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TheScience Fiction Research Association (SFRA) has announced the 2026 winners of its annual book awards.

The SFRA Award for Lifetime Contributions to SF Scholarship

• Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr.

The SFRA Innovative Research Award

• Growth, Resource, Population: The GRP Triangle in Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction by Female Writers. , Regina Kanyu Wang (SFRA Review Summer '25)

Thomas D. Clareson Award for Distinguished Service

• Patrick Sharp

…Read More

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Clive Barker and Joyce Carol Oates have been announced as the recipients of the 2026 World Fantasy Awards for Lifetime Achievement, presented annually to individuals who have demonstrated outstanding service to the fantasy field. The final ballot for the 2026 World Fantasy Awards was previously announced.

The awards will be presented during the 2026 World Fantasy Convention, to be held October 22-25, 2026 in Oakland CA.

For more information, see …Read More

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The Mythopoeic Society announced the 2026 Mythopoeic Awards winners during Mythcon 54, held July 24-27, 2026 in Weatherford OK.

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature

• WINNER: Snake-Eater, T. Kingfisher (47North)

• The Charlatan Duology, Holly Black (Tor)
• Audition for the Fox, Martin Cahill (Tachyon)
• The Bright Sword, Lev Grossman (Viking)
• The West Passage, Jared Pechaček (Tordotcom)
• Water Moon, Samantha Sotto Yambao (Del Rey)
• The Incandescent, Emily Tesh (Tor)

…Read More

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The National Fantasy Fan Federation(N3F) has announced the winners of the2026 National Fantasy Fan Federation Laureate Awards(AKA the Neffy Awards).

Best Novel

• All That We See or Seem, Ken Liu (Saga)

Best Shorter Work or Anthology

• The Dagger in Vichy, Alastair Reynolds (Subterranean)

Best Poem or Collection

• Entropocene, Jean-Paul L. Garnier (Space Cowboy)

Best Editor

• Toni Weisskopf (Baen Books)

…Read More

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The Queensland Writers Centre (QWC) has updated the entry guidelines for the 2026 Aurealis Awards, established to recognize the best in Australian speculative fiction, making changes including expanded terms for entry fees.

The Aurealis Awards were established in 1995 by Chimaera Publications, the team behind the magazine Aurealis. The Awards later partnered with different organizations to administer them. According to the Aurealis Awards web page, these have included Fantastic Queensland, …Read More

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Dragon Con has announced the ballot for the 2026 Dragon Awards.

Best Science Fiction Novel

• God's Junk Drawer, Peter Clines (Blackstone)
• The Faith of Beasts, James S.A. Corey (Orbit)
• Operation Bounce House, Matt Dinniman (Ace)
• Radiant Star, Ann Leckie (Orbit US)
• Slow Gods, Claire North (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• The Shattering Peace, John Scalzi (Tor; Tor UK)

Best Fantasy Novel (Including Paranormal)

• Twelve Months, Jim Butcher (Ace)

…Read More

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Dream Foundry, a non-profit dedicated to bolstering the careers of nascent professionals working with the speculative arts, hasannounced the finalists for its 2026 contests.

Writing Contest

• Ooreoluwa O. Agbede
• Sara Ang
• N.A. Blair
• Tomás Xavier Díaz
• Angela Luo
• Natalie Anai Nowo Lydick
• Fatima Masood
• Femi Salami
• Ashleigh Spencer
• Plamen Ivanov Vasilev

Art Contest

• River Barton
• Ginger Bertoni
• Emelia Feldman
• Javiera Díaz
• Sierra Eston
• Olive Humphrey
• Niko Kristic

…Read More

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by James Stegall

Read by Misha Grifka Wander

How often do you escape doomscrolling, capture the spark of an idea, then find time to write only to open your laptop to a buzz of distractions?

Restart to update Word. Here’s a tool tip. Please rate our app. Copilot can rewrite that for you! 

Did you forget what you wanted to write?

