IAFA 2023 Award Winners

The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts award ceremony was held March 18. (Some award winners were named ahead of the conference.)

THE CRAWFORD AWARD

[Presented annually by the IAFA for a first book of fantasy.] Previously announced in February.

  • Simon Jimenez for his novel The Spear Cuts Through Water (Del Rey)

THE JAMIE BISHOP MEMORIAL AWARD FOR AN ESSAY NOT IN ENGLISH

[For a work of scholarship written in a language other than English.]

  • Priscilla Layne and Sang-Keun Yoo

Finalists, Semi-finalists, and honorable mentions

  • Yilun Fan

THE IMAGINING INDIGENOUS FUTURISM AWARD

[Recognizes emerging authors who use science fiction to address issues of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination.] Previously announced in January.

  • Telling the Soul of Mars by Alina Pete

The other works on the shortlist were:

  • The Tangle by Rae Mariz
  • The Good One by Allanah Hunt
  • Spirit Medicine by Gina McGuire

THE DAVID G. HARTWELL EMERGING SCHOLAR AWARD

[For an outstanding student paper.] 

  • Marissa Luquette

DELL MAGAZINES AWARD

[An Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing.] Previously announced in February.

Winner: Sam Wilson of Chapman University for “blooming beating hearts”

First Runner-up: Olivia Garcia of Chapman University for “Of the Known Universe”

Second Runner-up: Rona Wang of the Massachussetts Institute of Technology for “The Glass Foxkit”

Third Runner-up: Simon Herz of Swarthmore College for “The River People”

Honorable Mentions

  • Jazmin Collins from Arcadia University for “A Practical Guide to Housesitting for North American Witches”
  • Jadyn Straigis of Goucher College for “The Ivory Peak Hotel”
  • Emely Menjivar of Chapman University for “Blind Faith”
  • Simon Herz from Swarthmore College for “Gone Up in Fog”
  • William Romero of Vanderbilt University for “The Great Blue Heron of the Mississippi”

IAFA DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARSHIP AWARD

[An annual career award, presented annually since 1986, recognizing distinguished contributions to the scholarship and criticism of the fantastic.]

  • Isiah Lavender III

BIPOC CAUCUS AWARDS

[The BIPOC Caucus presents two awards, one for Exemplary Allies and one for Members who have served the community as Uplifters.] The site does not indicate a 2023 Exemplary Ally award was given.   

Uplifters

  • AE Fonsworth
  • Candice Thornton 
  • Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki

IAFA 2022 Award Winners

The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts honored the winners of the following awards at their annual conference held March 16-20. (Some award winners were named ahead of the conference.)

THE CRAWFORD AWARD

[Presented annually by the IAFA for a first book of fantasy.] Previously announced in February.

  • Usman T. Malik for his story collection Midnight Doorways: Fables from Pakistan (Kitab).

THE JAMIE BISHOP MEMORIAL AWARD

[For a work of scholarship written in a language other than English.]

  • Szilvia Gellai

THE ROBERT A. COLLINS SERVICE AWARD

[A special award presented to an officer, board member, or division head for outstanding service to the organization.]

  • Jim Casey

THE DAVID G. HARTWELL EMERGING SCHOLAR AWARD

[For an outstanding student paper.] 

  • Iuliia Ibragimova 

IAFA DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARSHIP AWARD

[An annual career award, presented annually since 1986, recognizing distinguished contributions to the scholarship and criticism of the fantastic.]

  • Farah Mendlesohn

Jamie Bishop Memorial
Award 2021

Michael Bishop posted full information about this year’s Jamie Bishop Memorial Award on Facebook. The name of the winner was previously announced at the International Association of the Fantastic in the Arts 2021 online award ceremony on March 21.

Each year the winner of the Jamie Bishop Memorial Award is announced at the annual conference, given “to the author or authors of a critical essay on the fantastic written in a language other than English.”

Michael Bishop wrote:

It’s presented in Jamie’s memory because he was a speaker and a teacher of German, as well as an artist who created digital artwork for SF and fantasy titles.

[April 16 is] the 14th anniversary of the events at Virginia Tech that took his life along with those of 27 students and four other teachers. So word of this year’s Award came at a sensitive but entirely appropriate time

University of Florida Associate Professor of English Terry Harpold says there were submissions in nine languages. Eighteen judges from Europe, Canada, and the US reviewed the candidates, and three finalists and one overall winner of the Award were chosen.

