FIYAH Literary Magazine announced the inaugural Ignyte Awards finalists on August 17.

The Awards seek to celebrate the vibrancy and diversity of the current and future landscapes of science fiction, fantasy, and horror by recognizing incredible feats in storytelling and outstanding efforts toward inclusivity of the genre.

Finalists were picked by the FIYAHCON team. Voting on the awards will be open to the broader SFF community through September 11. The online ballot is here.

Best Novel – Adult – for novel-length (40k+ words) works intended for the adult audience: 

• The Dragon Republic – R.F. Kuang
• Gods of Jade and Shadow – Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• Jade War – Fonda Lee
• Storm of Locusts – Rebecca Roanhorse
• Kingdom of Copper – S. A. Chakraborty

Best Novel – YA – for novel-length (40k+ words) works intended for the young adult audience:

• Pet – Akwaeke Emezi
• Everlasting Rose – Dhonielle Clayton
• Slay – Brittney Morris
• War Girls – Tochi Onyebuchi
• We Hunt the Flame – Hafsah Faizal

Best in MG – for works intended for the middle-grade audience:

• Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky – Kwame Mbalia
• Just South of Home – Karen Strong
• The Mystwick School of Musicraft – Jessica Khoury
• Other Words for Home – Jasmine Warga
• Sal and Gabi Break the Universe – Carlos Hernandez

Best Novella – for speculative works ranging from 17,500-39,999 words:

• The Deep – Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes
• The Survival of Molly Southbourne – Tade Thompson
• The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday – Saad Z. Hossain
• This is How You Lose the Time War – Max Gladstone & Amal El-Mohtar
• The Haunting of Tram Car 015 – P. Djèlí Clark

Best Novelette – for speculative works ranging from 7,500-17,499 words:

• Emergency Skin – N K Jemisin for the Amazon Forward Collection
• While Dragons Claim the Sky – Jen Brown for FIYAH Literary Magazine
• Circus Girl, The Hunter, and Mirror Boy – JY Neon Yang for Tor.com
• The Archronology of Love – Caroline Yoachim for Lightspeed
• Omphalos – Ted Chiang for Exhalation: Stories

Best Short Story – for speculative works ranging from 2,000-7,499 words:

• Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island – Nibedita Sen for Nightmare Magazine
• Dune Song – Suyi Davies Okungbowa for Apex Magazine
• And Now His Lordship is Laughing – Shiv Ramdas for Strange Horizons
• Canst Thou Draw Out the Leviathan – Christopher Caldwell for Uncanny Magazine
• A Brief Lesson in Native American Astronomy – Rebecca Roanhorse for Mythic Dream

Speculative Poetry – 

• Heaven is Expensive – Ruben Reyes, Jr. for Strange Horizons
• Elegy for the Self as Villeneuve’s Beast – Brandon O’Brien for Uncanny Magazine
• A Conversation Between the Embalmed Heads of Lampião and Maria Bonita on Public Display at the Baiano State Forensic Institute, Circa Mid-20th Century – Woody Dismukes for Strange Horizons
• Those Who Tell the Stories – Davian Aw for Strange Horizons
• goddess in forced repose – Tamara Jerée for Uncanny Magazine

Critics Award – for reviews and analysis of the field of speculative literature:

• Jesse – Bowties & Books
• Charles Payseur – Quick Sip Reviews
• Maria Haskins
• Alex Brown – Tor.com
• Liz Bourke

Best Fiction Podcast – for excellence in audio performance and production for speculative fiction:

• PodCastle – Editors Jen R. Albert, Cherae Clark, Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali, Host + Assistant Editor Setsu Uzume, & Audio Producer Peter Adrian Behravesh
• Nightlight Podcast – Tonia Thompson
• LeVar Burton Reads – LeVar Burton
• Beneath Ceaseless Skies – Editor Scott H. Andrews
• Obsidian Podcast – Co-Creators, Producers, and Writers Adetola Abdulkadir & Safiyah Cheatam

Best Artist – for contributions in visual speculative storytelling:

• Geneva Benton Bowers
• Nilah Magruder
• Grace P. Fong
• John Picacio
• Paul Lewin

Best Comics Team – for comics, graphic novels, and sequential storytelling:

• These Savage Shores – Ram V, Sumit Kumar, Vitorio Astone, Aditya Bidikar, & Tim Daniel
• Blackbird Vol. 1 – Sam Humphries, Jen Bartel, & Triona Farrell
• Excellence – Khary Randolph, Brandon Thomas, Emilio Lopez, & Deron Bennett
• Coda – Simon Spurrier, Matías Bergara, Michael Doig, Jim Campbell, & Colin Bell
• Bitter Root – David F Walker, Chuck Brown, & Sanford Greene

Best Anthology/Collected Works – 

• The Mythic Dream – Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe
• Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Fiction in Translation – Ken Liu
• New Suns – Nisi Shawl
• This Place: 150 Years Retold – Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm, Sonny Assu, Brandon Mitchell, Rachel and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley, David A. Robertson, Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair, Jen Storm, Richard Van Camp, Katherena Vermette, Chelsea Vowel | illustrated by Tara Audibert, Kyle Charles, GMB Chomichuk, Natasha Donovan, Scott B. Henderson, Ryan Howe, Andrew Lodwick, Jen Storm | colour by Scott A. Ford, Donovan Yaciuk
• A People’s Future of the United States – Victor LaValle & John Joseph Adams

Best in Creative Nonfiction – for works related to the field of speculative fiction:

• AfroSurrealism: The African Diaspora’s Surrealist Fiction – Rochelle Spencer
• The Dark Fantastic – Ebony Elizabeth Thomas
• Black Horror Rising – Tananarive Due
• Our Opinions are Correct – Charlie Jane Anders & Analee Newitz
• Tongue-Tied: A Catalog of Losses – Layla Al-Bedawi

The Ember Award – for unsung contributions to the genre:

• Tananarive Due
• LeVar Burton
• Keidra Chaney
• Nisi Shawl
• Malon Edwards

Community Award – for Outstanding Efforts in Service of Inclusion and Equitable Practice in Genre:

• Beth Phelan
• Mary Robinette Kowal
• Diana M. Pho
• Writing The Other – Nisi Shawl + K Tempest Bradford
• Strange Horizons – Gautam Bhatia, Vajra Chandrasekera, Joyce Chng, Kate Cowan, Tahlia Day, William Ellwood, Rebecca Evans, Ciro Faienza, Lila Garrott, Dan Hartland, Amanda Jean, Lulu Kadhim, Maureen Kincaid Speller, Catherine Krahe, Anaea Lay, Dante Luiz, Heather McDougal, AJ Odasso, Vanessa Rose Phin, Clark Seanor, Romie Stott, Aishwarya Subramanian, Fred G. Yost, and the SH copyediting team and first readers

The winners will be announced during the inaugural FIYAHCON, being held October 17-18. FIYAHCON is a virtual convention centering the perspectives and celebrating the contributions of BIPOC in speculative fiction.