Sure, handwriting is an option, but you need to maximize available time. It would be nice to write on a device that doesn’t actively get in the way.

You’re not alone. In response to this swarm of digital mosquitoes, writers and tinkerers have started building their own devices they call writer decks.

A well-used Alphasmart Neo2. Photo by James Stegall.

The goals of a writer deck are simple: get to the cursor as fast as possible, long battery life, usable screen, and the ability to easily save and move files. Portability, ergonomics, keyboard quality, and personal style also play big roles. A writer deck is for enabling flow state, not editing.

The name writer deck evolved from building cyberdecks, a hobby paying homage to the history of computing, while imagining alternate timelines of industrial design.While cyberdecks can be more for art than utility, writer decks are designed for productivity. They can be purpose-built or be a repurposed old laptop with reduced connectivity, or a commercial device made for instant-on word processing.

On reddit.com/r/WriterDeck, newcomers ask “Why?” so often that it’s become an inside joke. Why not just use your laptop? Why not just turn off the Wi-Fi? Why not tap into your endless reserve of discipline to crank out words when the whole world wants to get inside your head?  The answer can be frustration, the hunt for better tools, accessibility, a desire to express yourself through your devices, or reduce carbon footprint by using an older device as long as possible. It could also be reclaiming headspace in an increasingly hostile software environment or a desire to protect your work from a future where platforms lock it behind a subscription or incompatible file types.

Getting Started

Many newcomers start with devices in their drawers and closets. The most basic writer deck can be an old phone in airplane mode running Word or Google Docs on an adjustable stand, paired with a Bluetooth keyboard. The upside of this setup is keyboard customization, ergonomics, and simply getting started. Breaking out of the standard shape of a PC to write with a keyboard on your desk and the screen at eye-height can be a game changer for accessibility.

Older Laptops

Any older laptop with a USB port can make a great writer deck. The oldest don’t even have Wi-Fi, which is ideal.

The Achilles’ heel of most laptops is the battery. Remove it completely, making the device lighter, and use a 100-watt portable battery designed for laptops, with a USB-C to DC power jack adapter available at many retailers.Your laptop probably still has Microsoft Word. Or other word processors can be found on archive.org. Don’t let tinkering with the laptop get in the way of using it as a writing device though. Notepad will do the job and save to a USB stick.

A ThinkPad X61, 12-inch laptop. Photo by James Stegall.

A warning: Remember that older devices don’t autosave. Get in the habit of pressing CTL-S on PC or CMD-S on a Mac every few minutes. Save everything to a USB stick for easy transfer. If you’re feeling adventurous, replace the old spinning hard drive with an inexpensive SATA SSD to really speed things up. 

It can be fun to repurpose a cool older laptop with early 2000s design language and hand-friendly curves. While some keyboards are unequivocally terrible, others can be much nicer than the standard chiclet keyboard on today’s machines. And without all the cloud bloat in modern operating systems, an older CPU with limited RAM is often snappier than expected. 

If you don’t have an older laptop, a user on /r/WriterDeck has developed an OS on a USB stick that boots to a simplified desktop for distraction-free writing. Another option is MicroJournal for PC. 

Off-the-Shelf

Ready-made writer decks probably started with the AlphaSmart, but now companies like Astrohaus serve the niche. Their Smart Typewriter, Traveler, and Alpha devices offer e-ink screens, cloud syncing, and long battery life. The boutique nature of these products are reflected in the prices though. 

The Pomera D250US. Photo by James Stegall.

As AlphaSmart devices disappear from secondary markets, more commercial products are available every day. Kickstarter has enabled devices such as the Zerowriter, BYOK (Bring Your Own Keyboard), and Pomera D250 with US Keyboard. E-ink tablets are also growing more popular and offer long battery life and screens free of blinking distractions.

DIY

The popularity of the Raspberry Pi single board computer has greatly lowered the barrier to entry on building your own writer deck. Most projects are open source with build guides on GitHub. YouTube, Hackaday Reddit, and WriterDeck.org also have resources to get started. Members of the writer deck community love to see builds in progress and enjoy offering thoughts on case design, hinge operation, power management, and whatever else makes the device work. 

