SFWA Whistleblower Exposes Private Online Forum Post With Frustrated Members Demanding Jeffe Kennedy Be Ousted As President

SFWA problems run deep for the embattled sci-fi org. Fandom pulse has exclusive informqation.

The Science Fiction And Fantasy Writers Association is going through a complete implosion, while the board of the organization is trying to keep matters quiet as to what the problems are. Now, a whistleblower has come forward from SFWA, delivering Fandom Pulse information from the private SFWA members’ only board showing how deep the corruption and incompetence goes within the science fiction writers’ organization, as it appears the problems run deeper than initially suspected.

SFWA was rocked with scandal as President Jeffe Kennedy stepped down suddenly for personal reasons, followed a week later by interim president Chelsea Mueller resigning because the pressure appeared to be too much for her. In between this, it was revealed several members of the board and paid employees of the organization had quit, while committees within the organization have had members booted with little explanation given. SFWA volunteers are at a premium as few want to do work for what appears to be a sinking ship.

No publicly given reasons were given for the problems SFWA faced, but Uncanny Magazine editor Michael Damien Thomas posted to X stating that an employee who requested accessibility accommodations was shut out from the forums and SFWA Discord after complaining, with SFWA refusing to acknowledge nor address her situation. There may be a lawsuit pending because of the American Disabilities Act (ADA).

RELATED: SFWA Interim President Chelsea Mueller Resigns After One Week At Post And Incoming Replacement Implies Sci-Fi Org Has Legal Troubles

It also appears there was possibly a misuse of funds from a charity scam. A check was given to a publisher for an anthology, and they were told quietly not to cash it. This isn’t the only instance of misappropriation of funds SFWA has been accused of, as there’s a rumor they granted embattled author Patrick S. Tomlinson more than $100,000 to use for lawyers to fight a frivolous lawsuit against the OnA Forums owner, a lawsuit which he lost and was forced to pay even more.

For the first of the inside information Fandom Pulse has gotten on the situation, we have a post to the SFWA forums from Michael Capobianco that exposes troubles within the organization. Capobianco wrote a series of novels in the 1990s and was married to fan-favorite Star Trek novelist A.C. Crispin before she passed. In this post, Capobianco exposes former President Jeffe Kennedy’s gross incompetence and mismanagement at running SFWA, and paints a story of disaster through the recent years of the organization. He said:

Since I think a lot of people are taken aback by Jeffe's sudden resignation and lack some of the context of what's been happening lately, I wanted to post here with my own perspective. Please note that this post is not an attack on any board member, on Jeffe, or on the board as a whole.

First of all, I hope resigning gives Jeffe the space she needs to work on what sounds like an incredibly difficult time in her personal life.

However, I just wanted it on the record that her resignation letter (attached here as a PDF in case you haven't seen it) ignores the fact that some past members of the board and former staff, as well as numerous SFWA members, were asking for her to be removed from her position for a number of reasons. I would even say that her email is a great example of why folks were asking for her removal—it places the blame for what's happening squarely on something else and makes her seem like the victim, rather than accepting any accountability for how her own actions have led to the current circumstances.

The immediate event that kicked this off was Terra LeMay being terminated from her staff position after putting in a 90-day notice due to being denied reasonable disability accommodations, and then banned from Discord and blocked from accessing her SFWA email (presumably by Jeffe) after she asked for an explanation on Discord in the ask-the-board channel. Prior to that, several former board members and staff have also resigned from their positions, although I do not know for certain these resignations were related to Jeffe and actually did not realize the staff had resigned at all until this happened. (AFAIK Kate is currently the only SFWA staff member.)

Communications from the board have been slow and opaque in general for the past few years, and the Nebulas conference seems to always get cited as a reason not to do anything. But on top of that, a number of volunteers or former volunteers (myself included) have been frustrated with a lack of transparency from the board and the fact that some board members have tended to consistently blame volunteers for projects failing when it was the board that canceled them—or even for projects succeeding if they caused extra work for the organization or its board members and volunteers—despite also frequently pushing extra-heavy workloads onto those volunteers and providing them with zero support. (As an example of this, see Jason Sanford's post about his withdrawal from running SFWA's annual auction.)

Jeffe has a history of sending communications that shift the blame away from her—like the one announcing her resignation, although again I see no reason to disbelieve the personal stuff, and I hope that she can get the support she needs to get through that—and which often are dismissive and insulting.

I have seen these communications first-hand as a SFWA volunteer, and sometimes they have even been sent to people outside SFWA when asking them to do things that were absolutely SFWA's fault. You can see some examples of that in the forum post I made about why I no longer volunteer for SFWA, especially the ones about cancelling a planned Ukraine benefit anthology. In that case, Jeffe sent the publisher an email asking them to shred a $5,000 check that SFWA had already sent for the project and then made it sound like rogue volunteers was the problem, as opposed to the board approving of the project for a year and a half and then abruptly cancelling it. (PS the publisher did still manage to publish the anthology despite SFWA, and it's a great book—check it out here!)

It seems like a part of the issue is that everyone serving on the board and in some volunteer positions is asked to sign a really broad NDA, which they feel stops them from being able to ever talk about anything. My personal opinion is that in this case, that NDA and the opaque environment it creates resulted in a space in which staff and board members did not feel empowered to speak out about their own poor treatment, and which allowed Jeffe to continue acting in ways that did not necessarily benefit the organization as a whole.

I get the impression that Jeffe's email took the board by surprise just as much as it took the rest of us by surprise, and I hope we will see a formal announcement from the current board after they have had a chance to meet and figure out their next steps.

Finally, if you are a board member and are reading this, please do let the membership know if there is anything we can do to help with this transition! We all want to see SFWA succeed as an organization, and many of us are happy to help with that even if we can't serve on the board directly.

Gmail - [SFWA] A Message from SFWA President Jeffe Kennedy.pdf

(Edit: I am adding the board's follow-up message from today as well -- I'm not sure those emails are preserved anywhere)

Gmail - [SFWA] A Message from the SFWA Board of Directors.pdf

Edited August 2 by Stewart C Baker

It appears as if a large portion of the membership wanted Jeffe Kennedy out for her negligence within SFWA. The board has been less than transparent in handling a multitude of situations, and Kennedy often blamed others for her own incompetence in handling SFWA matters.

Several SFWA members replied to Capobianco’s post with more information on the organization’s troubles, which Fandom Pulse will have more information on this weekend.

What do you think of SFWA members wanting their president ousted? Is the organization in deeper trouble than we suspected? Leave a comment and let us know.

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