LFS News

David Tuchman, who has been handling our Membership duties for a few years, has been elected to our Board of Directors, to replace Bruce Sommer. Our other Directors whose terms expired (Michael Grossberg and Fred Moulton) were reelected to new terms. We added Rick Triplett as the chair of the Special Awards Committee, and Fran Van Cleave moved up from Assistant Director to Director. As of press time, we were still looking for an Assistant Director. It would also be nice to add assistants for the Treasurer, and the Publicity committee. If you are interested in helping with any of these positions, please contact me (president@lfs.org), and let me know how you’d like to contribute.

We have three committees that review works nominated for each of our prizes each year. The Best Novel committee is limited to ten members, and when there is a waiting list, we prioritize it by membership level. Historically, the members of this committee have received review copies of the nominees from the publishers. In return, they have the rewarding task of reading 10-15 new books in time to choose the finalists each spring. The Hall of Fame committee reviews classic works. New members may have a bit of work to catch up on all the classics that most of the other committee members have already read. The Special Award committee doesn’t receive nominations every year. This past year was its all-time high, with three nominations.

Both the Special Award committee and the Hall of Fame could use more members this year. New members can join the committee at any point. If you are interested, let me or the respective committee chairs know. Rick Triplett (publicity@lfs.org) chairs the Special Awards Committee, and Lynn Maners (halloffame@lfs.org) is in charge of the Hall of Fame committee.

The LFS Director and Assistant Director are two of the most important public faces of our organization. For these two positions, we’re looking for veteran LFS members and solid libertarians who are interested in promoting and representing the LFS at public gatherings, especially sf and libertarian conventions.

This outreach could include distributing LFS literature/flyers at every such event, participating in panel discussions that offer opportunities to add an LFS perspective and informally talking up the LFS at social events.

The Assistant Director also backs up the Director, where possible, and informally serves as a “director-in-training” position. (Although Fran Van Cleave, our former Assistant Director, has now moved up to Director, there is no automatic move up, of course, without board approval.)

This past year, we created a mailing list (on yahoo groups) to allow members to discuss nominees and finalists for our awards. If you are a member, and would like to join the discussion (which is hottest after the finalists are announced in the spring), please let me know at LFS-discuss-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. Access to the list is only available to members of the LFS, so I have to approve your subscription.