Announcements

BayCon 2023 is pleased to welcome Frank Wu as Toastmaster!

Frank is an award-winning author and artist. As an undergrad at the University of Rochester, he majored in English, specializing in medieval studies, because the Hundred Years’ War is fun. He then took a hard right turn and earned a Ph.D. in bacterial genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After that, he combined his writing skills and scientific knowledge into a career as a patent agent (if you invent a new cure for cancer, he can help you get a patent on it!). He even had a tiny role in developing COVID-19 tests and vaccines.  

Meanwhile, Frank honed his skill as an artist. His illustrations have appeared in Amazing Stories, Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, The SFWA Journal, Fantastic Stories, and other publications. Some of his favorite subjects to paint are: Dinosaurs playing guitar and dragons fighting in WWI. Two of his works hang in The Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) in Seattle, and he won 4 Hugo Awards for Best Fan Artist. He also dabbled in animation with “Guidolon, the Giant Space Chicken” and designed spaceships and other 3D assets for his wife Brianna’s videogame “Revolution 60.” His proudest achievements in his art career, though, may have been pointing out scientific errors in the stories he was illustrating (as a science fiction artist, it’s useful to know some science).  

More recently, Frank has moved primarily onto writing. His second pro publication, “In the Absence of Instructions to the Contrary”, won the Anlab Award for Best Short Story in Analog magazine. He has a novel in the works with Tom Easton, and his newest novella, “Poison,” co-authored with Jay Werkheiser, will be in the May-June 2023 Analog (his 6th appearance in that magazine!). Frank will bring extra copies of the magazine to the con and promises to give one to anyone who can stump him on a random trivia question (while supplies last!).  

Frank spent much of his career in the Bay Area, and is very happy to return here, along with his wife, Special Tech Guest Brianna Wu.