The Norma K Hemming Award, under the auspices of the Australian Science Fiction Foundation (ASFF), announced the 2020 finalists on August 2.

Designed to recognise excellence in the exploration of themes of race, gender, sexuality, class or disability in a published speculative fiction work, the jury of the Norma K Hemming Award considered dozens of entries published in 2019 across the long and short form categories, comprised of short fiction, novellas, novels, edited anthologies, collections, graphic novels and stage plays.

The finalists for the Short Fiction (stories up to 17,500 words) are:

• “Like Ripples on a Blank Shore”, J S Breukelaar (Collision: Stories, Meerkat Press)
• “The Mark”, Grace Chan (Verge 2019: Uncanny, Monash University Publishing)
• “‘Scapes Made Diamond”, Shauna O’Meara (Interzone 280)
• “The Promise of Saints”, Angela Slatter (A Miscellany of Death, Egaeus Press)
• Winter’s Tale, Nike Sulway & Shauna O’Meara (Twelfth Planet Press)
• “Rats”, Marlee Jane Ward (Kindred: 12 Queer #LoveOZYA Stories, Walker Books Australia)

The finalists for the Long Work category are:

• Collision: Stories, J S Breukelaar (Meerkat Press)
• From Here On, Monsters, Elizabeth Bryer (Pan Macmillan Australia)
• The Old Lie, Claire G Coleman (Hachette Australia)
• Blackbirds Sing, Aiki Flinthart (CAT Press)
• Ghost Bird, Lisa Fuller (University of Queensland Press)
• Darkdawn, Jay Kristoff (HarperCollins Publishers)
• The Trespassers, Meg Mundell (University of Queensland Press)

The Norma K Hemming Award winners will be presented at an online ceremony in the first week of September, which is both the tenth anniversary week of the inaugural award, and Norma K Hemming’s birth month.

[Based on a press release.]