Deutscher Krimipreis 2023

The winners of the Deutscher Krimipreis 2023 have been announced. (Translations by Cora Buhlert.) 

NATIONAL

[Original German language crime fiction]

1st Place: Wie Sterben geht (How Dying Works) by Andreas Pflüger, Publisher: Suhrkamp

Winter 1983. At Glienicke Bridge in Berlin, everything is ready for the most spectacular agent exchange in history. KGB officer Rem Kukura – codename Pilgrim – is supposed to be exchanged against the son of  politbureau member. Caught up in the middle: Nina Winter, the only person who can identify Kukura. However, on the bridge Nina is plunged into an inferno, as her and Rem’s fate becomes a question of war and peace between the two superpowers.

2nd Place: Antoniusfeuer (St. Anthony’s Fire) by Monika Geier, Publisher: Ariadne/Argument

Detective inspector Bettina Boll is used to annoyances, but the latest order by her department leaves a bitter aftertaste. A death in juvenile detention has to be investigated, officials fear a scandal and Bettina is supposed to take the heat off her new boss and interfere with a colleague’s investigation. Moreover, the case turns out to be extremely bizarre. Are there really Catholic village activists who exorcise demons? And what does the famous Isenheim altar with its many colourful monsters and demons have to do with the case?

3rd Place: Die Guten und die Toten (The Good and the Dead) by Kim Koplin, Publisher: Suhrkamp

Saad and his little daughter Leila live off the grid in Berlin. Saad earns his living as a watchman in a parking garage in the Charlottenburg neighbourhood, working the nightshift for good reason. Parked in this garage is the luxury limousine of state secretary Brasch who is involved in nasty business deals with arms dealer Müller and shady Saudis. When Brasch causes an accident, while drunk and high on cocaine, and a body is discovered in the trunk of his car – much to Brasch’s surprise – the young female detective inspector Nihal Khigarian takes the case.

INTERNATIONAL

[Crime fiction translated into German]

1st Place: Fünf Winter (Five Decembers) by James Kestrel, translated by Stefan Lux, Publisher: Suhrkamp [Winner of the 2022 Edgar Award for Best Novel]

December 1941. America teeters on the brink of war, and in Honolulu, Hawaii, police detective Joe McGrady is assigned to investigate a homicide that will change his life forever. Because the trail of murder he uncovers will lead him across the Pacific, far from home and the woman he loves; and though the U.S. doesn’t know it yet, a Japanese fleet is already steaming toward Pearl Harbor.

This extraordinary novel is so much more than just a gripping crime story—it’s a story of survival against all odds, of love and loss and the human cost of war. Spanning the entirety of World War II, Five Decembers is a beautiful, masterful, powerful novel that will live in your memory forever.

2nd Place: Aus der Balance (The Turnout) by Megan Abbott, translated by Karen Gerwig and Angelika Müller, Publisher: Pulp Master

With their long necks and matching buns and pink tights, Dara and Marie Durant have been dancers since they can remember. Growing up, they were homeschooled and trained by their glamorous mother, founder of the Durant School of Dance. After their parents’ death in a tragic accident nearly a dozen years ago, the sisters began running the school together, along with Charlie, Dara’s husband and once their mother’s prized student.

Marie, warm and soft, teaches the younger students; Dara, with her precision, trains the older ones; and Charlie, sidelined from dancing after years of injuries, rules over the back office. Circling around one another, the three have perfected a dance, six days a week, that keeps the studio thriving. But when a suspicious accident occurs, just at the onset of the school’s annual performance of The Nutcracker—a season of competition, anxiety, and exhilaration—an interloper arrives and threatens the sisters’ delicate balance.

Taut and unnerving, The Turnout is Megan Abbott at the height of her game. With uncanny insight and hypnotic writing, it is a sharp and strange dissection of family ties and sexuality, femininity and power, and a tale that is both alarming and irresistible.