The BYOK with a Bluetooth keyboard. Photo by James Stegall.

The key behind a great build is to think of the drafting device as a tool that serves you, and mod it any way you like. Clamshell cases, chunky typewriter styles, ultra portable or alternate materials like wood, leather, or metal are all fair game. 

Personal Style

Whether you decide on an older laptop or build your own, the best feature of writer decks is personality. Writers love to decorate their decks with stickers, paint, fuzzy fabrics, or custom keyboards to make them a joy to work on. The goal is to create a device that inspires you and doesn’t get in the way of creation.

Sounds like fun? Time to check the closets for old tech and get some work done.

Explore more articles from Writing by Other Means

James Stegall is a member of SFWA. Writing as James S. Aaron, he is the author of the Aeon 14: Sentience Wars and Galactic Law series. His novel Retreat Hell is coming in 2026 from Aethon Books. He lives in Oregon and likes doing dad things, tinkering, digging in the yard, riding bikes and reading. Learn more at jamesaaron.net.

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The World Fantasy Awards ballot for works published in 2025 has been announced. The awards will be presented during the 2026 World Fantasy Convention, scheduled for October 22-25, 2026 in Oakland CA.

The World Fantasy Awards finalists are:

Best Novel

• Audition for the Fox, Martin Cahill (Tachyon)
• Once Was Willem, M.R. Carey (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• The Secret Market of the Dead, Giovanni De Feo (Saga)
• The Everlasting, Alix …Read More

  The post 2026 World Fantasy Awards Finalists appeared first on Locus.

Ursula K. Le Guin's longtime residence at 3321 NW Thurman St. in Portland, Oregon has been added to the National Register of Historic Places in recognition of its significance to American literature and women's history.

During the 58 years she spent in the distinctive Queen Anne-style home until her death in 2018, Le Guin wrote many of the novels that have since been canonized among the most celebrated classics …Read More

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The 13-title longlist for the 2026 Booker Prize has been announced, with works and writers of genre interest including:

The End of Everything, M. John Harrison (Serpent's Tail)

The Renovation, Kenan Orhan(Hamish Hamilton)

The Vivisectors, Missouri Williams(4th Estate)

Helen of Nowhere, Makenna Goodman (Coffee House)

Switzy, Emma Cline (Random House)

The Disappearers, Marlon James (Riverhead)

The shortlist will be announced September 22, 2026. Shortlisted authors receive £2,500. The winner will …Read More

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The North Carolina Speculative Fiction Foundation (NCSFF) has announced the winner for the 2026 Manly Wade Wellman Award. The award recognizes outstanding achievement in science fiction and fantasy novels written by North Carolina authors.

• WINNER: Transmentation: Transience, Darkly Lem (Blackstone)

• The Unseen, Ania Ahlborn (Gallery)
• Last Chance Live!, Helena Haywoode Henry (Nancy Paulsen)
• Infinite Archive, Mur Lafferty (Ace)
• The Coming Dark, D.J. Molles (Self-published)
• Labyrinth, A.G. …Read More

by Julie Le Blanc

Read by the author

All you need to get back to writing is one sentence a night.

Let me explain.

When my baby arrived, I wish I could say I had a stash of stories ready for that first round of edits once I’d emerged, moth-like and ethereal, from my maternity cocoon.

Instead, it felt like stepping out of a nuclear bunker.

In between toys, the craft box, and snack time, parents can find time to write again. Photo by Julie Le Blanc.

What is this random page?

What does this note mean?

Never mind fear of the white page. I couldn’t even get near a laptop. Setting up my laptop felt too difficult when I didn’t have enough hands. Also, who was that person who wrote before? They didn’t feel like who I was now.

But what I did have—playing soft, dreamy music in the darkness of my baby’s room—was my smartphone.

