Tag Archives: Elgin Award

2016 Elgin Award Candidates

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The Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Elgin Award, named for SFPA founder Suzette Haden Elgin, is presented in two categories, Chapbook and Book.

Nominations for the Elgin Award closed June 15. The SFPA website shows these poems as the candidates for the award.

Chapbooks

  • Be Closer for My Burn • Robin Wyatt Dunn (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2015)
  • The Book of Answers • Herb Kauderer (Written Image, 2014)
  • A Guide for the Practical Abductee • E. Kristin Anderson (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014)
  • Southern Cryptozoology • Allie Marini (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2015)
  • Stairs Appear in a Hole Outside of Town • John Philip Johnson (Graphic Poetry, 2014)
  • Undoing Winter • Shannon Connor Winward (Finishing Line Press, 2014)

Full-length Books

  • The Acolyte • Nancy Hightower (Port Yonder Press, 2015)
  • Chemical Letters • Octavia Cade (Popcorn Press, 2015)
  • The Crimson Tome • K. A. Opperman (Hippocampus Press, 2015)
  • Crowned: The Sign Of The Dragon Book 1 • Mary Soon Lee (Dark Renaissance Books, 2015)
  • Dark Energies • Ann K. Schwader (P’rea Press, 2015)
  • Dawn of the Algorithm • Yann Rousselot (Inkshares, 2015)
  • The Dishonesty of Dreams • A.J. Odasso (Flipped Eye Publishing, 2014)
  • Dreams from a Black Nebula • Wade German (Hippocampus Press, 2014)
  • An Exorcism of Angels • Stephanie Wytovich (Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2015)
  • Gravedigger’s Dance • G.O. Clark (Dark Renaissance Books, 2014)
  • Eden Underground • Alessandro Manzetti (Crystal Lake Publishing, 2015)
  • The Endless Machine • Max Ingram (Bone Forge Books, 2015)
  • If the Tabloids Are True What Are You? • Matthea Harvey (Graywolf Press, 2014)
  • An Inheritance of Stone • Leslie J. Anderson (Alliteration Ink, 2014)
  • Lilith’s Demons • Julie r. Enszer (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2015)
  • The Madness of Empty Spaces • David E. Cowen (Weasel Press, 2014)
  • The Manufacturer of Sorrow • Michelle Scalise (Eldritch Press, 2014)
  • Naughty Ladies • Marge Simon (Eldritch Press, 2015)
  • Resonance Dark and Light • Bruce Boston (Eldritch Press, 2015)
  • The Robot Scientist’s Daughter • Jeannine Hall Gailey (Mayapple Press, 2015)
  • Solar Maximum • Sueyeun Juliette Lee (Futurepoem Books, 2015)
  • Some Fatal Effects of Curiosity and Disobedience • Laura Madeline Wiseman (Lavender Ink, 2014)
  • Space Traveler • Benjamin S. Grossberg (University of Tampa Press, 2014)
  • To Love As Aswang • Barbara Jane Reyes (PAWA, 2015)
  • Turn Left at November: Poems • Wendy Rathbone (Eye Scry Publications, 2015)
  • Visitations into Sídhe and Tír na nÓg • Alex Ness (Uffda Press, 2015)

To be considered, chapbooks must contain 10-39 pages of poetry and books must contain 40 or more pages of poetry. The books must have been published in 2014 or 2015.

E-books are eligible, but self-published books are not. Single-author and collaborative books are eligible; anthologies are not. Books containing fiction as well as poetry are not eligible. Books must be in English, but translations are eligible. In the case of translations that also contain the poems in the original language, those pages will not count toward the total page count.

Any works that have already won 1st-3rd place in the preceding year are ineligible.

2016 Elgin Award Nominations Being Accepted

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The Science Fiction Poetry Association is taking nominations for the Elgin Award through May 15. A list of the works nominated so far is available here.

Named for SFPA founder Suzette Haden Elgin, the awards are presented in two categories, Chapbook and Book. To be considered, chapbooks must contain 10-39 pages of poetry and books must contain 40 or more pages of poetry. The books must have been published in 2014 or 2015.

E-books are eligible, but self-published books are not. Single-author and collaborative books are eligible; anthologies are not. Books containing fiction as well as poetry are not eligible. Books must be in English, but translations are eligible. In the case of translations that also contain the poems in the original language, those pages will not count toward the total page count.