3rd Place: Sekunden der Gnade (Small Mercies) by Dennis Lehane, translated by Malte Krutzsch, Publisher: Diogenes

In the summer of 1974 a heatwave blankets Boston and Mary Pat Fennessy is trying to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors. Mary Pat has lived her entire life in the housing projects of “Southie,” the Irish American enclave that stubbornly adheres to old tradition and stands proudly apart.

One night Mary Pat’s teenage daughter Jules stays out late and doesn’t come home. That same evening, a young Black man is found dead, struck by a subway train under mysterious circumstances.

The two events seem unconnected. But Mary Pat, propelled by a desperate search for her missing daughter, begins turning over stones best left untouched—asking questions that bother Marty Butler, chieftain of the Irish mob, and the men who work for him, men who don’t take kindly to any threat to their business.

Set against the hot, tumultuous months when the city’s desegregation of its public schools exploded in violence, Small Mercies is a superb thriller, a brutal depiction of criminality and power, and an unflinching portrait of the dark heart of American racism. It is a mesmerizing and wrenching work that only Dennis Lehane could write.

Hans Christian Andersen Awards 2024 Shortlist

The International Board on Books for Young People has announced the 2024 Hans Christian Andersen Award shortlist.

The Hans Christian Andersen Award is the highest international distinction given to authors and illustrators of children’s books. Given every other year by IBBY, the Hans Christian Andersen Awards recognize lifelong achievement and are given to an author and an illustrator whose complete works have made an important, lasting contribution to children’s literature.

AUTHORS

  • Marina Colasanti from Brazil
  • Heinz Janisch from Austria
  • Lee Geum-yi from the Republic of Korea
  • Bart Moeyaert from Belgium
  • Timo Parvela from Finland
  • Edward van de Vendel from the Netherlands

ILLUSTRATORS

Cai Gao from China
Iwona Chmielewska from Poland
Nelson Cruz from Brazil
Elena Odriozola from Spain
Sydney Smith from Canada
Paloma Valdivia from Chile

The award is presented in alternate years by the International Board on Books for Young People to “a living author and illustrator whose complete works have made a lasting contribution to children’s literature.”

Jury President Liz Page leads the 10-member jury which included Evelyn Arizpe (Mexico/UK), Brenda Dales (USA), Sabine Fuchs (Austria), Diana Laura Kovach (Argentina), Shereeh Kreidieh (Lebanon), Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (Germany), Jaana Pesonen (Finland), Tan Fengxia (China), Pavle Učakar (Slovenia) and Morgane Vasta (France).  IBBY Executive Director Carolina Ballester is an ex officio Jury member. 

The criteria used to assess the nominations included the aesthetic and literary quality as well as the freshness and innovation of the body of work; the ability to see the child’s point of view and to stretch their curiosity; and the continuing relevance of their works to children and young people. There were 59 candidates from 33 countries on the longlist.

The two winners will be announced at the IBBY Press Conference on Monday, April 8 at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair. The medals and diplomas will be presented to the winners during the 39th IBBY Congress in Trieste, Italy being held August 30-September 1, 2024.

Future Worlds Prize 2024 Shortlist Takes Readers from Snow Leopards to Suit Sellers

Future Worlds Prize for Science Fiction And Fantasy Writers Of Colour announced its 2024 shortlist today, which this year takes readers from a world powered by energy gained from the act of mapping territories to the streets of Hong Kong where a suit maker finds success with a mysterious new fabric.

The eight shortlisted stories (in alphabetical order by author surname) are:

  • The Unbound Atlas by Zita Abila
  • Blood on Shadowed Blades by Nelita Aromona
  • The Suit Sellers of Kowloon by Ese Erheriene
  • Ek Haseena Thi by Isha Karki
  • The Yawn of the Pond by Inigo Laguda
  • Walk in Fire by Ruairidh MacLean
  • Tribe of the Snow Leopards by Farah Maria Rahman
  • Let None Through by M.A. Seneviratne

This year’s prize will be judged by:

  • 2021 Future Worlds Prize winner M.H. Ayinde
  • writer and novelist author Isabelle Dupuy
  • quantum physicist turned best-selling author Femi Fadugba
  • founder of Originate Literary Agency, Natalie Jerome
  • Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author Tade Thompson.

