Winners for the 2019 Geffen Awards for best science fiction and fantasy published in Hebrew have been announced by the Israeli Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Best Translated Science Fiction Book
Best Translated Fantasy Book
Stephen & Tabitha King have received city council approval to rezone their Bangor ME home as a non-profit, with plans to turn it into a museum. Stephen King’s personal archives, previously housed at the University of Maine, will be moved to the home and made available to scholars and other visitors by appointment. A house next door, also owned by the Kings, will accommodate up to five writers-in-residence at a ...Read More
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The Horror Writers Association (HWA) has announced Mick Garris as media guest of honor for StokerCon UK, to be held April 16-19, 2020 at the Royal and Grand Hotels in Scarborough, UK. He joins previously announced guests Kim Newman, Grady Hendrix, and Gillian Redfearn, with A.K. Benedict as mistress of ceremonies and Robert Lloyd-Parry as special guest.
For more <stokercon-uk.com/guests.htm>.
While you are here, please take a moment to ...Read More
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The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (Vintage, Chatto & Windus) and Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo (Hamish Hamilton) were announced as joint winners of the 2019 Booker Prize during a ceremony held October 14, 2019 at the Guildhall in London, UK.
The Booker rules forbid splitting the prize, but chair of judges Peter Florence said, “We were told quite firmly that the rules state we can only have one winner. ...Read More
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The winners for the 2018 Sidewise Awards for Alternate History have been announced.
Long Form
Short Form
In
Literary critic Harold Bloom, 89, died October 14, 2019 in a New Haven CT hospital. Bloom was one of the most famous and controversial critics in America, writing and editing bestselling, influential volumes like The Anxiety of Influence (1973), Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998), The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (1994), and How to Read and Why (2000). In all he wrote more than ...Read More
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Winners for the 2019 Imadjinn Awards were announced during Imaginarium 2019, held October 11-13, 2019 at the Ramada Plaza Hotel and Conference Center in Louisville KY. Categories of genre interest include:
Best Science Fiction Novel
Best Fantasy Novel
The James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award has been renamed the Otherwise Award, announced by members of the Tiptree Motherboard on October 13, 2019. In a statement, they said:
The Tiptree Award was named as a joyful joke, 28 years ago.
James Tiptree, Jr/Alice Sheldon is a complicated figure who has grown more so as participants in the sff world have gained more diverse perspectives and more acute critical analyses. In ...Read More
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Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, the long-awaited sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, was under a worldwide embargo until September 10, 2019. Amazon shipped “a small number” of copies a week early to customers who’d pre-ordered. A Penguin Random House spokesperson said the books “were distributed early due to a retailer error which has not been rectified. We appreciate that readers and booksellers have been waiting patiently… in order to ...Read More
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The American Library Association launched a petition to protest Macmillan’s “recent efforts to limit library access to ebooks.” The petition reads, in part,
Beginning November 1, 2019, Macmillan Publishers will allow libraries to purchase only one copy of each new eBook title for the first eight weeks after a book’s release.
Readers cannot stay silent! We need your help!
This embargo would limit libraries’ ability to provide access to information ...Read More
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Dazzling by Chikọdili Emelumadu has won the inaugural Curtis Brown First Novel Prize. Emelumadu will receive £3,000 and an offer of representation from the Curtis Brown agency. The Wickedry of Mrs Wood by Lucy Barker was runner-up, and Barker will also receive an offer of representation; Monkeyflower by Debra Hills won a special commendation prize, earning Hills “a place on a three-month novel-writing course.” Curtis Brown Creative received “more than ...Read More
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Polish author Olga Tokarczuk has won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.” Her genre work includes Flights (Riverhead) and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (Riverhead).
Austrian author Peter Handke was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature “for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the ...Read More
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Twelfth Planet Press announced two winners of the 2018 D Franklin Defying Doomsday Award, given in recognition of “work in disability advocacy in SFF literature”: R.B. Lemberg for blog post “Sergeant Bothari and Disability Representation in the Early Vorkosiverse” (Strange Horizons 7/16/18) and Ace Ratcliff for blog post “Staircases In Space: Why Are Places In Science Fiction Not Wheelchair-Accessible?” (io9 7/31/18).
The prize is judged by Tsana Dolichva, Holly Kench, ...Read More
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Audible was recently sued by seven publishers who allege that the audiobook publisher’s new “Captions” feature, which scrolls machine-generated text along with audio narration, violates their copyrights. Audible agreed not to enable the feature “for all audiobooks for which Publishers own, or are the exclusive licensee of, the text or audiobook rights” until the court rules on the plaintiff’s request for a preliminary injunction.
