Left: Laura Anne Gilman, 2016 Endeavour Award Finalist. Right: Brenda Cooper, 2016 Endeavour Award Winner. Photo by James Fiscus..

The 18th annual Endeavour Award was won by Edge of Dark, a novel by Kirkland, WA, writer Brenda Cooper. The award was presented at OryCon on November 18, along with an honorarium of $1,000.00.

It is Cooper’s second Endeavour Award, the previous coming in 2008 for The Silver Ship and the Sea.

The other finalists were:

• Irona 700 by Victoria, BC, writer Dave Duncan, Open Road Integrated Media;
• The Price of Valor by Bothell, WA, writer Django Wexler, Roc Books;
• Silver on the Roa by Seattle, WA, writer Laura Anne Gilman, Saga Press
• Tracker by Spokane, WA, writer C.J. Cherryh, Daw Books.

The Endeavour Award honors a distinguished science fiction or fantasy  book, either a novel or a single-author collection, created by a writer living in the Pacific Northwest.

All entries are read and scored by seven readers randomly selected from a panel of preliminary readers. The five highest scoring books then go to three final judges, who are all professional writers or editors from outside of the Pacific Northwest. The judges for the 2016 Award were Jack McDevitt, Michaela Roessner, and Gordon Van Gelder.

Award Eligibility for 2017: To be eligible for next year’s Endeavour Award the book – a novel or a single-author collection of stories — must be science fiction or fantasy. The majority of the book must have been written, and the book accepted for publication, while the author was living in the Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Alaska, British Columbia, or the Yukon.)

The deadline to enter books published during 2016 is February 15, 2017. Full information on entering the Award is available on the Endeavour Website: www.osfci.org/endeavour. Click on Entry Form in the left-hand column for a fill-in PDF of the form.

[Thanks to James W.Fiscus for the story.]