The Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild has released the 2023 shortlists for the Aurealis Awards.

The winners will be celebrated at the Aurealis Awards ceremony in May – more information to follow soon.

BEST CHILDREN’S FICTION

• The lonely lighthouse of Elston-Fright, Reece Carter (Allen & Unwin)
• Ghost book, Remy Lai (Allen & Unwin)
• The letterbox tree, Rebecca Lim & Kate Gordon (Walker Books Australia)
• Deadlands: Hunted, Skye Melki-Wegner (Walker Books Australia)
• The hotel witch, Jessica Miller (Text Publishing)
• Spellhounds, Lian Tanner (Allen & Unwin)

BEST YOUNG ADULT SHORT STORY

• “The lingering taste of your last supper”, Matthew Davis (Shallow Waters Patreon, Crystal Lake Entertainment) 
• “Moonfall”, Alison Evans (Everything under the moon, Affirm Press) 
• “Precarious Waters”, Pamela Jeffs (Precarious waters and other dark tales, Four Ink Press) 
• “Follow The Water”, J Palmer (Where the weird things are Vol 2, Deadset Press)
• “An 80s tenement love story”, Anthony Panegyres (Bourbon Penn #31)
• “Integrated learning”, C H Pierce (Aurealis #166) 

BEST HORROR SHORT STORY

• “Il re Giallo”, Matthew R Davies (Strange Aeon: 2023)
• “Death interrupted”, Pamela Jeffs (Body of work, Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild)
• “Stokehold”, Pamela Jeffs (SNAFU: Punk’d, Cohesion Press)
• “There are things on me”, Matt Tighe (Killer creatures down under: Horror stories with bite, IFWG Publishing International) 
• “Trial by fire”, Matt Tighe (Etherea Magazine #18, Sunburnt Fox Press)
• “Blood born”, Pauline Yates (Midnight Echo #18, Australasian Horror Writers Association)

BEST FANTASY SHORT STORY

• “Sea mist, shore witch”, Mikhaeyla Kopievsky (Where the weird things are Vol 2, Deadset Press)
• “What bones these tides bring”, Nikky Lee (Remains to be told: Dark tales of Aotearoa, Clan Destine Press)
• “The reeds remember”, Juliet Marillier (The other side of never, Titan Books)
• “The dark man, by referral”, Chuck McKenzie (This fresh hell, Clan Destine Press)
• “The unexpected excursion of the murder mystery writing witches”, Garth Nix (The book of witches, HarperVoyager)
• “12 days of Witchmas”, Tansy Rayner Roberts (Patreon, self-published)

BEST SCIENCE FICTION SHORT STORY

• “Beirut robot hyenadome”, Thoraiya Dyer (Shoreline of Infinity #36)
• “Change YourView”, Matt Tighe (Nature: Futures)
• “Trial by fire”, Matt Tighe (Etherea Magazine #18, Sunburnt Fox Press)
• “Hollywood animals”, Corey J White (Interzone #295)
• “Customer service”, Emily Wyeth (Mother’s milk, Sempiternal House)

BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL / ILLUSTRATED WORK

• MEAT4BURGERS, Christof Bogacs & Beck Kubrick (self-published)
• Frankenstein Monstrance Preview #1, Jason Franks & Tam Morris (IPI Comics)
• Monomyth, David Hazan & Cecilia Lo Valvo (Mad Cave Studios)
• Ember and the Island of Lost Creatures, Jason Pamment (Allen & Unwin)

BEST COLLECTION

• The measure of sorrow: Stories, J Ashley-Smith (Meerkat Press)
• The gold leaf executions, Helen Marshall (Unsung Stories)
• Firelight, John Morrissey (Text Publishing)

BEST ANTHOLOGY

• Strangely enough, Gillian Hagenus (Ed.) (MidnightSun Publishing)
• An unexpected party, Seth Malacari (Ed.) (Fremantle Press) 
• The book of witches, Jonathan Strahan (Ed.) (HarperVoyager)

BEST YOUNG ADULT NOVEL

• Borderland, Graham Akhurst (UWA Publishing) 
• When ghosts call us home, Katya de Becerra (Macmillan)
• Archives of despair, Caleb Finn (Penguin Random House Australia)
• The weaver, Melanie Kanicky (MidnightSun Publishing) 
• The spider and her demons, sydney khoo (Penguin Random House Australia)
• The non-magical Declan Moore, Nathan Taylor (Magpie Drive Press)

BEST HORROR NOVELLA

• The morass, Zachary Ashford (Crystal Lake Entertainment)
• The leaves forget, Alan Baxter (Absinthe Books)
• “Hole world”, J S Breukelaar (Apex Magazine #141)
• “Quicksilver”, J S Breukelaar (Vandal: Stories of damage, Crystal Lake Entertainment)
• Radcliffe, Madeleine D’Este (Deadset Press)
• Bitters, Kaaren Warren (Cemetery Dance)

BEST HORROR NOVEL

• Borderland, Graham Akhurst (UWA Publishing) 
• When ghosts call us home, Katya de Becerra (Macmillan)
• The graveyard shift, Maria Lewis (Datura Books)
• Some shall break, Ellie Marney (Allen & Unwin)
• Cretaceous canyon, Deborah Sheldon (Severed Press)
• Bunny, S E Tolsen (Pan Macmillan Australia)

BEST FANTASY NOVELLA

• The leaves forget, Alan Baxter (Absinthe Books)
• “Hole world”, J S Breukelaar (Apex Magazine #141)
• The wizard must be stopped!, Taylen Carver (Stories Rule Press)
• “A marked man”, T R Napper (Grimdark Magazine #36)
• A wicked blade, Tansy Rayner Roberts (self-published)
• Gate sinister, Tansy Rayner Roberts (self-published)

BEST FANTASY NOVEL  

• Shadow baron, Davinia Evans (Orbit / Hachette)
• The will of the many, James Islington (Text Publishing)
• The sinister booksellers of Bath, Garth Nix (Allen & Unwin)
• Of knives and night-blooms, Tansy Rayner Roberts (self-published)
• The blood-born dragon, J C Rycroft (BattleWarrior Press)  
• How to be remembered, Michael Thompson (Allen & Unwin)

BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVELLA

• “Eight or die”, Thoraiya Dyer (Clarkesworld #206/207)
• Killware, Tim Hawken (Seahawk Press)
• Once we flew, Nikki Lee (self-published)
• The last to go, A D Lyall (Shawline Publishing Group)
• “Showdown on planetoid Pencrux”, Garth Nix (Asimov’s Science Fiction, July/August 2023)
• Bitters, Kaaren Warren (Cemetery Dance)

BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

• Minds of sand and light, Kylie Chan (HarperCollins Publishers)
• The comforting weight of water, Roanna McClelland (Wakefield Press)
• Aliens: Bishop, T. R. Napper (Titan Books)
• Dronikus, Marko Newman (AndAlso Books)
• Time of the cat, Tansy Rayner Roberts (self-published)Traitor’s run, Keith Stevenson (coeur de lion publishing)

[Based on a press release.]