Future Worlds Prize for Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers of Colour aims to find new talent based in the UK writing in the SFF space, from magical realism and space operas to dystopia and more. The winner will receive a prize of £4,500, the runner-up £2,500 and the remaining six shortlisted authors will each receive £850. 

All shortlisted writers, the runner-up and the winner will also receive mentoring from one of the prize’s publishing partners. The winner of the Future Worlds Prize 2024 will be announced at an event in May.

The prize’s publishing partners are Bloomsbury Publishing, Daphne Press, Orion Books’ Gollancz, Penguin Random House’s Michael Joseph, Hachette’s SFF imprint Orbit, Hodder’s Hodderscape, and Pan Macmillan’s Tor.

Future Worlds Prize was founded by bestselling author Ben Aaronovitch in 2020, and was previously named the Gollancz and Rivers of London BAME SFF Award. The prize is financially supported by Aaronovitch and Bridgerton actor Adjoa Andoh. It is administered by Future Worlds Prize CIC, a not-for-profit organisation. 

The 2023 winner was Mahmud El Sayed for his novel What the Crew Wants. M.H. Ayinde won in 2021; A Song of Legends Lost, the first book in her trilogy, is due out in 2024. The inaugural prize was won by Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson for The Principle of Moments, which was released in 2023 and is a Sunday Times bestseller.

About the shortlisted authors and their work

Zita Abila

Zita is a Nigerian-British writer and artist. She grew up in the Netherlands and across England, from Manchester to rural Lincolnshire, then at 17 she moved to London to study Law at King’s College London. She has a MA in Literature and Culture from the University of Birmingham, where she developed a love of oral histories and lost languages, which often find their way into her stories. In 2023, she graduated from the HarperCollins Author Academy, and was shortlisted for the FAB Prize and Golden Egg Award. Her artwork has been exhibited at Somerset House as part of the London Design Festival, and at the Victoria Miro Gallery in 2022.

Blurb for The Unbound Atlas

The Unbound Atlas is a cross-over romantic fantasy where Babel meets Daughter of Smoke and Bone. In a world powered by energy gained from the act of mapping territories, 23-year-old Yagazie is employed as an artist in the Fantasy Maps department of the Royal Academy of Mapmaking in London, and spends her days keeping her head down to not draw attention to her underlying ability to map souls. But when the wrong person learns she is a soul-mapper, she is kidnapped by a soulless young man, we’ll call him X, and drawn into a journey mapping souls around the world, collecting long-buried secrets which could upend the map-based economy.

Nelita Aromona

Growing up in the concrete jungle of inner-city London, Nelita Aromona escaped into reading and writing to experience many different lives from the moment she could hold a book for herself. Now that she’s a little older, she’s a project manager in construction who always finds the time to watch anime and k-drama, and learn Japanese. Blood on Shadowed Blades is the tip of the iceberg of all the black stories she wants to tell, with the hope that every character makes a reader feel something

Blurb for Blood on Shadowed Blades

Assassin. Aliriko. K. — Amidst the war against his nightmares and the investigation into the missing women, orders from above send K on a mission to kidnap the princess of a neighbouring kingdom with his killing instinct leashed, or suffer the fate that his ancestors faced long ago.

Princess. Tegu. Zeria. — With her hand forced to expedite her plans to sit on another throne, Zeria’s request for aid lands her in the care of a man who shouldn’t exist, and leads her to confront the consequences spawned from royal rule.

But the assignment that brings them together is only the beginning of uncovering secrets of generations past, and healing the wound that makes Syneria bleed.

