Members of the Executive Board include five elected officers: President, First Vice-President, Second Vice-President, Treasurer, and Public Information Officer.
Other officers are ex officio or are appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the other elected officers. You can find the Conference Division Heads in the conference section of our site.
President
Jim Casey
High Point University, High Point, North Carolina, USA
Jim Casey is an Assistant Professor at High Point University in North Carolina. He has an MA from the University of North Texas, an MPhil from the University of Glasgow, and a PhD from the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies at the University of Alabama, where he was the first Strode Exchange Scholar to study at The Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. Although primarily a Shakespearean, he has published on such diverse topics as fantasy, early modern poetry, textual theory, performance theory, postmodern theory, comics, masculinity, Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Battlestar Galactica.
- <jcasey AT highpoint.edu>
First Vice-President
Sherryl Vint
Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada
Sherryl Vint is Associate Professor of English at Brock University and Director of the Interdisciplinary MA in Popular Culture. She is the author of Bodies of Tomorrow and Animal Alterity, and co-editor of the The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction, and Beyond Cyberpunk. She is co-author of The Routledge Concise History of Science Fiction and co-edits the journals Science Fiction Film and Television and Humanimalia.
- <sherryl.vint AT gmail.com>
Second Vice-President
Sydney Duncan
Frostburg State University, Frostburg, Maryland, USA
Sydney Duncan is an assistant professor of English at Frostburg State University. She is active in science fiction and fantasy scholarship and fandom. She has an M.F.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University and a Ph.D. from the University of Alabama.
- <sduncan AT frostburg.edu>
Treasurer
William Clemente
Peru State College, Peru, Nebraska, USA
Bill Clemente is a professor of English at Peru State College where he has taught a variety of courses for the past eighteen years, from Non-western Literature to the History of the English Language. Bill presently serves his second term as Treasurer for the IAFA. A fan of SF for fifty years, Bill experiments this spring 2010 with an on-line SF Literature and Film class. Bill enjoys bird watching and photography and serves as “unofficial official” photographer for a variety of organizations.
- <bclemente AT mac.com>
Public Information Officer
Crystal Black
Crystal Black has been in the tech industry for 10 years and is currently a marketing operations manager for JDSU’s Test and Measurement group. Crystal has focused on driving domestic and international events, web site development and marketing, and social media marketing. Crystal has a Bachelor and a Masters Degree in English Literature from Virginia Tech.
- <cblack AT vond.net>
Immediate Past President
Farah Mendelsohn
Middlesex University, London, England, UK
Farah Mendlesohn is Reader in Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature in the Media Department at Middlesex University and writes on the history of American religions and American science fiction. In 2005 she won the Hugo Award for Best Related Book for The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, which she edited with Edward James. Her book Rhetorics of Fantasy won the BSFA award for best non-fiction book in 2009; the book was also nominated for both Hugo and World Fantasy Awards. In 2010 she was twice nominated for Hugo Awards in the Best Related Books category. She was the editor of Foundation – The International Review of Science Fiction from 2002 to 2007.
- <farah.sf AT gmail.com>
Editor of the JFA
Brian Attebery
Idaho State University, Pocatello, Idaho, USA
Brian Attebery is editor of the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts and Professor of English at Idaho State University. His dissertation in American Civilization at Brown University became his first book, The Fantasy in Tradition in American Literature. He has since published Strategies of Fantasy and Decoding Gender in Science Fiction and was co-editor, with Ursula K. Le Guin and Karen Joy Fowler, of The Norton Book of Science Fiction. He was a Fulbright lecturer at Uppsala University in 1988, and has been honored for his scholarship by Idaho State University, the Science Fiction Research Association, the Idaho Humanities Council, and the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts.
- <attebria AT isu.edu>
Membership & Registration Coordinator
Bridgid Shannon
Pine View School for the Gifted, Osprey, Florida, USA
Bridgid Shannon teaches honors literature, journalism, and writing at Pine View School for the Gifted in Osprey, Florida. She received her A.B. in English from Rollins College, her M.A. in Children’s and Young Adult Literature from Hollins University, and is presently finishing her M.F.A. thesis in Creative Writing. Brie has taught writing workshops in children’s literature at Harding University’s Teachers as Writers Conference for the past three years. She has had a passion for the fantastic since childhood and been presenting at professional conferences since 1999.
- <iafareg AT gmail.com>
Student Caucus Representative
Taryne Taylor
University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA
Taryne Taylor is Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Iowa. She holds an M.A. in Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature from Florida Atlantic University. Her research focuses on feminist science fiction and fantasy, especially late nineteenth-century feminist utopias. Her other scholarly areas include Victorian literature, transnational feminist theory, and critical race studies.
- <tarynetaylor AT gmail.com>
Technical Officers
Michael A. Smith
High Point University, High Point, North Carolina, USA
Michael Smith holds the BS in Computer Science, the MS in Management and the PhD from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is currently an Associate Professor of Information Systems at High Point University where he teaches courses in management information systems and operations management. His research has appeared in journals including the Communications of the ACM, the Journal of MIS, The European Journal of Operations and Production Management, Database and Information & Management. He has been an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy since he bought a copy of Poul Anderson’s The High Crusade at a department store in Atlanta in the summer of 1973.