The Parent Toolkit

I’ve tried all of these at one point or another postpartum. Some of them I use all the time, and others I pick up and set down as needed. Please feel inspired to do the same. That’s the first piece of advice.

Tell yourself, I am allowed to try. 

And unlike what Yoda says, I can promise you that if you try, you will succeed. One sentence at a time.

1. The One Sentence Wonder

Open the notes app on your phone. Find a good spot to nestle near enough to hear your child breathing but not so close that light would wake them.

The best time for me ended up being just after I breastfed, but before I jumped into a quick cup of tea and/or chores. Alone with them sleeping sweetly next to me in the dark, I’d write one sentence.

That’s it. That’s literally the only step.

The magic of this approach is that you will always write at least one sentence.

I say “always,” but you know what I mean. It’s hard to think you can’t write just one sentence. Even if it’s just:

“Really?” she asked.

The magic comes right after that. You’ve jump-started your brain into thinking about the scene. 

Sometimes, I’d do my one sentence and call it a day.

But often, I’d write more than one sentence.

You will forget what happened sometimes, and you might benefit from a quick reread before you write. But you’re a writer. Reading’s pretty fun too.

With just one sentence a night, what do you have to lose?

2. Voice Memos

Maybe typing takes too long, so if the baba is eating or playing and something comes to mind re: your writing, it’s easy enough to (secure the child with duct tape and a safety harness and) leave yourself a quick voice memo. 

This is especially good for those who are breastfeeding and might have only one hand available, or those with monster work commutes. Call yourself. Leave a message at the tone. Because that idea will most likely have disappeared by the time you get home.

3. The Art Supply Thief

Raise your hand if you are the crafting parent. 

That doesn’t mean you have to be good with crafts, only that you have access to colored paper, wax crayons, and the key to the safe that contains the scissors. And the sticky tape, for some reason.

I find investing in a small notebook, a good cardigan with enormous pockets, and whatever colorful marker your toddler last tried to use as a teething ring works wonders to ensure you have the bare minimum to take some notes for yourself.

None of the elements in this toolkit are meant to be silver bullets. It’s more about how you can get out of your own way, while still giving yourself the dynamic, amorphous time-eating space you need to parent your new human. And having 24/7 access to a pen and paper? Priceless.

4. Sleep Brainstorm when the Baby’s Sleeping

Ah, that sage little walnut. Sleep while the baby’s sleeping.

You know what I like more than sleep?

Writing my first draft.

It must be said that some babies might not sleep well at night, and that makes every aspect of parenting harder, never mind finding a moment to be creative. So please, be kind to yourself if the best way to refuel your writing tank is to follow that age-old advice. Get what sleep you can and consider coming back to this advice once your little one enters a period of more regular sleep.

If you’re too tired but also incredibly stubborn, the next best thing is to lie down beside them and brainstorm. If your fantasy world really does use live snakes as currency, what would that mean for other aspects of their world? If you have a pen and paper or a tablet around, you could even write down your ideas for later.

You might drift off, which is no bad thing; you might also get a bit of worldbuilding sorted out. Win-win.

5. Doe-a-Deer Mnemonics

Listen, Ms. Rachel’s songs will be stuck in your head anyway: Let’s take the reins here and use them to help us remember things when all other methods have failed us.

Perhaps today you don’t have any pockets. And you forgot to plug in your phone. And the baby skipped their nap.

Kids love music, and mine loves it when we make up songs together. This piece of advice is more for parents of toddlers than babies, but if that’s you, tell your kid you’re gonna sing a song about a mermaid, mentally bring up the backstory of your character, and start trying to rhyme on the fly. They’ll think it’s hilarious, and they don’t need to know that it’s from your sea-shanty-themed WIP. And if you both collapse into giggles, it’ll just stick in your mind even easier.

A Final Note

In the end, I promise you, you’ll have something. 

But please be kind: Know that any inevitable imperfections don’t mean your work is garbage. Heck, the first draft is always the hardest. 