Any works that have already won 1st-3rd place in the preceding year are ineligible.

2015 Elgin Award Winners

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The Science Fiction Poetry Association has announced the winners of the 2015 Elgin Award.

Named for SFPA founder Suzette Haden Elgin, the awards are presented in two categories, Chapbook and Book. To be considered, chapbooks must contain 10-39 pages of poetry and books must contain 40 or more pages of poetry. The books must have been published in 2013 or 2014.

Full-length Books

Winner

  • Sweet Poison • Marge Simon & Mary Turzillo (Dark Renaissance Books, 2014)

Second Place

Third Place

Chapbooks

Winner

Second Place

  • Seti Hits Paydirt • David C. Kopaska-Merkel (Popcorn Press, 2014)

Third Place

  • If the World Were to Stop Spinning • David Clink (Piquant Press, 2014)

2015 Elgin Award Candidates

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The Science Fiction Poetry Association has announced the candidates for the Elgin Award.

Named for SFPA founder Suzette Haden Elgin, the awards are presented in two categories, Chapbook and Book. To be considered, chapbooks must contain 10-39 pages of poetry and books must contain 40 or more pages of poetry. The books must have been published in 2013 or 2014.

Chapbooks
The Book of Answers • Herb Kauderer (Written Image, 2014)
request .pdf from [email protected]
A Guide for the Practical Abductee • E. Kristin Anderson (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014)
If the World Were to Stop Spinning • David Clink (Piquant Press, 2014)
request .pdf from [email protected]
Selected Regions of the Moon • J. E. Stanley (NightBallet Press, 2013)
request .pdf from editor Dianne Borsenik at [email protected]
Seti Hits Paydirt • David C. Kopaska-Merkel (Popcorn Press, 2014)
request .pdf from [email protected]
Spaces of Their Own • Russell Jones (Stewed Rhubarb Press, 2013)
Stairs Appear in a Hole Outside of Town • John Philip Johnson (Graphic Poetry, 2014)
request .pdf from [email protected]
Undoing Winter • Shannon Connor Winward (Finishing Line Press, 2014)
Wolf Skin • Mary McMyne (Dancing Girl Press, 2014)
request .pdf from [email protected]; sample poems at marymcmyne.com/wolf-skin/
Full-length Books
Dark Roads: Selected Long Poems 1971-2012 • Bruce Boston (Dark Renaissance Books, 2013) request .pdf from [email protected]; sample poems and illustrations available at bruceboston.com/DarkRoadsSampler.html
The Dishonesty of Dreams • A.J. Odasso (Flipped Eye Publishing, 2014)
request .pdf from [email protected]
Dreams from a Black Nebula • Wade German (Hippocampus Press, 2014)
request .pdf from [email protected]; SFPA voting members can also request a print copy here: [email protected]
Fearworms • Robert Payne Cabeen (fanboy comics, 2014)
download .pdf at https://www.dropbox.com/s/plrit0imzsrhgzq/FEARWORMS.Review.Galley.pdf?dl=0
The First Bite of the Apple • Jennifer Crow (Elektrik Milk Bath Press, 2013)
The Grandson of Heinrich Schliemann & Other Truths and Fictions • David Lunde (Mayapple Press, 2014)
request .pdf from [email protected]
Gravedigger’s Dance • G.O. Clark (Dark Renaissance Books, 2014)
request .pdf from [email protected]
The Haunted Girl • Lisa M. Bradley (Aqueduct Press, 2014)
Hungry Constellations • Mike Allen (Mythic Delirium Books, 2014)
request .pdf from [email protected]
If the Tabloids Are True What Are You? • Matthea Harvey (Graywolf Press, 2014)
An Inheritance of Stone • Leslie J. Anderson (Alliteration Ink, 2014)
The Madness of Empty Spaces • David E. Cowen (Weasel Press, 2014)
request .pdf from [email protected]
The Manufacturer of Sorrow • Michelle Scalise (Eldritch Press, 2014)
request ebook from [email protected]
Mourning Jewelry • Stephanie Wytovich (Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2014)
request .pdf from [email protected]
noise of our origin • Dietmar Tauchner (Red Moon Press, 2013)
request .pdf from editor Jim Kacian at [email protected]
The Offspring of the Moon • John W. Sexton (Salmon Poetry, 2013)
request .pdf from [email protected]
Our Rarer Monsters • Noel Sloboda (Sunnyoutside, 2013)
Prophets • Peter A. Salomon (Eldritch Press, 2014)
The Rings of Ganymede • Kendall Evans (Alban Lake Publishing, 2014)
Some Fatal Effects of Curiosity and Disobedience • Laura Madeline Wiseman (Lavender Ink, 2014)
Space Traveler • Benjamin S. Grossberg (University of Tampa Press, 2014)
request .pdf from [email protected]
Sweet Poison • Marge Simon & Mary Turzillo (Dark Renaissance Books, 2014)
request .pdf from [email protected] or [email protected]
Unexplained Fevers • Jeannine Hall Gailey (New Binary Press, 2013)
Venus Intervention • Corrine De Winter & Alessandro Manzetti (Kipple Officina Libraria, 2014) request .pdf from [email protected]