The three finalists this year were Marcellin Block for a paper in French, Tessa Sermet for another essay in French, and Yu Xuying in Chinese on the work of Liu Cixin.

The overall winner, Maria Belliaeva Solomon, an associate professor at the University of Maryland, received the Award for an essay in French on Gerard de Nerval’s first work of prose fiction, the 1832 story “The Enchanted Hand,” which was published in the Revue Nerval.

Jamie Bishop

Jamie Bishop (1971-2007) was the son of Michael Bishop, an award-winning science fiction writer, and Jeri Whitaker Bishop, an elementary-school counselor; he grew up in Pine Mountain, Georgia, the family’s hometown since 1974, and attended school there as well as in Athens, Georgia, and in both Kiel and Heidelberg, Germany. Jamie was an artist and a craftsman as well as an instructor of the German language at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech). He was among those killed in the Virginia Tech massacre of April 16, 2007.

A list of past Bishop Award winners is at this link.

IAFA 2021 Award Winners

The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts held a virtual ceremony on March 21 honoring winners of awards usually presented at their annual conference, which went online this year due to the coronavirus outbreak. (Several award winners were named ahead of the conference.)

THE CRAWFORD AWARD

[Presented annually by the IAFA for a first book of fantasy.] Previously announced in March.

  • Nghi Vo for The Empress of Salt and Fortune (Tordotcom)

THE JAMIE BISHOP MEMORIAL AWARD

[For a work of scholarship written in a language other than English.]

  • Maria Beliaeva Solomon

THE WALTER JAMES MILLER MEMORIAL AWARD

[For a student paper on a work or works of the fantastic originally created in a language other than English,]

  • Natalie Deam

THE IMAGINING INDIGENOUS FUTURISM AWARD

[Recognizes emerging authors who use science fiction to address issues of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination.] Previously announced in January.

  • Lennixx-Nickoli Treat Bad for “THE BOX”

THE DAVID G. HARTWELL EMERGING SCHOLAR AWARD

[For an outstanding student paper.] 

  • Robert Nguyen

DELL MAGAZINES AWARD

[An Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing.] Previously announced in February.

  • Winner: Jazmin Collins, Arcadia University, for, “My Gardening Journal: Tales from a Psychic Gardener.”
  • First Runner-up: Samuel Owens, the University of Chicago, for “The Piano Player.”
  • Second Runner-up: Jack Hawkins, Vanderbilt University, for “Chronicler of a Dying World.”
  • Honorable Mention: Samuel Owens, University of Chicago, for “Man’s End.”

IAFA DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARSHIP AWARD

[An annual career award, presented annually since 1986, recognizing distinguished contributions to the scholarship and criticism of the fantastic.]

  • Stacy Alaimo

IAFA Announces 2018 Awards

The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts named the winners of four awards that will be presented at the conference’s banquet during the 39th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in Orlando, Florida, March 14-18.

IAFA William A. Crawford Fantasy Award. The winner of the 2018 IAFA William A. Crawford Fantasy Award, presented annually by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts for a first book of fantasy, is Carmen Maria Machado for the story collection Her Body and Other Parties (Graywolf Press).

The other finalists on this year’s Crawford shortlist are:

  • S .A. Chakraborty, City of Brass (Harper Voyager);
  • Ruthanna Emrys, Winter Tide (Tor.com),
  • Sam J. Miller, The Art of Starving (HarperTeen),
  • K. Arsenault Rivera, The Tiger’s Daughter (Tor), and
  • Sandra Unerman, Spellhaven (Mirror World).

IAFA’s Distinguished Scholarship Award will be presented to the conference’s guest scholar, Fred Botting.

The Jamie Bishop Memorial Award for a work of scholarship written in a language other than English will be presented to Guangyi Li.

The Walter James Miller Memorial Award for a student paper on a work or works of the fantastic originally created in a language other than English, will be presented to Peter Adrian Behravesh.

The David G. Hartwell Emerging Scholar Award for an outstanding student paper will be announced at the banquet.

[Via Locus Online.]

2017 IAFA Awards

Awards presented at the 38th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in Orlando, Florida on March 19 included:

William L. Crawford Fantasy Award

  • All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

Other books making the Crawford shortlist: Maria Turtschaninoff’s novel Maresi (Pushkin/Abrams), Rose Lemberg’s poetry collection Marginalia to Stone Bird (Aqueduct), and Michael Wehunt’s story collection Greener Pastures (Shock Totem).

IAFA Distinguished Scholarship Award

  • Edward James

The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA) Distinguished Scholarship Award is an annual career award, presented annually since 1986, recognizing distinguished contributions to the scholarship and criticism of the fantastic.

