Renowned sci-fi writer will deliver lecture at KU

LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas Department of English will host author Karen Joy Fowler as the 2017 speaker for the Richard W. Gunn Lecture. Fowler will lecture on “Exploring and Expanding Gender in Speculative Fiction: The Tiptree Award at 25” from 7-8:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 14, in the Jayhawk Room of the Kansas Union.

Fowler is the author of author of six novels and three short story collections. She’s written literary, contemporary, historical and science fiction. Her most recent novel, “We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves,” won the 2013 PEN/Faulkner, the California Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker in 2014. She's won the Nebula and World Fantasy awards for short fiction, and this year, she will be the GoH at the World Fantasy Convention in San Antonio, Texas. She lives in Santa Cruz, California where she is currently “pretending” to write a new book.

Among her many achievements, Fowler co-founded the James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award, first announced at the 1991 WisCon, the world’s only feminist-oriented science fiction convention. For 25 years, the Tiptree prize has been awarded annually to a work of science fiction or fantasy that contemplates shifts in gender roles in ways that are particularly thought-provoking, imaginative and perhaps even infuriating. The lecture will provide an opportunity to hear from a pioneer thinker about the relation among feminism, gender and speculative fiction, and from one of the most important and accomplished writers working in the field today.

The lecture is free and open to the general public. For more information, please contact Professor Kij Johnson at kij@ku.edu or Professor Paul Outka at paul.outka@ku.edu.