The following is an FAQ for issues related to the cancellation of our April 2020 convention. We will update this post as necessary when new or updated information is settled.
This post was last updated .
Norwescon was canceled?!?
Unfortunately, yes. For the safety of our guests, pros, staff, members, and everyone involved, we announced on March 13, 2020 that our planned April convention would not be held this year.
Will Norwescon be back next year?
Yes! We have every expectation of running our convention as normal next year. As Norwescon is always held over Easter weekend, next year’s convention will be held from April 1–4, 2021.
Will next year be NWC43? NWC44? Something else? What’s the theme? Who are the Guests of Honor?
All excellent questions! As can be expected, we don’t have answers to announce just yet, but we will as soon as possible. Since it’s only been a few days since we confirmed that this year wasn’t happening, we have a lot of work to do wrapping things up with this year’s plans, and announcements for next year will come along when we have them ready. Thanks for understanding!
Will there be any sort of summer mini-con, relaxacon, or other such event?
Obviously, this is difficult to plan right now, and we won’t really be able to pursue plans until social distancing and isolation restrictions are lifted. We will be reviewing various options as the situation progresses, and will make announcements as and if we can.
What happens to our memberships?
All existing memberships for this year’s convention are being automatically rolled over to next year’s convention. If you have any concerns or questions, please contact our registration department at registration@norwescon.org.
Can I donate my membership instead of rolling it over?
Absolutely! Please contact our Charities department at charities@norwescon.org to make arrangements.
Are there other ways to donate to and support Norwescon?
There are! The easiest way is to donate to us directly through PayPal by using the link at the bottom of every page on this site.
You can also use Amazon Smile for your online shopping and designate Norwescon as your charitable organization of choice. From then on, every purchase you make through Amazon Smile will make a small contribution to us!
For other donation options, please contact our Charities department at charities@norwescon.org.
What happens to our hotel reservations?
If you reserved a room at our host hotel, the DoubleTree by Hilton Seattle Airport, through the links on our website, then the hotel is automatically canceling all reservations and refunding the one-night deposit. You should receive your cancellation receipt soon, if it hasn’t arrived already.
If you reserved a room at our host hotel through any other service, your reservation may not be flagged as part of our negotiated room block and you will need to contact your booking agent or the hotel directly to cancel the reservation.
If you need or want to contact the hotel regarding your reservation, we recommend calling the hotel directly at 206-246-8600 to ensure you speak with someone familiar with the situation. Calling one of the national numbers may be less effective.
If you reserved a room at any other location, you will need to cancel your reservation yourself.
I’m an artist/author/dealer. What happens to my table fees?
Art Show fees are being refunded. Dealers’ Room fees are either being refunded or rolled over to next year.
You will be contacted by our Dealers’ Room and/or Art Show heads soon to confirm the details of how we are handling these situations. Please be patient if you haven’t heard from us yet, as there are a number of moving pieces involved in these processes. We are doing our best to ensure all concerns are satisfactorily resolved.
We are also in the process of discussing ways we can help promote the many artists, authors, and dealers who were counting on the income from vending at Norwescon this year. We will announce more about this as we can; in the meantime, we encourage all of our members to visit our Art Show and Dealers’ Room pages, click through the links, and support the people listed there!
What happens to the P.K. Dick Awards?
We are currently planning on hosting the Philip K. Dick Award ceremony as scheduled at 7 p.m. on Friday, April 10, 2020, as a YouTube stream. We invite you and all your friends to join us online to hear readings from the six nominated works and to learn which work receives the Philp K. Dick award and the special citation. Please visit the webpage for the broadcast stream!
(This item updated April 4, 2020.)
What happens to the Norwescon Writers Workshop?
The Norwescon Writers Workshop is proceeding. Feedback sessions will be conducted through virtual means. Participants will receive details on this process as soon as we have them confirmed.
We miss you!
And we miss you too! We’re all very disappointed to miss out on our annual gathering. However, if you’d like to keep in touch with all your Norwescon friends and family, we have opened a Norwescon community Discord server! We invite you to stop in and start chatting — think of it as the con that doesn’t end! Norwesconline, if you will.
However, please be aware that our Discord is a community gathering and conversation space only, and we will not be using it for convention planning or formal, official communication purposes. No Exec Team or ConCom members are required to participate, and many may not. For formal announcements, please continue to watch our website and social media channels; to get questions answered, please use our Contact Info page. Thank you!
Anything else?
Finally, we at Norwescon would like to pass on our most sincere and heartfelt thanks to all of the people and parties involved in this process for their understanding of and assistance with the situation. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the staff and management of the DoubleTree by Hilton Seattle Airport, Civet Solutions, all of our pros, panelists, performers, artists, authors, dealers, and lobby table groups, our other community partners, all our volunteers, with particular thanks to our editors, social media, and website staff, and last but by no means least, our membership. The support we have received from everyone over the past days has been immeasurably helpful, and has gone a long way to make a difficult and unfortunate situation easier to deal with.
Our thanks to you all, and we’ll see you in 2021!