Ese Erheriene

Ese Erheriene is an emerging writer of short stories, fiction and poetry. Born and raised in South East London, she has lived in France, Norway, and across Asia. A journalist, she wrote for The Wall Street Journal — in London and Hong Kong — for almost six years. In 2020, she moved to Portugal for a year to write about identity, [dis]connection and culture. This became her short story ‘The Knowledge’, published in the Goldfish Anthology (2023). Her fiction was longlisted for the Deborah Rogers Fund Award in 2023 and her poetry was commissioned for the Montcalm Hotel Marble Arch as part of its relaunch.

Blurb for The Suit Sellers of Kowloon

A short story set among the men who work as suit sellers and tailors on the streets of Kowloon, in Hong Kong. We follow Siddharth as, one by one, sellers begin to go missing under mysterious circumstances — but the thread running through it all is the love story between Siddharth and his wife: Onovughakpor. This is a brief meditation on what we do to survive, on the idea that people contain multiples and on how life rarely progresses in a straight line.

Isha Karki

Isha Karki is a writer and PhD student based in London, currently thinking through the complexities of representing sexual violence, trauma, and testimonies on the page. Her short fiction has won the Dinesh Allirajah Prize, Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize and Mslexia Short Story Competition. Her work has appeared in publications such as khōréō, Lightspeed, and Nightmare Magazine, and she is an alum of Clarion West.

Blurb for Ek Haseena Thi

In Ek Haseena Thi, a film student travels to an isolated haveli in the borderlands of India. Thirty years ago, the haveli was the set for a much-hyped Bollywood horror film which was never released after its leading heroine vanished without a trace. Drawing on myth and the gothic, Ek Haseena Thi reclaims monstrosity and sisterhood, interrogating the extractive violence wreaked by wealth and privilege. Ek Haseena Thi is part of Good Girls, a genre-crossing collection of short stories which experiment with folklore, body horror, dystopia and the surreal to explore rape culture, violence, and trauma through the lens of brown womanhood.

Inigo Laguda

Inigo Laguda is a Yoruba-British writer, poet and musician from Hertfordshire. His soundscapes have appeared in The Serpentine Gallery, Venice Biennale and 180 The Strand. His poetry has won awards by The Young Poet’s Society. His nonfiction has appeared in Black Youth Project, Netflix and The Metro. His short stories have been long-listed for The Commonwealth Short Story Prize and received a special commendation for The Guardian & 4th Estate 2021 Prize. He was long-listed for the 2023 Bloomsbury Mentorship Programme and is an alumnus of the 2022/2023 London Library Emerging Writers Programme.

Blurb for The Yawn of the Pond

The Yawn of the Pond follows a nameless poacher-hunter with a supernatural ability to conspire with nature as he attempts to fulfil a promise. Tasked with finding the granddaughter of Baruti – his mentor, closest friend and Khoisan elder – the journey takes him across the Central Kalahari Game Reserve of Botswana. After crossing paths with a safari guide from the Makgadikgadi Pans, the guide and the poacher-hunter come face to face with ancient powers.

Ruairidh MacLean

Ruairidh MacLean is the son of a Dominican and a Scot; small island people who survived Catholicism and Calvinism and a bad party in South London to find each other. Until 2022 he was an English teacher in a London FE college where he taught students to love, endure and conspire against the English language. Last year he left that work to dedicate himself to his first vocation; writing stories about alien magicians and humane machines.

Blurb for Walk in Fire

The Quiet Land is a strange country, a fragment written out of history by those fleeing a world determined to destroy itself. But a peace apart cannot last and the horrors of the outside world are not as distant as its architects believe. Tales comprises ten fantastical stories; a tower grows eternally; friends become predator and prey; refugees flee a never-ending war. These apparently independent fables weave together the fate of the Quiet Land, illuminating the threads that connect its curious lives and draw them blindly towards catastrophe. 

Walk in Fire is the third such episode, the story of an alien attraction across a portal of fire; of thought and flesh united by flame.

