2016 Crawford Award

The winner of the 2016 Crawford Award, presented annually by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts for a first book of fantasy fiction, is The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson (Tor). The judges cited the novel’s “fresh and powerful voice,” “gorgeous language, great characters, and wonderfully imagined setting.”

The Crawford shortlist includes:

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Natasha Pulley (Bloomsbury US; Bloomsbury UK); The Grace of Kings, Ken Liu (Saga); The Devourers, Indra Das (Penguin India; Del Rey 2016);The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Seth Dickinson (Tor); and The Daughters, Adrienne Celt (Liveright).

Participating at various stages of this year’s nomination and selection process were previous Crawford winners Sofia Samatar, Jedediah Berry, and Candas Jane Dorsey, as well as Cheryl Morgan, Niall Harrison, Farah Mendlesohn, Ellen Klages, Graham Sleight, Karen Burnham, Jonathan Strahan, Liza Groen Trombi, and Stacie Hanes.  The award will be presented on March 19 during the 37th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in Orlando, Florida.

Also at the conference, the IAFA’s Distinguished Scholarship Award will be presented to Cristina Bacchilega, and the Jamie Bishop Memorial Award for a work of scholarship written in a language other than English will go to Natacha Vas-Deyres and Patrick Bergeron.  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 Kristy Eager.  The IAFA’s general award for an outstanding student paper, formerly called the Graduate Student Award, has been renamed the David G. Hartwell Emerging Scholar Award, in tribute to editor and long-time IAFA Board member and book room manager David Hartwell. The winner will be announced at a later date.