Ruth Booth is also a British-Fantasy-Award-winning writer of non-fiction.
Ruth is an award-winning columnist for Scottish SF journal Shoreline of Infinity, producing the quarterly Noise and Sparks column on various aspects of writing within genre as both an academic and author, as well as being part of the genre community. In 2019, Noise and Sparks won the British Fantasy Award for Best Non-Fiction, and her column was shortlisted for the Best Non-Fiction category at the British Science Fiction Association’s Awards. In 2020, Noise and Sparks was longlisted for the British Science Fiction Association’s Award for Best Non-Fiction for the second year running.
As an academic, Ruth has presented papers and posters at ICFA (International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts) 2021, Game Studies India (now DiGRA India), Island Dynamics Conference in Svalbard in 2019, Fantastika Conference (2019), Eastercon 2018: Follycon, Worldcon 75, GIFCon 2017 and 2018, and the 2020 Digital Heroisms symposium. She has also chaired panels at GIFCon 2017 and 2018. She is also an experienced convention panel chair, having chaired panels at Eastercon, Fantasycon, and more.
In 2018, Ruth completed an MLitt in Fantasy at the University of Glasgow, where she wrote on topics as diverse as mapping and landscape in fantastic works, superhero comics and folkloric adaptation in the cross-media works of Neil Gaiman, and the Monstrous-feminine in video-gaming. Her final dissertation explored the use of landscape in the heroic fantasies by C.S. Lewis, Ursula K. Le Guin and Terry Pratchett.
She is currently working on a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde, funded by Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities (SGSAH) in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
Ruth also has extensive experience of organizing events. She co-organized Glasgow International Fantasy Conversations (GIFCon) symposium over 2017-2019, taking over social media accounts for the event itself in 2017, serving as Social Media Manager for the second year (2018 event) and Facebook account manager for the third (2019 event). Ruth was Guest of Honour Liaison for the Programme Committee for Ytterbium, the 2019 Eastercon. Ruth played a key role in founding the University of Glasgow Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic’s Discord Server as part of the Centre’s ongoing outreach policy, constructing the server and putting in place many of the early standard practises, handbook creation, organizational structure, and serving as Server Administrator from October 2020 until May 2021.
Ruth is currently on the Promotions Team at the Glasgow in 2024 Worldcon bid, having spent a brief period in early 2021 as interim Area Head of Social Media. She runs the social media accounts for the Glasgow SF Writers’ Circle.