Farah Maria Rahman

Farah Maria Rahman lives in London and studied English at the University of Sussex and Goldsmiths College. She has been published in Litro magazine, 365 Tomorrows, Tales of the DeCongested Vol 1 (Apis Press), Brittle Star, Shot Glass journal, New Humanist, Tribune, Huffington Post and Crossing the Dissour. She has been an artist in residence at The Guesthouse Project in Cork city, and her story The Alder Tree was performed at the Whose Woods These Are: A festival of trees at the Dock Arts Centre in Carrick-on-Shannon. She was selected for the Royal Literary Fund Writers’ Pool bursary in 2006. 

Blurb for Tribe of the Snow Leopards

On Aurotopia, a planet much like Earth, Tahmina is growing restless. The rules of her village are constantly revised by the all-powerful ‘elders’, and following orders is not what she’s best at. When her closest friend goes missing, Tahmina must go against all that she knows to find her. But what she discovers goes beyond anything she could have imagined… her home is being colonised by the Earth-born, and her ‘best friend’ is on their side.

M.A. Seneviratne

M.A. Seneviratne is a tea-hoarding Sri Lankan auntie and writer of speculative fiction. An alumnus of the University of Cambridge where she obtained her LLM and the inability to ride a bicycle, she is now pursuing a PhD in Socio-Legal Studies. When she isn’t researching or writing, she likes to procrastinate and avoid writing about herself in the third person. You can find her short fiction at Tasavvur or her handful of terribly composed tweets at @Bookish_Auntea.

Blurb for Let None Through

Ceylon, 1925. At a holder university built for maintaining peaceful relationships between Ceylon’s native species, a pair of mysterious professors recruit a group of students: thought-consuming Vetala Reith Samarakoon, flesh-eating Pisahcha Laila Pinto and their inevitable human prey Cassius Ramachandran. Driven by their individual agendas, the trio join a secret society for reviving indigenous literature in exchange for guaranteed entry into Oxford and Cambridge. But when a body is found on campus and a suspicious nun launches a murder investigation, they soon learn the true price of an ‘English’ education.

[Based on a press release.]

2023 Aurealis Awards Shortlists

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.]

SFWA Announces the 59th Nebula Awards Finalists

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) announced the finalists for the 59th Annual Nebula Awards® in a livestreamed presentation on March 14.  

The awards will be presented in a ceremony on Saturday, June 8, that will be streamed live as it is held in-person in Pasadena, CA, as part of the 2024 Nebula Conference Online. Winners in each category will be determined by the vote of Full, Associate, and Senior members of SFWA.

Here is the complete list of finalists:

Nebula Award for Novel

  • The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom)
  • The Water Outlaws, S.L. Huang (Tordotcom; Solaris UK)
  • Translation State, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
  • The Terraformers, Annalee Newitz (Tor; Orbit UK)
  • Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, Wole Talabi (DAW, Gollancz)
  • Witch King, Martha Wells (Tordotcom)

Nebula Award for Novella

  • The Crane Husband,  Kelly Barnhill (Tordotcom)
  • “Linghun”,  Ai Jiang (Linghun)
  • Thornhedge, T. Kingfisher (Tor; Titan UK)
  • Untethered Sky,  Fonda Lee (Tordotcom)
  • The Mimicking of Known Successes,  Malka Older (Tordotcom)
  • Mammoths at the Gates,  Nghi Vo (Tordotcom)

Nebula Award for Novelette

  • “A Short Biography of a Conscious Chair“, Renan Bernardo (Samovar 2/23)
  • I Am AI, Ai Jiang (Shortwave)
  • “The Year Without Sunshine“, Naomi Kritzer (Uncanny 11-12/23) 
  • “Imagine: Purple-Haired Girl Shooting Down The Moon“,  Angela Liu (Clarkesworld 6/23)
  • “Saturday’s Song“, Wole Talabi (Lightspeed 5/23)
  • “Six Versions of My Brother Found Under the Bridge“, Eugenia Triantafyllou (Uncanny 9-10/23)

