The new directions being taken by the Otherwise Award are discussed in a press release published August 16. The Otherwise Award has been on a pause while the motherboard has been discussing ways to update the award and improve things about the way it works while staying connected to the award’s roots and tradition of honoring and promoting recent works that explore and expand our ideas of gender.

The organization has announced a new streamlined process, and is moving forward with the award for work published in 2024. They are asking the public to send in recommendations. However, the 2022 and 2023 awards are still on hold.

Here is a summary of the new developments.

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What is changing

• We’re changing our focus somewhat. In particular, we plan to:
  • Focus less on honoring one specific work, and more on curating a short list of works.
  • Focus less on presenting an award, and more on having a conversation around recent works.
  • Focus less on having a celebration at one or two conventions, and more on creating accessible ways for the public to engage with the jury’s thoughts.
• We’re reducing the amount of unpaid labor and burnout involved. We plan to:
  • Reduce the amount of work jury members have to do.
  • Spread out required work among more people.
  • Pay more people for doing infrastructure/support work, such as an administrative coordinator to support the jury.

What you’ll get each year

Under the new approach, each year’s jury will create the following:

• An honor list of about three to six works, with a description of why the jurors chose each one. (That is, the jury won’t be selecting only one winner.)
• Optionally, a “long list” of additional works that the jurors want to call attention to.
• A discussion, among the jurors, of the works on the honor list, any trends or general ideas they noticed, and related topics. This usually takes the form of an online video call, recorded for you to watch.
• A briefer synthesis/distillation of that discussion, such as a text summary, that we publish for the world to read and reference.

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The organization will continue its Fellowship program.

THE 2024 AWARDS. The Otherwise Award jury has been empaneled, chaired by Eugene Fischer, a winner of the 2015 award. They have a paid coordinator who’s working with Fischer to create the first-stage list. They are seeking more recommendations of works published in 2024. The form will be open until mid-November.

They expect to announce the 2024 honor list in late March 2025, and to share a discussion video and a text summary in April or May 2025.

People can now subscribe and unsubscribe themselves. If you want to be on their mailing list, enter your email address in the subscription form.

[Thanks to Jed Hartman for the story.]