David G. Hartwell Emerging Scholar Award

  • Grant Dempsey

The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts presents an annual award and stipend to the graduate student submitting the most outstanding paper at the Association’s conference.

 

Grant Dempsey with Hartwell Award plaque.

Jamie Bishop Memorial Award

  • David Dalton

The Jamie Bishop Memorial Award is a prize for a critical essay on the fantastic written in a language other than English. The IAFA defines the fantastic to include science fiction, folklore, and related genres in literature, drama, film, art and graphic design, and related disciplines.

Walter James Miller Memorial Award

  • Ida Yoshinaga

The Walter James Miller Memorial Award for Student Scholarship in the International Fantastic is given annually to the author of the best ICFA student paper devoted to a work or works of the fantastic originally created in a language other than English. In addition to its scholarly excellence, the winning paper must also demonstrate the author’s command of the relevant linguistic, national, and cultural contexts of the work or works discussed.

The names of the winners were first announced in February.

Pixel Scroll 6/17/16 The Second Fifth Season

(1) RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU’RE A GREAT WRITER. Photos from George R.R. Martin’s sit-down with Stephen King last night in Albuquerque, in “The King and I” at Not a Blog.

(2) NON-ENGLISH SCHOLARSHIP AWARD. Through September 1, the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts is taking entries for the 10th annual Jamie Bishop Memorial Award for a critical essay on the fantastic written in a language other than English.

The IAFA defines the fantastic to include science fiction, folklore, and related genres in literature, drama, film, art and graphic design, and related disciplines.

The prize is $250 U.S. and one year’s free membership in the IAFA.

(3) FUTURE IAFA. In 2017, “Fantastic Epics” will be the theme of the 38th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, to be held March 22-26 in Orlando, Florida. Guests of Honor: Steven Erikson and N.K. Jemisin; Guest Scholar: Edward James; and Special Guest Emeritus: Brian Aldiss.

(4) INVENTIVE SF WRITER. Mike Chomko salutes “120 Years of Murray Leinster” at the Pulpfest website.

Although magazines have been around since the seventeenth century, it wasn’t until the last month of 1896 that the pulp magazine was born. It was left to Frank A. Munsey – a man about whom it has been suggested, “contributed to the journalism of his day the talent of a meat packer, the morals of a money changer and the manner of an undertaker” – to deliver the first American periodical specifically intended for the common man — THE ARGOSY. In his own words, Munsey decided to create “a magazine of the people and for the people, with pictures and art and good cheer and human interest throughout.”

That same year, on June 16, a child was born who would become one of THE ARGOSY’s regular writers for nearly four decades — William Fitzgerald Jenkins. Best known and remembered under his pseudonym of Murray Leinster, Jenkins wrote and published more than 1,500 short stories and articles, fourteen movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays. Active as a writer for nearly seven decades, Jenkins’ writing career began in early 1916 when his work began to be featured in H. L. Mencken’s and George Jean Nathan’s THE SMART SET.

(5) JEMISIN INTERVIEWED BY WIRED. “Wired Book Club: Fantasy Writer N.K. Jemisin on the Weird Dreams That Fuel Her Stories”.

We asked readers to submit questions. Here’s one: “I love how this storyline seemed to play with the idea that a person is fluid rather than static, especially when discussing the concept of mothering. Women tend to be judged very harshly on whether or not they want a family, and on the decisions they make when they do have a family. To see one person travel along all different points of the mother spectrum was very interesting. Am I reading too much into this?”

No! I’m glad that reader saw that. I tend to like writing characters that are not typical heroes. I have seen mothers as heroes in fiction lots of time, but they tend to be one-note. You don’t often see that they weren’t always that interested in having kids. They weren’t always great moms. You don’t often see that they are people beyond being mothers, that motherhood is just one aspect of their life and not the totality of their being. I had some concern about the fact that I am not a mother. It’s entirely possible that I made some mistakes in the way that I chose to render that complexity. But it’s something I wanted to explore.

(6) YOU CAN SAY THAT AGAIN. In fact, they have.

(7) JUDGING A BOOK BY ITS COVER. Joe Zieja, gaining fame as a genre humorist, proves his mettle in “Five Books I Haven’t Read But Want To and Am Going to Summarize Anyway Based on Their Titles and Covers” at Tor.com.