- <msmith AT highpoint.edu>
Curtis Potterveld
Independent Scholar
Curtis Potterveld holds a BS in Physics and a MS in Astrophysics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a MS in Aerospace Engineering from Arizona State University. He works currently for Boeing Space Operations as a systems engineer on the Commercial Crew Transportation System. Curtis is also pursuing a PhD in systems engineering at Steven’s Institute of Technology. Prior to working for Boeing he taught at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and worked at Microcosm Inc. He acquired is passion for engineering from reading and watching science fiction and fantasy as child and he has been hooked on it ever since.
- <curtis.potterveld AT gmail.com>
Sean Nixon
Conference On-Site A/V Coordinator
Sean Nixon is a graduate student at the University of Colorado finishing his PhD in Applied Mathematics. His research interests include Nonlinear Wave, Asymptotic Methods/Perturbation Theory, and nonlinear optics. He’s been attending the ICFA since 2000 and refused to give it up just because he was a mathematician.
- <sean.d.nixon AT gmail.com>
Len Hatfield (consultant)
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA
Len is a former president of the IAFA. Besides the fantastic in literature, his interests include literary theory, postmodernism, and humanities computing.
Awards Director
Gary K. Wolfe
Roosevelt University, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Gary Wolfe has long been involved in literary scholarship and criticism, with a particular focus on the fields of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. In addition to having written several books on these topics, he’s been a monthly book review columnist for LOCUS magazine since 1992. Over the years, Gary has contributed more than two hundred essays to academic journals, reference works, encyclopedias, and magazines. Among the more recent are essays on authors Peter Straub, Neil Gaiman, Jane Yolen, Joanna Russ, and Ray Bradbury.
- <gwolfe AT roosevelt.edu>
Conference Chair
Donald E. Morse
Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA
University of Debrecen, Debrecen, Hungary
Donald E. Morse is University Professor of American, Irish, and English literature, University of Debrecen, Hungary and Emeritus Professor of English and Rhetoric, Oakland University, Michigan. He has been twice Fulbright Professor (1987–1989, 1991–1993) and Soros Professor (1990, 1996–1997), University of Debrecen, Visiting Professor at the Centre for Transatlantic Studies, Maastricht and Partium University, Nagyvárad, Romania. He has written and/or edited 15 books. Among his latest are The Novels of Kurt Vonnegut: Imagining Being an American (2003), The Mythic Fantasy of Robert Holdstock with Kálmán Matolcsy (2011), Brian Friel’s Dramatic Artistry (2006), and Anatomy of Science Fiction (2006). He is also co-author of Worlds Visible and Invisible (1994), the editor of The Delegated Intellect: Emersonian Essays on Literature, Art, and Science (1995) and The Fantastic in World Literature and the Arts (1987). With the Hungarian scholar, Csilla Bertha, he co-edited A Small Nation’s Contribution to the World (1993), More Real than Reality: The Fantastic in Irish Literature and the Arts (1991), and The Celebration of the Fantastic (1992), and published translations of contemporary Hungarian plays into English, Silenced Voices: Transylvanian-Hungarian Plays for which he received a Rockefeller Study Fellowship. Their translation of The Heretic received its World Premiere at ICFA. His more than one hundred scholarly essays have appeared in a English and American Studies. Since 1984 he has served as the Conference Chair of the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (USA) and for the past 15 years has hosted Bloomsday in Detroit. The University of Debrecen awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in recognition of his international scholarship and his service to Hungarian higher education. In 2007 the Hungarian Society for the Study of English awarded him the László Országh Medal, the first non-Hungarian to receive the award.
- <Donaldcsilla AT yahoo.com>
Conference Publications Officer
Judy Collins McCormick
Campbellsville University, Campbellsville, Kentucky, USA
Judy Collins McCormick is Associate Professor of English at Campbellsville University in Campbellsville, Kentucky. She has an M.A. from Florida Atlantic University and a Ph.D. in Modern American Literature from the University of Kentucky. She publishes little and hasn’t been listed in the ICFA program as an official presenter since 1999, but she discovered the power of the all-nighter when she was still in high school, the first time her father, Conference Founder Robert A. Collins, asked her to please help him get the next issue of Fantasy Review to the printer. Since then, she has committed to memory everything her father would tell her about page lay-out, and she has had a passion for ICFA since its inception.
- <jarcm AT insightbb.com>
Book Exhibits and Sales Director
David Hartwell
New York, New York, USA
David Hartwell holds a Ph.D. in comparative medieval literature. He is an American editor of science fiction and fantasy and the publisher of numerous anthologies. He founded the Timescape imprint at Pocket and is currently a senior editor at Tor/Forge. He chairs the board of directors of the World Fantasy Convention and, with Gordon Van Gelder, is the administrator of the Philip K. Dick Award.
- <dgh AT panix.com>
Dell Magazines Award Director
Rick Wilber
University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA
Rick Wilber is a journalism and mass-media professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He has published two novels, several short-story collections, a memoir, and several college textbooks on writing, editing and mass-media studies for some of the world’s largest publishers. Rick has published more than fifty short stories and a similar number of poems in magazines and anthologies ranging from Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine and Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine to the often reprinted Alien Sex anthology and many others. Most recently, he is the editor of “Future Media” (Tachyon, 2011), a collection of reprinted classic works of fiction and non-fiction.
- <rickwilber AT tampabay.rr.com>
