Nebula Award-winning, science fiction author Sheila Finch has generously offered for bid an autographed copy of her collection of Xenolinguist stories.  The Guild of Xenolinguists is a hardbound edition of eleven different stories and one essay on the issue of interstellar cross-cultural communication.

In essentially all science fiction, the problems of actually talking to and understanding a new alien race are usually glossed over, by resorting to the "universal translator" or by totally ignoring any difference in language.  Sheila Finch has addressed this issue in this series of stories that range from first contact with an advanced alien species on Earth to the development of a galaxy-wide Guild of Xenolinguists that handles all cross-cultural communication, and indeed ascertains if a species is sentient or not.

Of course, with a totally new culture, and culture being a large part of language, interacting with an alien species is far from routine, or even safe, as these insightful, well-crafted stories portray.