May 2026:

Finding Hope

Program
This month we will welcome author Marie Vibbert, and she offers some thought-provoking questions leading up to her talk:

"How do I dare spend time on art, when the world is on fire?" many of my fellow authors lament. This talk is about why we must make time for our art, and how we can use art to douse the fire.

Ursula K. LeGuin wrote "resistance and change often begins in art." We know from research that science fiction can promote new ideas and ethical questions. How, then, do we add to the conversation?

A Hugo- and Nebula Award finalist, author Marie Vibbert’s short fiction has appeared over 100 times in top magazines like Nature, Analog, and Clarkesworld, and been translated into Czech, Chinese and Vietnamese. Her debut novel, Galactic Hellcats, was long listed by the British Science Fiction Award and her work has been called “everything science fiction should be” by the Oxford Culture Review. She is the editor of the 2026 Triangulation anthology “Bad Romance.” She also writes poetry, comics, and computer games. By day she is a computer programmer in Cleveland, Ohio.