Nebula Award for Short Story

  • “Once Upon a Time at The Oakmont“, P.A. Cornell (Fantasy 10/23)
  • “Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200“, R.S.A Garcia (Uncanny 7-8/23)
  • “Window Boy“, Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld 8/23)
  • “The Sound of Children Screaming”,  Rachael K. Jones (Nightmare 10/23)
  • “Better Living Through Algorithms”, Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld 5/23)
  • “Bad Doors”, John Wiswell (Uncanny 1-2/23)

Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction

  • To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, Moniquill Blackgoose (Del Rey) 
  • The Inn at the Amethyst Lantern, J. Dianne Dotson (Android)
  • Liberty’s Daughter, Naomi Kritzer (Fairwood) 
  • The Ghost Job, Greg van Eekhout (Harper)

Nebula Award for Game Writing

  • The Bread Must Rise, Stewart C Baker, James Beamon (Choice of Games)
  • Alan Wake II, Sam Lake, Clay Murphy, Tyler Burton Smith, Sinikka Annala (Remedy Entertainment, Epic Games Publishing)
  • Ninefox Gambit: Machineries of Empire Roleplaying Game, Yoon Ha Lee, Marie Brennan(Android) 
  • Dredge, Joel Mason (Black Salt Games, Team 17)
  • Chants of Sennaar, Julien Moya, Thomas Panuel (Rundisc, Focus Entertainment)
  • Baldur’s Gate 3, Adam Smith, Adrienne Law, Baudelaire Welch, Chrystal Ding, Ella McConnell, Ine Van Hamme, Jan Van Dosselaer, John Corocran, Kevin VanOrd, Lawrence Schick, Martin Docherty, Rachel Quirke, Ruairí Moore, Sarah Baylus, Stephen Rooney, Swen Vincke (Larian Studios) 

Ray Bradbury Nebula Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

  • Nimona, Robert L. Baird, Lloyd Taylor, Pamela Ribon, Marc Haimes, Nick Bruno, Troy Quane, Keith Bunin, Nate Stevenson (Annapurna Animation, Annapurna Pictures)
  • The Last of Us: “Long, Long Time”, Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin (HBOMax)
  • Barbie, Greta Gerwig, Noah Baumbach (Warner Bros., Heyday Films, LuckyChap Entertainment)
  • Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Michael Gilio, Chris McKay (Paramount Pictures, Entertainment One, Allspark Pictures)
  • Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, Dave Callaham (Columbia Pictures, Marvel Entertainment, Avi Arad Productions)
  • The Boy and the Heron,  Hayao Miyazaki (Studio Ghibli, Toho Company)

Author Martha Wells graciously declined her nomination as a novel finalist this year for System Collapse published by Tordotcom. In 2022, Wells also declined a nomination for novella and felt that the Murderbot Diaries series has already received incredible praise from her industry peers and wanted to open the floor to highlight other works within the community.

[Based on a press release.]

2024 Yoto Carnegies for Children’s Writing and Illustration Shortlists

The Yoto Carnegies, the UK’s longest running book awards for children and young people, announced their 2024 shortlists at the London Book Fair on March 13.

The Yoto Carnegies celebrate outstanding achievement in children’s writing and illustration and are unique in being judged by librarians, with respective Shadowers’ Choice Medals voted for by children and young people.  

The shortlists have been whittled down from the 36 longlisted titles by the expert judging panel which includes 12 librarians from CILIP: the library and information association’s Youth Libraries Group. 

Only one book is described in the press release as having predominant fantastic elements, writing medal finalist The Boy Lost in the Maze by Joseph Coelho, illustrated by Kate Milner, which incorporates the myth of the Minotaur.  

