The top ten finalists for the 2022 Baen Fantasy Adventure Award for best original fantasy short story were announced July 1. They are:

• “All the Colors of Everything” by Alex Fox
• “The Carryman” by Jon R. Osborne
• “Colossi of Zakatla” by Gregory D. Mele
• “Exchanged” by Brittany Rainsdon
• “Generous Handful of Fresh Unja Berries” by Jessica Federle
• “My Mother, Dragonslayer” by Edward Rathke
• “On Cultivating A Chosen One” by Christopher Baxter
• “Red Lanterns” by Marshall J. Moore
• “Shadow and Full Dark” by Chris Cornetto
• “To Sleep, Perchance to Wake” by Jonathan Ficke

Started in 2014, this is the ninth annual Baen Fantasy Adventure Award contest. The award honors stories that best exemplify the spirit of adventure, imagination, and great storytelling in a work of short fiction containing an element of the fantastic, whether epic fantasy, heroic fantasy, sword and sorcery, contemporary fantasy, or historical fantasy. The stories are judged anonymously.

The Grand Prize and Second and Third Place Winners will come from among these ten finalists.

Those winners will be announced during the Baen Travelling Roadshow at this year’s Dragon Con. Dragon Con will take place from September 1-5 in Atlanta, GA. The author of the Grand Prize story receives an award trophy, a prize box filled with Baen merchandise, and paid professional rates for first publication rights. The winning story also will be featured on Baen.com main webpage.