SFWA's New Executive Director Is An Identity Politics Activist Who's Built A Career Off Government Grants And Corporate Charity

SFWA has a new executive director, and the organization's focus is clear: to push identity politics even harder than ever before.

Yesterday, Isis Asare was named the new Executive Director of SFWA after an embattled year for the organization where they lost their last front-facing paid employee, several members of their board, and the President of the organization quit out of outrage because of a situation where it appeared as if their employee was getting shamed for requesting disability access.

They further had troubles later in the year when a Nigerian author board member was removed after coming under investigation for stealing a short story from a white woman.

For those familiar with SFWA, it might sound too absurd to be a reality, but for those unfamiliar and wondering what the acronym stands for, no, it’s not an ANTIFA front organization; it’s the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.

Originally, SFWA was formed by the who’s who of science fiction (not fantasy) writers to try to form a loose union to help negotiate contracts with publishers so smaller-time authors wouldn’t get screwed by legalese. It helped negotiate contracts, call out bad actors in publishing, and had a very real business purpose that helped sci-fi as a whole.

As most authors who actually make full-time money now self-publish, and even those in mainstream publishing are mostly under standardized contracts in the internet era, the club has become irrelevant and has been relegated to a social club over the last several years. As they failed to bring in science fiction authors who generate real revenue, they both allowed in fantasy writers and lowered the requirement to join to where one doesn’t have to be even nearly a professional to be a part of it.

As they’ve lowered the barrier to entry, they’ve lost a lot of the upper class of science fiction writing as a consequence, which turned the social club into a grievance club, mostly with members complaining about each other and others in the SF/F field in their private online forum.

One wonders what they need paid employees for, but the member dues have to go somewhere, even after it was alleged the organization funneled over a hundred thousand dollars into a frivolous lawsuit for Patrick S. Tomlinson to sue an anonymous online forum for being mean to him on the internet a few years back.

Isis Asare has been named the new director as a consequence, and her biography shows much more of the same attitudes that got SFWA here, to begin with, coupled with a lot of credentialism that means very little in terms of actually selling books or moving the needle for authors.