Suzette Haden Elgin (1936-2015)

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Elgin_S_LVersatile sf author, poet and linguist Suzette Haden Elgin died January 27. She’d been experiencing health troubles for a long time, and abandoned several newsletters and her blog a few years ago due to the effects of Fronto-Temporol Dementia which, as her husband, George, explained in 2012 — is “a condition that develops more rapidly than Alzheimer’s disease, and does not respond to any form of treatment or medication.”

Elgin began her career as a science fiction writer in the late Sixties. Having remarried after being widowed, Elgin found herself a mother of five and at the same time a graduate student in linguistics at UC San Diego. She began writing sf to pay her tuition.

Andrew Porter recalls, “I pulled her first short story, ‘For the Sake of Grace’, out of the slushpile when I was assistant editor at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Ed Ferman published it in 1969. It was subsequently widely reprinted and anthologized. She was one of the few authors I discovered who went on to a wide-ranging and productive career.”

Elgin completed her grad school work by writing two dissertations, one on English, the other on Navajo. She was later hired by San Diego State University, where she taught until she retired in 1980.

Elgin’s first novel, The Communipaths, published in 1970 as half of an Ace double, marked the beginning of her Coyote Jones series, followed by Furthest and Star-Anchored, Star-Avenged.

She then wrote the Ozark Trilogy, Twelve Fair Kingdoms, The Grand Jubilee and And Then There’ll Be Fireworks. Coyote Jones also appeared in another book set in that universe, Yonder Comes the Other End of Time.

In the mid-1980s she produced her best-known work, Native Tongue, The Judas Rose and Earthsong – sf novels where women create, word by word, a language of their own called Láadan to help free themselves from men’s domination. (A Láadan grammar and dictionary was published in 1988 by SF3 of Madison, Wisconsin.)

Elgin made another key contribution to the genre by founding the Science Fiction Poetry Association in 1978. For awhile she edited its newsletter, Star*Line. Her poem “Rocky Road to Hoe” won SFPA’s Rhysling Award in 1987. The organization also honored her by creating the Elgin Award in 2013.

Although Elgin admitted other poets disagreed, her essay “About Science Fiction Poetry” defined genre poetry in this way —

It seemed to me that the field of sf poetry badly needed rigor (the quality that makes hard sf hard), so that there’d be a way to stand up and argue for its literary value. People look at Picasso’s abstract paintings and object that their six-year-old child could do that — but Picasso could put a pencil on a sheet of paper and draw a magnificently realistic horse (or anything else you asked him for) as a single line, without ever lifting the pencil from the paper. That’s rigor. Because he could do that if he chose, he could also break all the rules if he chose; that’s fair. I wanted sf poetry first to prove that it could do the thing rigorously; after that, if it wanted to fly off into the never-nevers, it would at least be possible to point to the body of rigorous work and say, “When sf poets choose to, they can write like this; they’ve proved that, and now they have the right to break the rules.” So I assumed “poem” as defined, and proposed that an sf poem was one that had two parts: a science part, and a fiction — narrative — part. Like most grandiose projects, mine didn’t go far; the sf poets shouted me down in short order. But I still think it was, and is, worth a try.

