2009 Mythopoeic Awards Finalists

The 2009 Mythopoeic Awards finalists have been announced. The winners of this year’s awards will be announced during Mythcon XL to be held from July 17-20, 2009 in Los Angeles, California. A complete list of Mythopoeic Award winners is available on the Society website.

2009 Mythopoeic Awards finalists:

ADULT LITERATURE

• Flesh and Spirit and Breath and Bone, Carol Berg (Roc)
• Pandemonium, Daryl Gregory (Del Rey)
• Lavinia, Ursula K. Le Guin (Harcourt)
• The Bell at Sealey Head, Patricia A. McKillip (Ace)
• An Evil Guest, Gene Wolfe (Tor)

CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

• Graceling, Kristin Cashore (Harcourt Children’s)
• The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins)
• House of Many Ways, Diana Wynne Jones (HarperCollins)
• Savvy, Ingrid Law (Dial)
• Nation, Terry Pratchett (HarperCollins)

INKLINGS STUDIES

• Charles Williams: Alchemy and Imagination, Gavin Ashenden (Kent State, 2008)
• Tolkien on Fairy-stories: Expanded Edition, with Commentary and Notes, Veryln Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson, eds. (HarperCollins, 2008)
• The History of the Hobbit, Part One: Mr. Baggins; Part Two: Return to Bag-end, John Rateliff (Houghton Mifflin, 2007)
• Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis, Michael Ward (Oxford, 2008)
• The Evolution of Tolkien’s Mythology: A Study of the History of Middle-earth, Elizabeth A. Whittingham (McFarland, 2008)

MYTH AND FANTASY STUDIES

• Four British Fantasists: Place and Culture in the Children’s Fantasies of Penelope Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper, Charles Butler (Children’s Literature Association & Scarecrow, 2006)
• Folklore and the Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction, Jason Marc Harris (Ashgate, 2008)
• Rhetorics of Fantasy, Farah Mendlesohn (Wesleyan University Press, 2008)
• One Earth, One People: The Mythopoeic Fantasy Series of Ursula K. Le Guin, Madeleine L’Engle and Orson Scott Card, Marek Oziewicz (McFarland, 2008)
• Oz in Perspective: Magic and Myth in the Frank L. Baum Books, Richard Carl Tuerk (McFarland, 2007)

The Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature is given to the fantasy novel, multi-volume, or single-author story collection for adults published during 2008 that best exemplifies the spirit of the Inklings. Books are eligible for two years after publication if not selected as a finalist during the first year of eligibility. Books from a series are eligible if they stand on their own; otherwise, the series becomes eligible the year its final volume appears. The Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature honors books for younger readers (from young adults to picture books for beginning readers), in the tradition of The Hobbit or The Chronicles of Narnia. Rules for eligibility are otherwise the same as for the Adult Literature award. The question of which award a borderline book is best suited for will be decided by consensus of the committees.

The Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies is given to books on Tolkien, Lewis, and/or Williams that make significant contributions to Inklings scholarship. For this award, books first published during the last three years (2006–2008) are eligible, including finalists for
previous years. The Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies is given to scholarly books on other specific authors in the Inklings tradition, or to more general works on the genres of myth and fantasy. The period of eligibility is three years, as for the Inklings
Studies award.