TWO CANADIAN AUTHORS ARE WINNERS IN
INTERNATIONAL WRITERS CONTEST
Canadian authors Michael Kortes and Lance Robinson are winners in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest earning them both a trip to Hollywood, a week-long master-class workshop, and their winning stories published in the international bestselling anthology, L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 40.
Why should you order and read
L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 40?
Because…
- These stories will bring you into fresh new worlds and new ideas.
- Some of your favorite authors chose them.
- Reading the stories will teach you what it takes to win the contest.
- Illustrators of the future illustrate the stories.
The Contest, one of the most prestigious writing and illustrating competitions in the world, is currently in its 41st year and is judged by some of the premier names in speculative fiction.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
In his day job, Lance Robinson is an environmental social scientist who often works closely with mobile peoples. He is a sporadic nomad himself, having lived variously in countries such as Ghana, the Gambia, Colombia, and Kenya. He began writing speculative fiction as a child, and by his early twenties his stories began appearing in small press magazines. In the early 1990s, he even entered the Writers of the Future Contest two or three times. Eventually, though, his life filled up with other things and he set creative writing aside.
Recently, however, when he returned home to Canada, he decided it was also time to come back home to writing. Since then, his stories have often explored how our relationship with the natural world is intertwined with our spiritual journeys—as individuals, as communities, and as a collective humanity. Lance is also an avid astronomy and space-travel nut, and he found the germ of his story “Five Days Until Sunset” at the intersection of pondering the spiritual search that never ends and wondering what life might be like on a tidally locked, “eyeball” planet. The story also asks what it means to live in harmony with a world that is ready to kill you, and what it means to have faith in the face of inconvenient truths. Lance and his two children currently make their home in Robinson-Superior Treaty territory on the traditional land of the Anishnaabeg peoples and Fort William First Nation in the City of Thunder Bay, Ontario.
Michael Kortes (pen name in the book Galen Westlake)
Born and raised in Canada, Galen practices law in Toronto and spends his days talking a great deal to a great many people. His family of four, however, confidently assures him the less he says the better. To this end, he more quietly expresses himself by writing stories during his daily commute on the train. When the stranger sitting next to him stops reading over his shoulder, he knows his tale needs a little something extra.
Galen’s fiction has appeared in Galaxy’s Edge and Unidentified Funny Objects. His most recent legal writing may be found in Advocates’ Quarterly, if someone is so inclined.
Galen was awarded the Silver Play button by Google (they have yet to ask for it back) and he once competed in a Mud Hero-Ultra race event without dying. For a decade, Galen alternated as the VP and treasurer of a nonprofit, operating a nursery school for inner-city children in Toronto. He has been a janitor, a camp counsellor, and once spent a summer mining a crypto currency that may or may not have actually existed. His laser tag score is outstanding.
A strong proponent of paragraphs, Galen claims to have invented the word “cacophony. ”He has also incorrectly memorized pie to one-hundred decimal places. Galen is forever indebted to the Writers of the Future forum and to his beloved writer’s group: the One Ring. But right now, he needs to go chase some kids off his lawn.
