Henki ja Elämä in Tampere

The Henki ja Elämä (“Life and spirit”) book festival takes place in Tampere this weekend. There will be a couple of sfnally interesting program items during the event:

• Risto Isomäki talks about his new book Litium 6 (Sat 10:30, Viinibaari)
• Esko Valtaoja tells how he became a writer (10:30, Tähtien Sali)
  
• Johanna Sinisalo discusses the new Moomin graphic novel Muumimamman vaarallinen nuoruus (“The dangerous youth of Moominmamma”) she has written (Sat 13:30, Viinibaari)
• Esko Valtaoja talks about his new book Ihmeitä – kävelyretkiä kaikkeuteen (“Miracles: a walking tour of everything”) (Sat 13:30, Tähtien Sali)
  
• Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen talks about his new short story collection Taivaalta pudonnut eläintarha (“The zoo that fell from the sky”) with his editor Kanerva Eskola (Sat 14:00, Viinibaari)
• Sari Peltoniemi discusses her latest YA book Suomu (“Scale”) (Sun 12:30, Lasten maailma)
  

Finnish Sf in Year’s Best

The forthcoming Year’s Best SF 13 anthology (edited by David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer) will have a Finnish short story in it, Johanna Sinisalo’s Baby Doll (first published in Finnish in 2002). Baby Doll was also published in French in the 2005 Utopiae anthology. Go Johanna!

(via Babek nabel)

Finnish Writers on the Net

Finnishwriters.com is a new site that showcases Finnish authors and their texts. The site was started by Juha-Pekka Koskinen, Anne Leinonen, and Sari Peltoniemi (who are the only featured authors at the moment, but more is to come).

On the site there are introductions of the authors in English, Swedish, and German, and also some sample texts (extracts from novels and short stories—mostly in English, less so in the other languages). Unfortunately they’ve chosen the less-screen-or-other-reading-device-friendly pdf format for the texts.

I think the site is a good idea, and suggest you go have a look. All the currently featured authors have written fantastic fiction, although the site isn’t limited to any specific genre or type of literature.

Atorox Nominees Wanted

TSFS is asking for nominations for the best Finnish sf short story of 2007. Every member of the Finnish fandom can send in their candidates (in addition to the preliminary jury), and the ones that get the most votes will end up on the final nominees list.

(There seems to be a slight change in the rules this year: there is no pre-set minimum amount of votes a story needs to get on the nominees list; instead the rules just say, “20 to 30 short stories will form the candidate list”. I guess this is to avoid a situation like last year where the amount of required votes needed to be adjusted on the fly to have at least some nominees.)

If you have trouble remembering which short stories are eligible, there’s a thread on the FSFWA forum where people have been listing stories published in 2007. (Update: or you could of course just go to the Atorox page where there is a list of stories too.)

Usva Camping Report

Anne is blogging the Usva writers’ horror camp. Sounds like loads of fun.

Finncon 2011 Initial Meeting

From time to time there have been musings about organizing another Finncon in Turku. Most of the active fen here haven’t been too interested to commit to such a project again though, having already done it at least once, many of them twice. But now a new generation is emerging, and some of them have expressed interest in conrunning. The proposed year is 2011, which is when Turku will also be a European Capital of Culture.

This Wednesday (January 30) there will be an open meeting to discuss the possible Finncon, what it would be like and who would be interested in participating. Everybody who is interested is welcome to attend. The place is Turku-sali, Yo-talo A (2nd floor), Rehtorinpellonkatu 4. The meeting starts at six.

An open e-mail discussion list has also been created for talking about the project, and is open to join if you’re interested. (Please fill in also your real name when joining the list.)

Noviisi 2007 Competition Results

The first Noviisi short story competition for 13–17-year-olds is over. The first place was a tie between Vilhelmiina Palonen for her short story Karahka (“Lopped branch”—the translation does not do the title justice) and Klaus Maunuksela for Yö ei ole sinua varten (“The night is not for you”). There was no mention of the winners’ age in the announcement. The Winners split a 300 € cash prize, and in addition both got a scholarship for 55 € for a writing workshop this spring.

In addition, Sara Valta got an honorary mention for her story Sammalmestari (“Master of moss” perhaps—hard to translate without reading the story).

The jury commended the variety of different stories in the competition, and felt that the overall quality of the finalists was rather good, and also that there was quite a bit of humor in the stories. The structure of the texts often betrayed the inexperience of the writers, and the judges recommend wannabe future writers show their texts to someone before submitting it to a competition or for publication.