The 2024 Yoto Carnegie Medal for Illustration shortlist

  • The Tree and the River by Aaron Becker (Walker Books) 
  • April’s Garden by Catalina Echeverri, written by Isla McGuckin (Graffeg) 
  • Lost by Mariajo Ilustrajo (Quarto) 
  • The Wilderness by Steve McCarthy (Walker Books) 
  • To the Other Side by Erika Meza (Hachette Children’s Group) 
  • The Midnight Panther by Poonam Mistry (Bonnier Books UK) 
  • The Bowerbird by Catherine Rayner, written by Julia Donaldson (Macmillan Children’s Books) 
  • The Search for the Giant Arctic Jellyfish by Chloe Savage (Walker Books)  

The 2024 Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing shortlist

  • The Door of No Return by Kwame Alexander (Andersen Press) 
  • The Song Walker by Zillah Bethell (Usborne) 
  • Away with Words by Sophie Cameron (Little Tiger) 
  • The Boy Lost in the Maze by Joseph Coelho, illustrated by Kate Milner  
    (Otter-Barry Books) 
  • Choose Love by Nicola Davies, illustrated by Petr Horáček (Graffeg) 
  • Crossing the Line by Tia Fisher (Bonnier Books UK) 
  • Safiyyah’s War by Hiba Noor Khan (Andersen Press) 
  • Steady for This by Nathanael Lessore (Bonnier Books UK) 

The winners will be announced and celebrated on Thursday, June 20 at a live and streamed ceremony at the Cambridge Theatre.  

The winners will each receive a specially commissioned golden medal and a £5,000 Colin Mears Award cash prize. The winners of the Shadowers’ Choice Medals – voted for and awarded by the children and young people – will also be presented at the ceremony. They will also receive a golden medal and, for the first time this year, £500 worth of books to donate to a library of their choice.

[Based on a press release.]

2024 First Fandom Awards Nominees

First Fandom members will begin voting this week on the First Fandom Awards for 2024. President John L. Coker III says arrangements are being made to present the awards during Opening Ceremonies at the 2024 Worldcon in Glasgow, Scotland, August 8-12.

FIRST FANDOM AWARDS NOMINEES FOR 2024

Note: There can be more than one recipient for each of the awards. 

FIRST FANDOM HALL OF FAME

A prestigious achievement award (est. 1963) that has been presented each year to a living recipient who has made significant contributions to Science Fiction and Fandom throughout their lifetime. 

  • Mary & Bill Burns
  • David Langford

FIRST FANDOM POSTHUMOUS HALL OF FAME

An esteemed award (est. 1994) to acknowledge people in Science Fiction who should have but did not receive deserved lifetime achievement recognition.

  • Alfred Bester
  • Marion Eadie
  • Michael David Glicksohn
  • Ethel Lindsay
  • Mike Resnick
  • Ina Shorrock
  • Jerry Weist
  • Peter Weston

SAM MOSKOWITZ ARCHIVE AWARD

Sam assembled one of the world’s most complete collections of Science Fiction and he organized it so that he could do extensive research.  This award (est. 1999 for attaining “excellence in collecting”) is to recognize not only an impressive collection but also what has been done with it. 

  • Malcolm Edwards
  • Rob Hansen
  • Joe Siclari & Edie Stern
  • Jim Steranko

2024 SFWA Infinity Award Goes to Tanith Lee

Tanith Lee. Photo: © Daughter of the Night

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) will recognize the works and career of Tanith Lee (1947–2015) with the 2024 SFWA Infinity Award on June 8 at the 59th Annual Nebula Awards® Ceremony.

This will be the second presentation of the Infinity Award, created by the SFWA Board to posthumously honor acclaimed creators who passed away before they could be considered for a Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. This new award aims to recognize that even though those celebrated worldbuilders, storytellers, and weavers of words are no longer with us, their legacies will continue to inspire.

SFWA President Jeffe Kennedy remarked, “Tanith Lee was writing combinations of science fiction, fantasy, romance, horror, queerness, and sex long before the current trends. She was a true trailblazer in multiple cross-genres and influenced so many of today’s authors. It’s a sorrow to me that she passed before we could celebrate her as she should have been, but a bittersweet joy to at least be able to give her this honor today.”

