Otherwise Award Updates

The organizers of the Otherwise Award (formerly the Tiptree Awards) have announced updates and changes, including a streamlined process, and plans to move forward with the award for work published in 2024, after being “on pause” for 2022 and 2023 publications.

We will continue in the tradition of the award, honoring and promoting recent works that explore and expand our ideas of gender.

But we’re improving how we do that, by bringing the award even more into line with our values. For example, we’re making the process more sustainable and more equitable, and going even further in our traditional approach of honoring multiple works.

They will continue to rely on recommendations from the public, celebrate multiple works, and continue their Fellowship program.

Changes include plans to: “Focus less on honoring one specific work, and more on curating a short list of works,” “Focus less on presenting an award, and more on having a conversation around recent works,” and “Focus less on having a celebration at one or two conventions, and more on creating accessible ways for the public to engage with the jury’s thoughts.” They’re also “reducing the amount of unpaid labor and burnout involved.”

Going forward, the jury will create an honor list of “about three to six works,” without a single winner chosen. They will have the option to release a long list of additional works “the jurors want to call attention to.” There will be a recorded discussion among the jurors about the selected works and related topics, plus a distilled text summary of that discussion.

The new process begins with works published in 2024. Eugene Fischer is the chair of the jury, and there is now a paid coordinator to assist with the process. The jury will accept recommendations of works published in 2024 through mid-November, and expect to announced the honor list in March 2025, and release a discussion video and summary in May 2025.

For more, see their announcement.