I’ve managed to complete the first draft of a short story this way. It took me about two months, and it’s now ruminating quietly in a drawer for me to return to it and start the process again.

Is this strategy perfect?

Would I rather be able to sit down and do hours of creative work at a time, in the flow-state, on a sunny afternoon with zero commitments?

Well, sure. But I wouldn’t trade that for being a parent in a million years. 

So I do what parents have done for millennia. I adapt. I drink my tea lukewarm-to-cold. And I find new ways to catch that creative spark.

I know you can do this too.

You’re a writer, after all.

Explore more articles from Writing by Other Means

Julie Le Blanc is a speculative fiction writer living in the west of Ireland. Her stories have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Diabolical Plots, and Cast of Wonders. Her nonfiction about Old Irish literature and mythology has been published by Wiley-Blackwell and Brepols. She also once wrote a PhD about the Irish war-goddess, the Morrígain, and got away with it. You can find her drinking lukewarm tea and crocheting while the baba sleeps at www.julieleblancwrites.com.

The post Writing Tips and Tricks for Time-Poor Parents appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

Winners for the2026 Imadjinn Awardshave been announced. Winners were selected by jury and announced at theImaginarium Convention, held July 17-19, 2026 at the Holiday Inn Louisville East in Louisville KY.

Best Science Fiction Novel

• WINNER: Dead to Rights: A Car Warriors Autoduel Novel, Jay Barnson (Three Ravens)

• Frozen Echoes, Ed Downes (Undertaker)
• Bifrost Down, Jon R. Osborne (Seventh Seal)

Best Fantasy Novel

• WINNER: Rise From …Read More

Fan and organizer Robin Johnson, 89, died July 6, 2026 in Ballarat, Australia of underlying causes after a fall.

Johnson was born March 9, 1937 and lived variously in Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart, and Ballarat, as well as in England. He chaired the first Australian Worldcon in 1975 as well as Thylacons 1-3. He was awarded the Ditmar Awards Special Award in 1974 and in 1983, and he received the Big …Read More

Dark Carnival, the second oldest science fiction bookstore in the US, will be celebrating its 50th anniversary on Saturday, August 1, 2026 from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at its longtime location on Claremont Avenue in Berkeley, CA.

The sprawling establishment, which specializes in science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mystery books-as well as comics through its next-door sister store, Escapist Comics-first opened its doors in 1976, resiliently weathering challenges including …Read More

Russell Kirkpatrick, 65, died June 26, 2026 in Canberra Hospital. He was diagnosed with aggressive melanoma.

Kirkpatrick was born April 11, 1961 in Christchurch, New Zealand. He received a PhD in geography from the University of Canterbury and was at separate times a lecturer at the University of Waikato and the University of Canberra. He wrote the Fire of Heaven series and the Husk series, the latter known as Broken …Read More

Titan US publicity director Katharine T. Carroll, 68, died June 28, 2026. The cause was attributed to aortic dissection.

Carroll was born Katharine Trowbridge in January 1958. She attended Manhattan Country School, Riverdale Country School, and Boston University and lived in New York City and Maine. She began work as a publicist in 1980 with Time Inc., formed her own publicity consulting company in 1990, then joined Titan Publishing Group's …Read More

On July 20, the US District Court for the Northern District of California granted final approval of the $1.5 billion settlement proposed in class action suit Bartz v. Anthropic PBC, in which authors accused the Amazon-backed company of illegally obtaining and using their books to teach its AI system.

According to a Bloomberg report, Bartz v. Anthropic is the largest copyright class action settlement in US history, paying about $3,100 …Read More

Westercon 80, to be held in 2028 by the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS) in conjunction withLoscon 54, will officially be the final Westercon after voters at its2026 business meeting ratified a motion to repeal its bylaws. Following Loscon 54/Westercon 80, the convention will be deemed to have 'returned its charter' to the owner of the Westercon service mark, LASFS, which will determine its future going forward.

Westercon's press …Read More