some help achieving those goals. The organizations mentioned in this post are part of that help: sponsoring awards, increasing visibility of unrepresented writers and their books and providing support (emotional and/or financial).

I recently joined the Mother Board for Broad Universe . Broad Universe is a volunteer-run organization that promotes women writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror through podcasts, convention readings, book tables, panels, a listserv and various forms of social media. We run an ad in Locus every year celebrating our award winners (it gets bigger each time!) and do other forms of outreach and promotion. "Women" are defined as anyone identifying and presenting as female, as I found out when I asked.  I'm really enjoying being on the board and I'm hoping to see the organization grow and expand during my tenure.

One of the things I'm working on as part of my board duties is building bridges with other organizations in the genre. We're hoping to start doing some joint readings and events such as panels at different cons in the near future so that more readers and fans find out about us and the issues that we're working on.