The Aurora Short-Form Finalists up against the wall

On Saturday night at Ad Astra, Toronto's annual SF convention, I happened to notice that all five of the nominees for this year's Aurora Award for Best Short-Form Work in English were standing or sitting within two metres of each other at the hotel bar. Photo-op! Here they are:

Left to right: Stephen Kotowych, Tony Pi, Hayden Trenholm, David Livingstone Clink, Douglas Smith. As I mentioned before, I'm very, very proud of this group: four of them have been my writing students, and the fifth -- Dave -- is my brother-in-law!

One of the highlights of the con was the launch for Hayden's novel Defining Diana. Hayden and his wife Liz were among the six (!) houseguests Carolyn and I had for the Ad Astra weekend.

For my own part, I gave the first public reading of Wake, volume one of my WWW trilogy. Who knew the book was about apes? I did! :) I read several scenes comprising a subplot of the book about ape-language communication. It was the first time I'd read the material out loud, and I was very gratified by how well it was received.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site