Hey, folks! Just a quick note that it’s my birthday — I’m 51! — and if you’d like to give me something, the best gift would be a donation of any size to my non-profit, the SLF.
Donations go directly to helping us bridge to paid staff (the big goal for this year), which means I won’t have to donate quite so much of my time to keep everything running, which will be very good for my mental health, and also help free up my time for writing more SF/F books of my own. 
If you’re not familiar with the SLF, we’re working on building out a host of resources for writers and readers:
– we’ve given out over $100,000 (quite a bit over) in grants to writers over the last two decades
– we host free online panels where you can interact directly with professional writers, editors, agents, and more (look for more of these during our next membership drive, which is probably coming in September)
– we’re building out the Portolan Project, a host of free educational resources for creative writing and lit. — great for individual writers, small workshops, teachers in the classroom, book clubs, and more
– we’re going to start offering full-on online classes this fall, in fiction writing, screenwriting, and more, as well as affordable mentored cohorts — follow the SLF on Facebook for more details, or subscribe to our newsletter
– Benjamin Rosenbaum and I co-host our podcast, Mohanraj and Rosenbaum are Humans; we’ve just started recording for our second year, but if you haven’t listened yet, there are 39 episodes (many of them two hours long, eep, but you can listen in smaller chunks!) from year one waiting for you
– we also have a Discord server we’ve just started up for our members; a great place to find people to game with, to talk SF/F, to look for local workshop members, etc. and so on
– and we’re starting up the Chicago Deep Dish reading series again very soon! VERY VERY soon! Watch my wall for more details on that in the next day or two, but you can save the date now, Chicago peeps, for August 18, 6:30 p.m. — I’ll be a featured reader, along with Meghan Lamb: https://www.bookcellarinc.com/deep-dish-reading-series — if you’re interested in being one of our rapid-fire readers (beginners welcome, reading for 3 minutes each), let me know! We’re also looking for featured readers for later in the year and next year; those are usually people who have a book coming out, and read for 10-15 minutes.
– become a member here: https://speculativeliterature.org/membership/
– learn more at our site: www.speclit.org