Elgin’s other nonfiction enterprises were considerably more influential. Her Ozark Center for Language Studies was dedicated to reducing violence in the U.S. and getting information about linguistics out to the public. She wrote a remarkable book called The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense, whose goal was “To establish an environment in which verbal violence almost never occurs and which — on those rare occasions when it cannot be avoided — it is dealt with efficiently and effectively, with no loss of face on either side.” (I used it in my own work.) She taught four basic principles: “Know that you are under attack. Know what kind of attack you are facing. Know how to make your defense fit the attack. Know how to follow through.” She taught workshops based on the material, and wrote several follow-up books, one of which was a novel, Peacetalk 101.

She was a widely respected professional in multiple fields who will be truly missed.

2014 Elgin Award Winners

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The Science Fiction Poetry Association’s 2014 Elgin Award winners have been announced.

Named for SFPA founder Suzette Haden Elgin, the awards are presented in two categories, Chapbook and Book. Eligible chapbooks contain 10-39 pages of poetry, while books must contain 40 or more pages of poetry.

Elgin Book Award

Winner: Demonstra by Bryan Thao Worra (Innsmouth Free Press, 2013)

Second Place: Unexplained Fevers by Jeannine Hall Gailey (New Binary Press, 2013)

Third Place: Dark Roads by Bruce Boston (Dark Renaissance Books, 2013)

Elgin Chapbook Award

Winner: The Sex Lives of Monsters by Helen Marshall (Kelp Queen Press, 2013)

Second Place: The Edible Zoo by David C. Kopaska-Merkel (Sam’s Dot Publishing)

Third Place: Inhuman: Haiku From The Zombie Apocalypse by Joshua Gage (The Poet’s Haven, 2013)

May 15 Deadline for SF Poetry Award Entries

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Submissions for the Dwarf Stars anthology, from which the best short speculative poem of 2013 will be selected, opened April 1. Anyone may submit poems of their own or by others — though only Science Fiction Poetry Association members may vote for the award.

The Dwarf Stars anthology is open to all genres of speculative poetry, including science fiction, fantasy, horror, and “unclassifiable, but speculative.” Poems must be no more than ten lines (or no more than 100 words for prose poems) not including title or stanza breaks, and first published in 2013. Submission deadline is May 15. The anthology will be issued in July. The voting deadline will be August 15, 2014.

SFPA is also taking nominations from members for the Elgin Awards. Named for founder Suzette Haden Elgin, the awards are given for Chapbook and Book. A cumulative list of nominated books is posted on the SFPA website. The deadline to nominate is May 15; the voting deadline is August 15.

SFPA Announces Dwarf Stars, Elgin Winners

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ds13The Science Fiction Poetry Association will present the Rhysling, Dwarf Stars, and Elgin Awards at LoneStarCon 3 in a ceremony on Friday, August 30.

Although given at Readercon in recent years, in 2013 these awards are being presented at the Worldcon.

The winners of the Dwarf Stars and Elgin Awards have been announced in advance of the ceremony.

Dwarf Stars

Winner: Basho After Cinderella (iii) • Deborah P Kolodji • Rattle 38

2nd Place: The Hidden • Mary Turzillo • Lovers & Killers (Dark Regions 2012)

3rd Place: Sarcophagus • N. E. Taylor • inkscrawl 3

The Dwarf Stars award recognizes the best speculative poem of 1–10 lines published in the previous year. The award was created to recognize excellent scifaiku, tanka, cinquains, and other short poems, that tended to be overshadowed in Rhysling Award competition. The 2013 Dwarf Stars Anthology edited by Stephen M. Wilson and Linda D. Addison is available from SFPA.

Elgin Awards

Named for SFPA founder Suzette Haden Elgin, the awards are presented in two categories, Chapbook and Book. To be considered, chapbooks must contain 10-39 pages of poetry and books must contain 40 or more pages of poetry.

Book

Winner: Lovers & Killers • Mary Turzillo (Dark Regions Press)

2nd Place: Notes From the Shadow City • Bruce Boston & Gary William Crawford (Dark Regions Press)

3rd Place: Come Late to the Love of Birds • Sandra Kasturi (Tightrope Books)

Chapbook

Winner: Out of the Black Forest • F. J. Bergmann (Centennial Press)

2nd Place: The House of Forever: Selected Poems • Samantha Henderson (Raven Electrick Ink)

3rd Place: The Edible Zoo • David Kopaska-Merkel (Sam’s Dot Publishing)

[Via SF Site News.]