R.S.A. Garcia’s “Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200,” published by Uncanny Magazine, is the winner of the 2024 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best science fiction short story published in 2023. The award was announced September 5 by the J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction (CSSF).

This year’s second-place runner up for the award was Beston Barnett’s “Patsy Cline Sings Sweet Dreams to the Universe,” and the third-place runner up was Naomi Krizer’s “The Year Without Sunshine”.

The award jurors were Elizabeth Bear, Kelly Link, Sarah Pinsker, Noël Sturgeon, and Taryne Taylor. They called Garcia’s work “inventive, humorous, and moving.” Jurors said that the story “shines with hope and connectedness,” and is “a fun combination of Science Fictional idea and voice and humor and heart.”

R.S.A. Garcia is a Nebula Award and MIFRE Media Award winning writer of speculative fiction. She is also a Locus, Ignyte and Eugie Foster Award finalist. She has published short fiction in venues such as Clarkesworld Magazine, Escape Pod, Strange Horizons and Internazionale Magazine. Her stories have been long-listed for the British Science Fiction Awards, translated into several languages, and included in a number of anthologies, including the critically acclaimed The Best of World SF, The Best Science Fiction of the Year, and The Apex Book of World SF. Her sff duology, beginning with The Nightward, is forthcoming from Harper Voyager US, October, 2024. She lives in Trinidad and Tobago with an extended family and too many cats.

CSSF will present the trophy and monetary prize to Garcia at the Sturgeon Award Ceremony on October 24 in a ceremony during the Gunn Center’s third annual Sturgeon Symposium. The theme, “Stars in Our Pockets: Celebrating Samuel R. Delany,” honors his lasting impact on science fiction, speculative fiction, and literary criticism.

[Based on a press release.]