The History of the Houston Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Group
9/18/2025 | Shannon Winton
Tomeworks is now running the Houston Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers group! This group is the oldest active social group for sci-fi and fantasy writers, and it has an amazing and varied history.
(Photo of Kim Kofmel (right) and other members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Meetup, 2004, photographer unknown)
It all started with Meetup.com, and the Meetup.com edifice was technically the first showrunner of the group in 2004. At the time, Meetup itself would propose events/groups across the nation on a consistent day of the week (like every first Thursday), and if enough people signed up, a location and time was arranged by Meetup in that area. That way, their employees wouldn’t go through the process of finding a place to have a meeting if there weren’t enough people to “make.” The idea was that if you traveled, you could find like-minded groups wherever you went who would meet on a day you were accustomed to.
However, they realized that running all groups like identical tentacles on a nation-sized octopus wasn’t working. Eventually, they asked for volunteers to host their local groups to improve community. This was how Kim Kofmel became the first volunteer leader of Houston Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers. Kim was also the volunteer host for the Houston Costumers Meetup, so she ran both groups together at the same location, meaning it would not be unexpected to discuss writing about kaiju while sitting next to someone dressed as Godzilla.
Around 2007, both groups grew large enough that it stopped making sense to have everyone in one place or at one table, and they began having events on different days. The sci-fi/fantasy group began to meet at the Café Express in Montrose on Mondays. Around the same time, they began communicating in a separate group chatroom outside of Meetup.com that allowed for more topics and direct discussion to happen online.
Meetup changed their model around 2009, requiring hosts pay for their accounts, and Hilary Moon Murphy, who ran a sister group in Minneapolis, sponsored them for the first few integral years of this.
(Private room at Theo’s Restaurant, circa 2016, Photo by George Dimopoulos)
Kim became increasingly busy with her other activities like chairing Apollocon, and Keri Bas took over as the organizer of the group in 2009. The group was tested in 2010. Café Express refused to allow the sci-fi/fantasy writers to reserve their semi-private room, and the group ended up sharing space with more and more business and hobby groups who’d chosen the same day, time, and place for their own events, including a knitting circle described as “possibly the loudest group of knitters on the whole goddamn planet.” Of all the things that could make a place unwelcoming, a cacophonous din from people brandishing knitting needles was utterly unexpected. Attempts to come to a resolution with management were unsuccessful, and it was clear the group needed to move elsewhere. They eventually settled on Theo’s on Westheimer, where the group flourished with good food and a private room where they could be nerdy without reproach.
Around 2011, the group began hosting open feedback sessions of short works. These open critiques were often a highlight for members as they allowed people to get round-robin feedback from new and experienced authors alike. They also had wandering write-ins allowing members on the outskirts of the city to meet, write, and enjoy their shared love of sci-fi and fantasy even if they couldn’t drive all the way into the heart of the city on a weeknight.
(Houston Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers members from left to right: author and musician George Wright Padgett, award-winning game developer and author Carrie Patel, managing editor and graphic designer Dusty Sabourin, psychic Kristin Marie, and Pseudopod associate editor Austin Malone posing during Apollocon, 2014, Photo by Shannon Winton.)
The mid-2010s were a thriving period for the group. They hosted professional workshops like Medical Concepts for Science Fiction in 2013, where participants got hands-on training from medical professionals on issues like wounds, injuries, and first aid. Professional local authors like Jason Kristopher, DL Young, and Cassandra Rose Clark hosted exclusive workshops for the group, and eventually, industry insiders like Kij Johnson, World Fantasy Award finalist, and director of Ad Astra Institute for Science Fiction & the Speculative Imagination, Chris McKitterick, were flown in to deliver top-tier educational intensives.