The Grace of Kings—Ken Liu

The year is 2256. The Earth is a barren wasteland of oatmeal raisin cookies and hyper-intelligent cockroaches Everything is pretty much firmly settled in a dystopian, post-apocalpytic mess, and nobody can grow any plants. Except one girl: Grace King. This is the story of one girl’s attempt to grow a dandelion out of a really fancy upside-down ladle. As she struggles to find the courage inside herself—and maybe some water or fertilizer, or something—we recognize that her quest for the ladle is not unlike our own, deeply personal quest for soup.

This game sounds tailor made for Filers…

(8) FATHERS DAY READS. The B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog comes up with “5 Great Dad Moments in Science Fiction & Fantasy History”.

Aral Vorkosigan Saves His Son (The Warrior’s Apprentice, by Lois McMaster Bujold) Aral Vorkosigan is not a man who easily bends his principles or behaves counter to his beliefs; you can probably count the number of times he’s actually used his power and influence for personal gain on one hand—remarkable considering how much power he wields at various times in his career. At the end of the second book in Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga, his son Miles stands accused of raising a private army and is poised to be drummed out of the military and executed, but Aral influences the proceedings so that Miles is charged instead with the equally serious crime of treason. Why is having your son accused of treason a grand Dad Moment? Because Aral knew treason could never be proved—while it was pretty clear that Miles had indeed raised a private army (even if he had a really good reason). It’s a neat way for Aral to demonstrate his loyalty to his son without, technically, violating his own moral code.

(9) NOW WE HAVE FACES. Yahoo! News brings word that Supergirl has cast its Superman.

For Season 2, though, the Last Son of Krypton will finally have a face, and he’ll look a lot like Tyler Hoechlin. The Teen Wolf star takes flight in a role previously played on The CW by Smallville’s Tom Welling, who portrayed a pre-Superman Clark Kent for 10 seasons.

Hoechlin actually has comic book roots that pre-date his Supergirl assignment. At the age of 14, he won the coveted role of Tom Hanks’s son in Road to Perdition, the Sam Mendes-directed adaptation of an acclaimed graphic novel. In addition to his role as Derek Hale on Teen Wolf, the actor will also appear in the upcoming Fifty Shades of Grey sequels, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed.

(10) QUALITY EMERGENT. At Amazing Stories, MD Jackson continues the series: “Why Was Early Comic Book Art so Crude? (Part Two)”.

His talents did not go unnoticed. Everett M. “Busy” Arnold, publisher of Quality Comics, wanted to integrate the comic book format into the more prestigious world of the Sunday Funnies. He lured Eisner away from the studio to create a weekly comic book that would be distributed by a newspaper syndicate. Eisner agreed and came up with his most famous creation, The Spirit, which would continue to break new ground artistically, but also in the comic book business. Eisner insisted on owning the copyright to his new creation, a situation almost without parallel in comics at that time and almost without parallel on any popular basis for several decades to come. “Since I knew I would be in comics for life, I felt I had every right to own what I created. It was my future, my product and my property, and by God, I was going to fight to own it.” Eisner said. That was a watershed moment in terms of the artist being acknowledged as a creator of comics rather than just part of an assembly line.

(11) A LOONEY IDEA. A BBC video explains why Earth probably has more than one moon a lot of the time.

Or, as JPL explains it:

As it orbits the sun, this new asteroid, designated 2016 HO3, appears to circle around Earth as well. It is too distant to be considered a true satellite of our planet, but it is the best and most stable example to date of a near-Earth companion, or “quasi-satellite.”

“Since 2016 HO3 loops around our planet, but never ventures very far away as we both go around the sun, we refer to it as a quasi-satellite of Earth,” said Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object (NEO) Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “One other asteroid — 2003 YN107 — followed a similar orbital pattern for a while over 10 years ago, but it has since departed our vicinity. This new asteroid is much more locked onto us. Our calculations indicate 2016 HO3 has been a stable quasi-satellite of Earth for almost a century, and it will continue to follow this pattern as Earth’s companion for centuries to come.”

(12) IT’S A THEORY.

(13) A DOCTOR ON DYING. Rudy Rucker Podcast #95 shares with listeners an essay/memoir by Michael Blumlein called “Unrestrained and Indiscreet” originally read at the SF in SF series in San Francisco.

And then all at once Blumlein … tells about learning that he himself has lung cancer, about having large sections of his lungs removed, and about learning that the treatments have failed and that he’s approaching death. Blumlein is a doctor as well as as science-fiction author, and he ends with a profound meditation on the process and experience of death…

(14) SCALES AND TALES. William Wu has released the final cover for Scales and Tales, the anthology created to benefit three different animal adoption programs in the LA area.