An aspiring writer from the age of nine, Lee’s first professional sale was “Eustace,” a ninety-word vignette which appeared in The Ninth Pan Book Of Horror Stories (1968), edited by Herbert van Thal.

While working as an assistant librarian, Lee wrote a children’s story which was accepted for publication. A number of additional stories were also purchased, but none of them were ever published, due to a slump in the publishing firm’s sales. In 1971, Macmillan published The Dragon Hoard, a children’s novel, followed by Animal Castle, a children’s picture book, and Princess Hynchatti & Some Other Surprises, a short story collection (both 1972).

DAW published The Birthgrave in 1975, beginning a relationship that lasted until 1989 and saw the publication of 28 books altogether. Following the publication of her second and third books from DAW, Don’t Bite The Sun and The Storm Lord (both 1976), Lee quit her day job to become a full-time freelance writer.

Tanith Lee has won or been nominated for a variety of awards, including the World Fantasy Award, the August Derleth Award and the Nebula. She has appeared as Guest of Honour at a number of science fiction conventions, including Boskone XVIII in Boston in 1981, and the 1984 World Fantasy Convention in Ottawa.

Rather than a physical award, SFWA will make a donation to a cause that an Infinity Award honoree supported or that their loved ones request. This year, it has been requested by the family that the donation be split between two charitable causes, Pasadena Humane and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation

[Based on a press release.]

Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off #9 Reaches the Finals

Slender girl kung fu master wielding the power of the elements of the earth, in a low fighting stance mabu She is overwhelmed by the power from which the stones around fly up erasing into dust. 2d art

The finalists have been announced for Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off 9. The competition sponsored by Mark Lawrence began with the submission of self-published fantasy works on June 1, 2023. The first 300 author-submitted works were accepted into the competition. The major qualifiers were that the book must be self-published, must be currently available for purchase, must be a work of fantasy, and must be either a stand-alone novel or the first book in a series.

The works were then divided into ten groups of 30 with each group being assigned to one of ten volunteer sites/organizations that provide reviews of works of fantasy. Each site read their 30 assigned works and promoted one book into the finalist round.

The 10 finalists are:

  • Murder at Spindle Manor by Morgan Stang
  • The Fall Is All There Is by C.M. Caplan
  • Cold West by Clayton Snyder
  • The Wickwire Watch by Jacquelyn Hagen
  • Hills of Heather and Bone by K.E. Andrews
  • A Rival Most Vial by R.K. Ashwick
  • Master of the Void by Wend Raven
  • The Last Fang of God by Ryan Kirk
  • The Last Ranger by J.D.L. Rosell
  • Daughter of the Beast by E.C. Greaves

Now that the finalists are identified, each review site will read, review, and rate the nine finalists selected by their colleagues. The winner will be the book with the highest average rating from the ten review sites.

The blogs for SPFBO 9 are:

2024 Oscars

The 2024 Academy Award winners were announced tonight and films of genre interest won many of the 23 Oscars presented.

Oppenheimer was crowned Best Picture and took home six other awards, including Best Actor for Cillian Murphy, Best Supporting Actor for Robert Downey Jr. and Best Director for Christopher Nolan. Oppenheimer is the highest-grossing best picture winner since The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2003.

Poor Things was next behind Oppenheimer with four wins, including a Best Actress win for Emma Stone. 

“What Was I Made For?” from Barbie won Best Original Song.

Godzilla Minus One won Best Visual Effects.

The Boy and the Heron won Best Animated Film.

The “Oscars 2024 In Memoriam” tribute included Michael Gambon, Alan Arkin, Julian Sands, Tom Wilkinson, Glynis Johns, Jane Birkin, Paul Reubens, Piper Laurie, Robbie Robertson, Lee Sun-Kyun, Arthur Schmidt, Carl Weathers, William Friedkin, Tina Turner, Cormac McCarthy, and Lance Reddick, although not all of them were represented by photos or clips. (See the YouTube video at the end of the post.)

The complete list of winners follows the jump.

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