2015 Award Winners
Pins
20 SWANCON’s attended:
Jayden Griffiths
Kate Sharpe
Colin Sharpe
Grant Watson
Fe Waters
Peter Kelly
Jenny Kelly
33 SWANCON’s attended:
None this year.
Mikey
I knew Michael O’Brien, and his terrible loss to the SwanCon community is one reason among many that cancer research is my charity of choice.
Mikey brought so much joy to the games room of SwanCon in years past, and the Mikey Award was instituted to celebrate that in future gaming streams.
That the attendees of the gaming room thought that I was worthy of it this year.
I have no words.
- John Samuel, March 2015
Marge Hughes
This is a story of how I became a fan.
I was 14 years old and living away from home; 2000 kilometres away from home, here in Perth. I was having a particularly hard time, bullying basically,and while I’ve had plenty of highs and lows in my life when I was 14 I was definitely at my lowest.
I somehow found myself organising a display in my high school library about Doctor Who. I was staying in a boarding college and didn’t have anything to display. I telephoned the ABC Shop, figuring they might have something. They gave me a telephone number, saying it belonged to a guy who was running a local Doctor Who club.
I phoned the number, and the man at the other end suggested I go along to the club meeting the following Saturday. When I went there he met me, introduced me to everyone there. He asked the members of the club if they’d be willing to pitch in. In the end he loaned me, a then-shy 14 year-old boy at his lowest ebb, valuable memorabilia from his own collection to use in the display. On the week the display went up he took public transport all the way out to Midland to give a talk during lunchtime to a room full of students about Doctor Who.
And he did all of this – he expressed so much generosity – because he is a selfless, utterly wonderful human being who has a near-unparalleled enthusiasm for science fiction and popular culture and wants nothing more than to share that enthusiasm with as many people as he can.
He is my longest-running friend,and for 25 years I have watched him befriend and encourage new fans and young people to share our love for science fiction. He has been a selfless volunteer, and the most wonderful person you could hope to meet.
The Marge Hughes Award celebrates the best of us – and I can think of no one who reflects that as brilliantly as Damian Magee.
- Grant Watson, March 2015
A. Bertram Chandler
In 2005, Donna created what I believe is her greatest contribution to the community – ‘Australian Speculative Fiction: A Genre Overview’. This took thousands of hours of her own time, and thousands of her own dollars and the result was truly astonishing. A complete snapshot of the profession in Australia at that moment, including interviews with most writers, examples of the artwork being produced and even introducing us to some of the up and comers.
- Nicole Murphy, March 2015
Norma K. Hemming
The 2015 Norma K Hemming Award for excellence in the exploration of themes of race, gender, sexuality, class and disability in Australian speculative fiction was won by Paddy O’Reilly for her speculative fiction novel The Wonders, published by Affirm Press in July 2014.
Peter McNamara Achievement
