We’re in the last two days of a drawing to raise money at the Carl Brandon Society. The Carl Brandon Society, an organization dedicated to racial and ethnic diversity in speculative fiction, will hold a prize drawing of five eReaders and a signed copy of the award winning anthology, Dark Matter, to benefit The Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fund, a fund that sends two emerging writers of color to the Clarion writers workshops annually.
Look here, you all fail to understand: K. Tempest Bradford has a goal. She wants to raise enough money to cover one full tuition to Clarion Diego, which is currently over $4900. This is not a woman you want to play with.
I don’t think you hear me.
We have TWO days for the eReader drawing. If you haven’t bought tickets yet, please do! Or, if you don’t care about eReaders or the autographed Dark Matter, just consider donating directly.
As if you need any other reasons, here’s a link to five good reasons to support this scholarship. When people complain about why there aren’t as many people of color writing genre fiction or wondering what we can do to encourage young writers of color, we can point to the efforts of the Carl Brandon Society. That should be a good enough reason. I, however, only need this one: the image of K. Tempest Bradford being displeased.
No one wants that.
Yeah people, don’t make me make this face: http://www.flickr.com/photos/35025258@N00/294522631/
Look at my eyes — that’s not red eye! Those are the laser beams about to shoot out.
I love the very idea of Octavia Butler; though I only found out about her last year and my public library doesn’t stock her stuff so I only know her novels through Wikipedia to date! Another one on my reading list! She sounded very intelligent and brave and obviously one of those who died too soon: pity.
Hey: why hasn’t our own talented bard on here done any posts for a while? (Don’t you die on us!) He must be thinking: maybe I nettled him into thought on some things.. Must check his Twitter!
from the carl brandon society:
Hi all,
Just thought you’d want to see this:
Last night the Drawing came to a close and now it’s time to announce the winners of the 5 eReaders and the autographed Dark Matter anthology. But first, I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who made this fundraiser successful.
We raised $4,520 from tickets sales and so far $490 in direct donations since the drawing began. We haven’t even calculated all of the donations sent in via mail yet! Right now the total stands at $5,010, which is simply amazing. Our original goal was just $1,000. Once we blew past that in the first 4 days, we set our sights on raising $3,200, the price of a Clarion West tuition. Once we met that goal, our next was to raise $4,950, enough for a tuition to Clarion Diego. In the last 30 hours of the drawing we sold 799 tickets and blew past that goal, too. Thanks to those of you who bought tickets and donated we were able to exceed our goals time and again. We appreciate your participation and generosity so much. Thank you.
Next, a huge, huge thank you to Jenn Brissett. Without her we never would have been able to pull this drawing off. She did all the technical wizardry on the backend and when problems arose (and they did… oh they did) she worked hard to fix them and keep the drawing going. All while doing her graduate work and under major time crunches. Jenn is nothing short of an angel, and we all so, so appreciate her hard work.
Thanks to the other folks behind the scenes who helped put this whole thing together: Candra Gill, who took care of all the other technical needs surrounding the CBS website plus was smart about everything; Nisi Shawl, Claire Light and Kate Schaefer, who gave support, advice, guidance, and time as we rushed to make this whole thing a reality; Pablo Defendini and Nivair Gabriel who volunteered to convert stories into ePub files to make them compatible with the eReaders (for which I am eternally grateful); Matt Kressel whose work on the KGB Raffle inspired us to try it here and who offered advice and technical know-how. And thanks to the members of the Carl Brandon Society board who gave the green light to begin with.
I can never convey enough gratitude to the companies that donated the technology. Barnes & Noble, Kobo and Spring Design all jumped at the chance to be a part of this fundraiser. Thanks for making such wonderful, tempting eReaders and for supporting literature in the digital age.
A big, big thank you to all of the writers and publishers who sent us fiction, poetry and essays to include with the eReaders. The full list is here. The eReaders were a big draw, of course, but your donations added an extra layer of awesome to the prizes.
Everyone who spread the word about this online, on social networks, via blogs, or by word of mouth: thank you.
And now, here are the winners:
The winner of the Spring Design Alex eReader is: Kang-Yun Tsai
The winners of the Barnes & Noble Nook are: David Linder and Joshua Kidd
The winners of the Kobo Wireless Reader are: Jessica Nasca and Molly Aplet
The winner of the autographed copy of the Dark Matter anthology is: Deanne Fountaine
Congratulations to all of you! If we haven’t contacted you directly yet, we will very soon.
whenever i go on extended blog breaks, it usually means i’m in the last week or two of a major deadline. in this case, the last book of my knights of breton court series being due. tomorrow. blogging to resume probably later this week when i start playing catch up on reviews.