The shortlists for the 2023 Mythopoeic Awards were revealed May 17.

The winners will be announced at the Mythopoeic Society’s Online Midsummer Seminar 2023, “Fantasy Goes to Hell,” which runs August 5-6.

MYTHOPOEIC FANTASY AWARD FOR ADULT LITERATURE

• Kelly Barnhill, When Women Were Dragons (Doubleday, 2022)
• Alex Jennings, The Ballad of Perilous Graves (Redhook, 2022)
• Sacha Lamb, When the Angels Left the Old Country (Levine Querido, 2022)
• GennaRose Nethercott, Thistlefoot (Anchor Books, 2022)
• Peng Shepherd, The Cartographers (William Morrow, 2022)

2023 MYTHOPOEIC FANTASY AWARD FOR CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

• Tracy Badua, Freddie vs. the Family Curse (Clarion, 2022)
• Kelly Barnhill, The Ogress and the Orphans (Algonquin Young Readers, 2022)
• Kate DiCamillo, The Beatryce Prophecy (Candlewick Press, 2021)
• Brian Farrey, The Counterclockwise Heart (Algonquin Young Readers, 2022)
• L. D. Lapinski, Strangeworlds Travel Agency trilogy (2021-2022)
• Sofiya Pasternack, Black Bird, Blue Road (Versify, 2022)
• Christina Soontornvat, The Last Mapmaker (Candlewick, 2022)

2023 MYTHOPOEIC SCHOLARSHIP AWARD IN INKLINGS STUDIES

• Paul S. Fiddes, Charles Williams and C.S. Lewis: Friends in Co-inherence (Oxford UP, 2021)
• John Garth, The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien: The Places that Inspired Middle-earth (Princeton UP, 2020)
• Peter Grybauskas, A Sense of Tales Untold: Exploring the Edges of Tolkien’s Literary Canvas (Kent State UP, 2021)
• Thomas Kullmann and Dirk Siepmann, Tolkien as a Literary Artist (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).
• John Rosegrant, Tolkien, Enchantment, and Loss: Steps on the Developmental Journey (Kent State UP, 2022)

2023 MYTHOPOEIC SCHOLARSHIP AWARD IN MYTH AND FANTASY STUDIES

• Brian Attebery, Fantasy: How It Works (Oxford UP, 2022)
• Taylor Driggers, Queering Faith in Fantasy Literature (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022)
• Hadas Elber-Aviram, Fairy Tales of London: British Urban Fantasy, 1840 to the Present (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021)
• Daniel Ogden, The Dragon in the West: From Ancient Myth to Modern Legend (Oxford UP, 2021)
• Matthew Oliver, Magic Words, Magic Worlds: Form and Style in Epic Fantasy (McFarland, 2022)
• Marek Oziewicz, Brian Attebery, and Tereza Dědinová, editors. Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene: Imagining Futures and Dreaming Hope in Literature and Media (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022)

The Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature is given to the fantasy novel, multi-volume, or single-author story collection for adults published during 2023 that best exemplifies the spirit of the Inklings. Books are eligible for two years after publication if not selected as a finalist during the first year of eligibility. Books from a series are eligible if they stand on their own; otherwise, the series becomes eligible the year its final volume appears. The Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature honors books for beginning readers to age thirteen, in the tradition of The Hobbit or The Chronicles of Narnia. Rules for eligibility are otherwise the same as for the Adult literature award. The question of which award a borderline book is best suited for will be decided by consensus of the committees.

The Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies is given to books on Tolkien, Lewis, and/or Williams that make significant contributions to Inklings scholarship. For this award, books first published during the last three years (20 00–2023) are eligible, including finalists for previous years. The Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies is given to scholarly books on other specific authors in the Inklings tradition, or to more general works on the genres of myth and fantasy. The period of eligibility is three years, as for the Inklings Studies award.

A complete list of Mythopoeic Award winners is available on the Society website. The finalists for the literature awards, text of recent acceptance speeches, and selected book reviews are also listed in this on-line section.

[Based on a press release.]