LANCASTER ARTIST WINS INTERNATIONAL ILLUSTRATION CONTEST, TO BE HONORED AT UPCOMING HOLLYWOOD AWARDS EVENT

Lancaster, California artist CL Fors is a winner in the L. Ron Hubbard Illustrators of the Future Contest earning her a trip to Hollywood for a week-long master-class workshop, an awards event and her winning art will be published in the international bestselling anthology, L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 41. 

CL Fors—Cherrie to her friends—was born to a mad-scientist and a mad-artist, so it’s no surprise she’s cultivated lifelong dual passions for art and science that shape her career in writing and illustrating science fiction and fantasy.

Cherrie has lived all over the US and now calls the Southern California desert her home, where her family tethers are. She shares her life, love, and creative endeavors with her husband, four clever children, and beloved art family.

Cherrie spent her early years obsessed with story and the many ways to tell it through drawing, writing, sculpting, and performing—sketching for hours, cobbling together ‘creatures' from whatever she could find in the back of junk-drawers, or staring into marbles and imagining she could step through into another world.

Cherrie served in the military and raised a family, but she knew she had to find a way back to her creative path. In 2012, she made a commitment to write her stories and, over the next ten years, wrote, illustrated, and published four science fiction novels. She also began submitting short stories and illustrations to Writers and Illustrators of the Future. She uses WOTF to strengthen her skills and as a goal-post to keep striving.

Her ambition for the future is to find publishers for her finished manuscripts and finish her first graphic novel. You can find her work at www.clforsauthor.com(http://www.clforsauthor.com) and her Patreon, The Art of CL Fors: sci-fi, fantasy, bat-piggies, oh my!

The Illustrators of the Future Contest judges include, Bob Eggleton (11 Chesley Awards and 7 Hugo Awards), Larry Elmore (Dungeons & Dragons book covers), Echo Chernik (graphic designs for major corporations including Celestial Seasonings tea packaging), Rob Prior (art for Spawn, Heavy Metal comics and Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Ciruelo (Eragon Coloring Book). 

The Writers of the Future Contest judges include, Tim Powers (author of On Stranger Tides), Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert (Dune prequel series), Robert J. Sawyer (The Oppenheimer Alternative), Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn series, The Stormlight Archive), Larry Niven (Ringworld), Orson Scott Card (Ender’s Game), Nnedi Okorafor (Who Fears Death), Hugh Howey (Wool), and Katherine Kurtz (Deryni series) to name a few. 

Following the 1982 release of his internationally acclaimed bestselling science fiction novel, Battlefield Earth, written in celebration of 50 years as a professional writer, L. Ron Hubbard created the Writers of the Future (writersofthefuture.com) in 1983 to provide a means for aspiring writers of speculative fiction to get that much-needed break. Due to the success of the Writers of the Future Contest, the companion Illustrators of the Future Contest was inaugurated five years later.

In the 40 years of the Writers of the Future Contest, there have been 559 winners and published finalists. The past winners of the Writing Contest have published 2,000 novels and nearly 6,300 short stories. They have produced 36 New York Times bestsellers, and their works have sold over 60 million copies.  

In the 35 years of the Illustrators of the Future Contest, there have been 406 winners.  The past winners of the Illustrating Contest have produced over 6,800 illustrations, 390 comic books, graced 700 books and albums with their art, and visually contributed to 68 television shows and 40 major movies. 1

The Writers of the Future Award is the genre’s most prestigious award of its kind and has now become the largest, most successful, and demonstrably most influential vehicle for budding creative talent in the world of speculative fiction. Since its inception, the Writers and Illustrators of the Future contests have produced 39 anthology volumes (with this event) and awarded upwards of $1 million in cash prizes and royalties.

For more information about the Contests, go to www.WritersoftheFuture.com.