2025 Sturgeon Symposium

Call for Papers: 4th Annual Sturgeon Symposium: 

"Expanding Speculative Horizons"

The J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction is pleased to announce our 4th Annual Sturgeon Symposium, to be held October 9-10, 2025.  In addition to presenting the annual Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best science fiction short story, which will include a reading from the winner, we are delighted to announce that Darcie Little Badger has accepted our invitation to speak at the symposium. 

Darcie Little Badger is a Lipan Apache writer with a PhD in oceanography. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Elatsoe, was featured in Time Magazine as one of the best 100 fantasy books of all time. Elatsoe also won the Locus award for Best First Novel and is a Nebula, Ignyte, and Lodestar finalist. Her second fantasy novel, A Snake Falls to Earth, received a Nebula Award, an Ignyte Award, and a Newbery Honor and is on the National Book Awards longlist. It is a breathtaking work of Indigenous futurism. Her third book, Sheine Lende, is the prequel to Elatsoe, which is centered on Ellie’s grandmother, deepens and expands Darcie’s one-of-a-kind world and introduces us to another cast of characters that will wend their way around readers’ hearts. She also writes short stories and has written comics for Marvel and DC (among others).

 
Event Details: 

The symposium will take place over two days, featuring both virtual and in-person events to accommodate both international and local attendees: 

• Thursday AM: All-virtual panels
• Thursday afternoon/evening: 
  • Darcie Little Badger reading
    • Presentation of the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best science fiction short story and a reading from this year's winner.
      • Reception
• Friday: In-person panels will be held throughout the day, including an author’s panel featuring Darcie Little Badger and others. Lunch included.

 
Call for Papers: 

We invite papers, panel proposals, and roundtable discussions that engage with a wide array of topics connected to speculative fiction (SF) in its myriad forms and modalities (science fiction, fantasy, film, comics, etc.). We especially encourage proposals for fully-formed panels and roundtables, along with submissions related to indigenous futurism, speculative YA literature, SF created originally in other languages than English, and/or work that reflects expansive understandings of speculative expression.

Topics may include but are not limited to: 

• Indigenous futurism 
• Global SF
• Rethinking/disrupting categories of speculation (genre, form, audience, etc.)
• Afrofuturism
• Novel approaches to the study of SF (creative, interdisciplinary, etc.)
• Speculative arts and desire
• The intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality in speculative fiction
• Kinship and speculative expression
• Speculative places and spaces 
• Narratives of resistance
• Utopia/dystopia
• SF and pedagogy 

Creative submissions are also warmly encouraged, including speculative narrative, poetry, and visual art. 

Guidelines for Proposals: 
 

• Abstracts for individual papers should be no more than 250 words. 
• Panel proposals should list all speakers, affiliations, presentation titles, and email addresses, and include short abstracts for each presentation. 
• Roundtable proposals should list speakers, affiliations, and email addresses and include an abstract of up to 500 words on the topic to be discussed. 
• Proposals should make clear whether they are for virtual or in-person presentation.  
• Deadline for submissions: May 19
• Notification: mid June
   

Proposal submission portal:

https://kusurvey.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1ZzMvW6FNRKa2UK

Questions? Contact us at sfcenter@ku.edu.