(Medication in Fiction workshop at Nextwall Gallery led by Lindsey Carlson, 2013, Photo by Matt Adams)
(Presenters Dominick D’Aunno and Shannon Winton preparing a pig cadaver for hands-on medical demonstrations, 2013, Photo by Matt Adams)
Good fortune ebbed and flowed, and unfortunately, in 2019, the building that housed Theo’s was sold to a real estate development company and razed. Though the group attempted to find a new home, they were unable to find a secure and consistent location, which caused confusion and missed connections within the group. The next year, the COVID epidemic pushed the meetings online, and though events were still regular, attendance dwindled. In 2023, the group began to inconsistently meet in person again at Coral Sword, but the damage from the loss of a true homebase and the epidemic lockdown was clear. Meetings that at one time had filled a room with upward of fifty people had dwindled to only one or two. Keri, who had seen the rise and seeming demise of her stalwart community, needed a break.
In 2024, she passed the torch to Daniel Ellis. Unfortunately, Daniel experienced some personal setbacks shortly after that prohibited him from focusing energy on the group. There appeared to be little hope of the once-prosperous community returning to anything like its previous glory.
(Chris McKitterick teaching about plot and character, January 6, 2018, photographer unknown)
I (Shannon) had been an active member of the sci-fi group during its heyday, but my attendance declined as I took on volunteer roles in other communities like NaNoWrimo and the Houston chapter of the Editorial Freelancers Association. I finally petered out during a difficult pregnancy and harried post-partum period. I simply didn’t have the reserve to leave my newborn and be social with regular human beings. Like many others, I presumed the group would be waiting when I was ready to go back, and like many others, I was wrong.
When Daniel asked for someone to take over, I realized this would be a great opportunity for Tomeworks to give back to our specific type of writers on our home turf. Sean Carroll and I had started Writers Lunch and Houston Independent Authors in 2018 and were later joined by Anna Hawkins, Daphne Strasert, and Ian Everett. Writers Lunch had also gone online during the pandemic, but unlike the sci-fi/fantasy group, we had managed to prosper, perhaps because our endeavors were generalist or because our focus was more on education. However, we’d been hearing increasing requests from the writing community for local, in-person events. There is a different kind of solidarity that builds from being in the same place at the same time with people who share the same loves and aspirations that you do.
We evaluated the state of the sci-fi /fantasy group to see the condition it was in. Despite its apparently robust membership roster online, with almost a thousand authors on Meetup.com and over four hundred in the Facebook group, there were recent scathing reviews about no one showing up to events. The communication in group spaces was also all but dead. The question we had to ask ourselves was could this be revived, or was it too far gone? After much discussion about what the group would need to thrive and what we could provide, we decided to go for it. We had our wildly successful Resurrection Party in January of 2025 and have re-established regular meetings since then at Mélange Crêperie. We knew it would be important to have a consistent and inviting home base our authors could depend on.
(The group reborn! 2025 Photo by Sean Carroll)
Our next phase is re-establishing community write-ins. From there, we’ll investigate hosting open critiques again. Since Facebook has become too unreliable for communications, we’ve opened our Discord community to our local authors as a place where they can set up individual local meets, ask questions about writing, and find beta readers. Eventually, we hope to facilitate the formation of closed critique groups where authors can provide support and feedback on longform fiction. Finally, our future goals include reinstituting more in-person professional events at low or no cost for our authors. Houston science fiction and fantasy writers deserve support here at home, and it’s our goal to create a robust local social network that will encourage new and experienced authors alike.
If you would like to attend a meeting, sign up for Houston Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers on Meetup or follow HIA on Eventbrite to see our upcoming events.
Do you have pictures from Houston Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ past? Post them on social media and tag us @tomeworksedits. We’d love to gather all the nostalgia we can for this great group!
Special Acknowledgments: Thank you to both Keri Bas and Kim Kofmel for your years of community management and for compiling an educational document about the group’s full history.
Are you the leader of a writing group looking for professional speakers who love to support community? All our editors our expert speakers with experience from paneling conventions like Comicpalooza and Wiscon to running professional classes with organizations like Editorial Freelancers Association and Writespace Writing Center. Check out our in-person and online workshop opportunities HERE to see how we can assist with your event.