Guests of Honor

We have an amazing lineup of guests for Minicon 53

Lyda Morehouse

Lyda (Li-dah) Morehouse is an author and a fan, although not always in that order. She would argue that it’s difficult for her to be one without the other. An award winner for the Philip K. Dick, Shamus, Barnes & Noble Maiden Voyage and many other national awards, Lyda has created numerous short stories and novels. Her best known works are the LINK Angel series and the Garnet Lacey series. The LINK Angel series merges a hard-boiled detective story with cybernetic messengers from the Highest authority with engaging and thoughtful results. Her Garnet Lacey series (written under the pseudonym Tate Hallaway) sees her titular character as a recovering witch who battles with the FBI, vampires, frat boy zombies, the Vatican and other supernatural threats. She currently lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with her partner and their son.

You can see some of her work at http://www.lydamorehouse.com/ & https://mangakast.wordpress.com/.

Rachel Swirsky

Rachel Swirsky is a California-born multi-award winner of the Nebula for short stories and poetry. She’s been nominated for the Hugo, Locus, World Fantasy and Sturgeon awards as well. When not getting awards and nominations, Rachel writes short form speculative fiction about everything from dinosaurs to love to dragons and back again. She also provides editing and writing critiques in what can only be scant spare time. Rachel is also a founding editor of the immensely popular podcast PodCastle, and has contributed her voice talents to it and many other podcasts and radio shows. Easily covering all the bases, she also writes poetry and essays with a myriad of colorful and illuminating observations and constructions. She currently lives in Bakersfield, California while contemplating how to fill her remaining slivers of free time.

You can see her work at http://rachelswirsky.com/.

Jon Arfstrom

Our artist guest-of-honor is Jon Arfstrom. Born in Wisconsin, Jon eventually migrated to Minnesota by way of adventures in Chicago and work on freighters travelling the Great Lakes. His influential style was featured on the covers of Weird Tales, Other Worlds Science Stories as well as a multitude of works for publishing, marketing and illustration companies. A Stoker Award winner, he has a wide ranging interest in styles of art from moody gothic landscapes to exciting pulp adventure covers to colorful Surrealism and abstract fantasy illustrations. Sadly, Jon is a posthumous guest-of-honor having passed away in his home at the age of 87 in 2015. His daughter will be making presentations of her father’s work as well as providing some of his best works for exhibition in the art show.

Some of his work can be seen at https://www.pulpartists.com/Arfstrom.html.