2015 Ditmar and Other Australian Awards

The winners of the 2015 Ditmar Awards for Australian SF, along with some other Australian awards, were announced at Swancon 40 in Perth on April 5, 2015.

Best Novel (tie)

• Thief’s Magic, Trudi Canavan (Hachette Australia)
• The Lascar’s Dagger, Glenda Larke (Hachette)

• Bound, Alan Baxter (Voyager)
• Clariel, Garth Nix (HarperCollins)
• The Godless, Ben Peek (Tor UK)

Best Novella or Novelette

• “The Legend Trap”, Sean Williams (Kaleidoscope)

• “The Darkness in Clara”, Alan Baxter (SQ Mag #14)
• “Escapement”, Stephanie Gunn (Kisses by Clockwork)
• “The Female Factory”, Lisa L. Hannett & Angela Slatter (The Female Factory)
• “The Ghost of Hephaestus”, Charlotte Nash (Phantazein)
• “St Dymphna’s School for Poison Girls”, Angela Slatter (Review of Australian Fiction Volume 9, Issue 3)

Best Short Story

• “The Seventh Relic”, Cat Sparks (Phantazein)

• “Bahamut”, Thoraiya Dyer (Phantazein)
• “Vanilla”, Dirk Flinthart (Kaleidoscope)
• “Signature”, Faith Mudge (Kaleidoscope)
• “Cookie Cutter Superhero”, Tansy Rayner Roberts  (Kaleidoscope)

Best Collected Work

• Kaleidoscope, Alisa Krasnostein & Julia Rios, eds. (Twelfth Planet)

• The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2013, Liz Grzyb & Talie Helene, eds. (Ticonderoga)
• Phantazein, Tehani Wessely, ed. (FableCroft)

Best Artwork

• Illustrations by Kathleen Jennings for Black-Winged Angels, Angela Slatter (Ticonderoga)

• Illustrations by Kathleen Jennings for The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings, Angela Slatter (Tartarus Press)
• Cover art by Kathleen Jennings for Phantazein, Tehani Wessely, ed. (FableCroft)

Best Fan Writer

• Tansy Rayner Roberts

• Tsana Dolichva
• Bruce Gillespie
• Alexandra Pierce
• Katharine Stubbs
• Grant Watson
• Sean Wright

Best Fan Artist

• Kathleen Jennings, for body of work, including Fakecon art and Illustration Friday series

• Nalini Haynes, for body of work, including “Interstellar Park Ranger Bond, Jaime Bond”, “Gabba and Slave Lay-off: Star Wars explains Australian politics”, “The Driver”, and “Unmasked” in Dark Matter Zine
• Nick Stathopoulos, for movie poster of It Grows!

Best Fan Publication in Any Medium

• The Writer and the Critic, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond

• Snapshot 2014, Tsana Dolichva, Nick Evans, Stephanie Gunn, Kathryn Linge, Elanor Matton-Johnson, David McDonald, Helen Merrick, Jason Nahrung, Ben Payne, Alex Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Helen Stubbs, Katharine Stubbs, Tehani Wessely, and Sean Wright
• Galactic Suburbia, Alisa Krasnostein, Alexandra Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Andrew Finch
• It Grows!, Nick Stathopoulos
• Galactic Chat, Sean Wright, Helen Stubbs, David McDonald, Alexandra Pierce, Sarah Parker, and Mark Webb

Best New Talent

• Helen Stubbs

• Michelle Goldsmith
• Shauna O’Meara

William Atheling Jr. Award for Criticism or Review

• “Does Sex Make Science Fiction Soft?” Tansy Rayner Roberts (Uncanny Magazine #1) 

• Reviews in The Angriest, Grant Watson
• Reviews in FictionMachine, Grant Watson
• The Eddings Reread series, Tehani Wessely, Jo Anderton, and Alexandra Pierce (A Conversational Life)
• Reviews in Adventures of a Bookonaut, Sean Wright
• The Reviewing New Who series, David McDonald, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Tehani Wessely

Voting for the Ditmar Awards was open to members and supporting members of Swancon 40 and members of Continuum 10.

Several other awards were also presented:

The Peter McNamara Achievement Award went to Merv Binns.

The Norma K. Hemming Award for excellence in exploration of race, gender, sexuality, class, and disability in Australian literature went to The Wonders by Paddy O’Reilly (Affirm Press), with an honorable mention for The Female Factory by Angela Slatter & Lisa L. Hannett (Twelfth Planet).

The A. Bertram Chandler Award, recognizing outstanding achievement in Australian SF, went to Donna Maree Hanson.