The GUFF (Going Under Fan Fund) race from Europe to Australia is currently on. The fan fund brings a European fan to Australia to attend the Natcon and meet Australian fandom. Conflux members are able to vote to have a say in who will be the delegate to their convention. The candidates for 2013 are Julie McMurray from the UK and Mihaela Marija Perković from Croatia. Details about the candidates and an online voting form can be found here: http://guff.lostcarpark.com/vote.

About the candidates

Julie McMurray: I’ve been in Fandom since 1989 starting out in media fandom. Then I went to Novacon 23 and was completely drawn in by the diversity of the conventions and amazing people I met. I volunteered from my first convention doing all sorts of fun and exciting stuff. My passion is travelling and meeting people and I’ve always dreamed of going to Australia. Some of my favourite authors include Shaun Tan & Garth Nix. I love reading, larping and volunteering. I’d love to travel to Australia and have an active trip meeting fans, promoting European fandom and worldcon/loncon3 in London 2014.

Julie’s nominators are James Bacon, Emma King, Jim Mowatt, Dave Cake and Richard Crawshaw

Mihaela Marija Perković: A Croatian fan who is downright crazy about Australia; she earned her degree with a paper on “SF tropes in Peter Carey’s short fiction”. Active in fandom since 2004, she has participated at Croatian conventions as lecturer, moderator and GoH host. She runs the SFERA Award Jury and writing workshops, is PR manager of SFera and SFeraKon, and coordinated Kontakt Special Track at Eurocon 2012. Enthusiastic, cheerful and chatty, she is an active blogger and lousy photographer. She plans to attend Swancon and Conflux, visit Sydney, Melbourne and New Zealand. Her report will be fun to read.

Mihaela’s nominators are Cheryl Morgan, Carolina Gómez Lagerlöf, Cristian Tamas, Anna Hepworth and Adrian Smith.

Voting ends on Monday, 7th January 2013 at 23:59GMT.