Wu’s small press is printing 500 copies. An e-version will follow.

There will be a signing at the San Diego Comic-Con in July, and another at Dark Delicacies bookstore in Burbank on August 28 at 2 p.m.

Scales-and-Tales-cover COMP

(15) SIXTIES HUGO WINNER. Nawfalaq at AQ’s Reviews is not the least blown away by Clifford D. Simak’s Way Station, a book that was at the very top of my list of favorite sf novels for a number of years.

Way Station by Clifford D. Simak (1904 – 1988) is the third novel by the author that I have read. It was published in 1963 and won the 1964 Hugo Award for best novel.  Off the bat, I have to say that this is the most polished of the three novels by Simak that I have read. Nevertheless, I admit that this was not an easy read for me to get through. The setting and the tone really caused the big slowdown with my reading of this novel.

The review makes me want to “revenge read” Way Station to prove to myself it is as wonderful as I remember. But what if it’s not…?

(16) SECURITY THEATRE? JJ calls this a “replicant check.”

https://twitter.com/J0hnnyXm4s/status/743465789081157634

(17) IT PAYS TO BE A GENIUS OF COURSE. In this installment of Whatever’s “The Big Idea” series, Yoon Ha Lee reveals the thinking behind Ninefox Gambit.

Not so fast. Both of them were also supposed to be geniuses: Jedao at tactics and psychological warfare, Cheris at math. It’s possible that writing geniuses is easy when one is a genius oneself; I wouldn’t know, because I’m definitely not a genius. (I have since sworn that maybe the next thing I should do is write slapstick comedy about stupid-ass generals, not brilliant tacticians.)

So I cheated.  A lot. One of the first things I did was to reread James Dunnigan & Albert A. Nofi’s Victory and Deceit: Dirty Tricks at War. I wrote down all the stratagems I liked, then tried to shove all of them into the rough draft. (And then there was too much plot so I had to take some of them out.)  And of course, their opponent also had to be smart. I’d learned this from reading Gordon R. Dickson’s Tactics of Mistake, a novel I found infuriating because the “tactical genius” mainly geniused by virtue of the opponent being stupid, which I’m sure happens all the time in real life but makes for unsatisfying narrative. Besides all the military reading I did, I also hit up social engineering and security engineering.

(18) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • June 17, 1955 — Bert I. Gordon’s King Dinosaur premieres in theaters.

ws_Vintage_Cinema__King_Dinosaur!_1440x900 COMP

(19) MONSTERKID. Rondo Award emcee David Colton presents Steve Vertlieb with the Lifetime Achievement, Rondo Award “Hall Of Fame” plaque at the Wonderfest film conference on June 4.

Vertlieb receives rondoRondo Hall of Fame

(20) STAR WARS 8 FINISHES SHOOTING IN IRELAND. Post-Star Wars filming in Ireland, the studio put an ad in a local Kerry newspaper complete with Gaelic translation of may the force be with you. The commenters tried to make it look like the translation was wrong. All I can say is Google Translate made nonsense of it.

Then local Credit Union decided to capitalize on the zeitgeist with Darth Vader as Gaeilgoir (Irish speaker).

(21) FURNISHING THE FUTURE. Stelios Mousarris is a designer with a fantastic imagination.

A Glass Coffee Table propelled by a team of rockets makes a nice Father’s Day gift.

table-1

Ever since I was a little boy, I loved playing with action figures and spent my weekend mornings watching cartoons on the TV. I have been collecting toys and action figures and anything nostalgic from my childhood until this day.

Every time I take a look at my collectibles I remember my childhood, when I used to play for hours on end without a care in the world.

I wanted to recreate that feeling of carefreeness and nostalgia with the Rocket Coffee Table. The design is visually playful bringing cartoon-like clouds and aerial rockets from a personal toy collection to life, in the form of a table.

Combining various techniques from lathe to 3d printing, resin casting and traditional hand curved pieces, this table is fashioned to draw a smile on the face of nostalgic adults, children, and children trapped in adult bodies.

The rockets are not attached to the glass giving the opportunity to each owner to form their own desired structure of the table.

Price: €5000

Or look at the Wave City Coffee Table:

another table 2 COMP.jpg

 

Inspired by a film this table is a well balanced mixture of wood, steel and 3D printed technology.

Price: €8500

[Thanks to Nigel, JJ, Andrew Porter, Chip Hitchcock, John King Tarpinian, and robinareid for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip W.]