We expanded the slate to achieve the racial diversity of Guest of Honor (GoH) authors that our members look forward to every year. The slate expansion was originally announced in an apology newsletter from our board president on 8/23. We had published a slate of two non-BIPOC GoHs for 2027, and while there was excitement and anticipation about those particular authors, people were also disappointed with the lack of intersectional representation.
In this blog:
– Nomination and Selection Protocol – What happened and what we’re doing about it.
– Ongoing Diversity Efforts
– New This Year – POC Outreach Chair and Guest Panel Curator positions
Nomination and Selection Protocol
For context, WisCon is all-volunteer. We lose institutional memory every time there’s turnover. And, while there’s been a concerted effort to document all of the protocols from different departments in this last year, that’s still ongoing.
After releasing the initial GoH slate for 2027, we were immediately approached by previous volunteers asking why we hadn’t followed ‘the selection protocol.’ This triggered a forensic search revealing additional documents our selection team wasn’t aware of, which included the procedures cited by the volunteers designed to increase the racial diversity of our final GoH invitees.
It’s informative that, even though selections for our 2025 and 2026 conventions were done using the flawed procedures, they still produced diverse slates, demonstrating that our nomination process is robust and diverse. However, those results were a happenstance of the order of our candidate pool rather than the result of a structural policy. We have now recovered the full policy and procedures and are unifying documentation going forward.
Ongoing Diversity Efforts
WisCon is a feminist, diverse, inclusive convention. Those qualities don’t just appear during the GoH selection process. Here are a few things we work on all year long:
– Collaborations with other, diverse literary organizations, like the Otherwise Awards and the Speculative Literature Foundation. This is a great source of programming, participants, AND nominations.
– POC Outreach Fund – Helps with membership and travel costs. Will be overseen this year by the POC Outreach Chair.
– Right to Be… bystander response training taken by board members and recommended to volunteers.
NEW This Year
– The POC Outreach Chair – This role has been reorganized and simplified so it has more administrative back-end support built-in. There will be more detailed announcements regarding this soon.
– Guest Panel Curator – This is a BIPOC industry professional who works with WisCon to design a panel track on any subjects they choose, and invites friends, colleagues, peers and experts to staff those panels in addition to WisCon attendees.
This list isn’t exhaustive. There’s a lot going on, and we’ll be communicating more of it in the coming months. Every effort listed here is accomplished by dedicated volunteers putting in the hours. If you’re invested in what goes into WisCon-being-WisCon, please consider answering the Calls for Volunteers as they’re posted. Also, the annual SF3 general meeting is coming up October 25 (membership deadline is 10/11). That’s your chance to let the board know what’s important to you, and to nominate people (yourself or others) to serve as board members.
We heard from a lot of people about the initial slate that was announced, and, as awkward as it was to have made the mistake, it was really heartening to hear from so many of you. It seems that worthwhile things, like, say, freedom, democracy, and yes, diversity, can never be truly ‘won’. They have to be actively pursued, built, constantly reaffirmed. This was a good opportunity for us as a community to loudly and consciously recommit to what makes WisCon so worthwhile.
But let’s not forget the best part of going through this whole process. In 2027, WisCon will have FOUR talented, accomplished, and unique Guests of Honor. It will be an amazing year.
Look forward to an announcement of the full slate soon.