I woke this morning to learn that Jennifer Swift, whom I’d met in 1979 when we both attended the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop in East Lansing, passed away this morning at 1:15 a.m. after a rapid decline. Her husband, Timothy Bartel, wrote her many friends to pass on the sad news. A memorial service will be held in Oxford, with details to be provided later.

Jennifer had a wonderful laugh. She was intelligent, witty, and grew into a talented writer. She published excellent stories in Amazing, Asimov’s, F&SF, and Interzone. She’d also written articles and essays on bioethics for The Guardian, New Scientist, The Daily Telegraph, and other publications.

Soon after Clarion, Jennifer emigrated to Oxford with her husband, and due to the transatlantic nature of the friendship, we mostly kept up on the details of each other’s lives via e-mail. We only managed to get together in the flesh twice since Clarion, both times in Glasgow, both meetings involving lengthy meals in Indian restaurants. It was odd that these two lunches—in 1995 and 2005—only came about due to the scheduling of World Science Fiction Conventions. Last time we were together (which is when I snapped the picture below), we joked that we hoped we wouldn’t have to wait until a 2015 Glasgow Worldcon to see each other again. Sadly, that next meeting will never take place, at least not in this world.

Jennifer will be much in my thoughts today.

Jennifer’s husband shared this Gerard Manley Hopkins poem with us this morning, and I thought I’d share it with you:

‘I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.

With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.’