Audible also notified its self-published authors ...Read More
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LaShawn M. Wanak is the new editor of GigaNotoSaurus, taking over from Elora Gatts. As previously announced, Gatts had assumed the role in December of 2018.
Wanak is a book reviewer for Lightspeed and served as an associate editor at PodCastle from 2013 to 2015. She says,
I know it’s been a while since GigaNotoSaurus has published a new story. Therefore, I’ll be closing submissions this Friday, August 9, 2019, ...Read More
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Finalists for the National Book Awards (NBA) have been announced, including titles of genre interest.
Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James (Riverhead) is a finalist in the Fiction category. The Young People’s Literature category includes Pet by Akwaeke Emezi (Make Me A World) and Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All by Laura Ruby (Balzer & Bray). The Translated Literature category includes The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, translated by ...Read More
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The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS) has selected Barbara Hambly as this year’s recipient of the Forry Award for lifetime achievement in the SF field. The award, named for Forrest J Ackerman and given annually since 1966, will be presented by LASFS president Marty Cantor at Loscon 46, to be held November 29 – December 1, 2019 at the LAX Marriott Hotel in Los Angeles CA.
[via File 770] ...Read More
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The winners for the 2019 Sunburst Awards for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic have been announced:
Adult Fiction
Young Adult Fiction
The Tiptree Motherboard, the seven-member committee in charge of the James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award for books “encouraging the exploration and expansion of gender,” has announced plans to change the name of the award in the future. In a post titled “Alice Sheldon and the name of the Tiptree Award” updated on September 11, 2019, they wrote
We said we would be listening and we have. We’ve read your thoughtful ...Read More
Read moreAuthor J.A. Pitts, 54, died October 3, 2019 in Bellevue WA. He is best known for the Sarah Beauhall urban fantasy series: Black Blade Blues (2010), Gaylactic Spectrum Award winner Honeyed Worlds (2011), Forged in Fire (2012), and Night Terrors (2016). He also published short fiction (including a collaboration with Ken Scholes), starting around 2006, sometimes as John A. Pitts. Some of his short work was collected in Bravado’s House ...Read More
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Dublin 2019, the 77th World Science Fiction Convention, took place August 15-19, 2019 at the Convention Centre Dublin in Ireland. Guests of honour were Diane Duane, Ginjer Buchanan, and Ian McDonald; other guests of honour were astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell, fans Bill & Mary Burns, and game creator Steve Jackson. There were 6,024 attending memberships purchased, with 5,814 warm bodies, compared to San Jose’s 5,440 attending members and Helsinki’s 5,949. ...Read More
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Shortlists for the 2019 Books Are My Bag (BAMB) Readers Awards have been announced, including some titles and authors of genre interest in the following categories:
Novel
Poetry
Jesmyn Ward will give this year’s annual Eudora Welty Lecture, celebrating “creative origins in the spirit of Welty’s treasured One Writer’s Beginnings.” The event is sponsored by the Eudora Welty Foundation and will be held October 16, 2019 at the Folger Theatre in Washington DC.
For more information, see the Folger website.
While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. ...Read More
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The 2020 Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award contest is open until February 1, 2020. Co-sponsored by Baen Books and the National Space Society, the contest focuses on stories of near-future space exploration.
The grand prize includes publication on the Baen website at “normal paying rates for professional story submittals,” an engraved award, an assortment of Baen books, free admission to the 2020 International Space Development Conference, a year’s membership ...Read More
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The American Library Association (ALA) has announced the longlist for the 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence for “the best fiction and nonfiction books for adult readers published in the U.S. in the previous year,” including the following titles and authors of genre interest:
Fiction
In January 2019, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America announced that their minimum payment rate for professional short fiction markets (“the SFWA pro rate”) would increase to eight cents per word on September 1, 2019, and that rate has now gone into effect. Only stories sold at 8¢/word or above can qualify authors for membership in SFWA, though writers applying for membership qualify on the basis of the ...Read More
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The Science Fiction Poetry Association has announced the 2019 Dwarf Stars and Elgin Awards winners.
The Dwarf Stars Award is given by the SFPA to recognize the best speculative poem of one to ten lines published in the previous year. Winners will have their work reprinted in the 2019 Dwarf Stars Anthology, edited by John C. Mannone.
Debut collection We Show What We Have Learned by Clare Beams (Lookout) won the Bard Fiction Prize. The $30,000 annual prize is awarded by Bard College “to a promising emerging writer who is an American citizen aged 39 years or younger at the time of application.” Beams also receives a one-semester residency at the college.
Applications for next year’s prize are open now through June 15, 2020. For more information, ...Read More
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CBS and Viacom are merging, becoming one company again after their separation in 2006. As a result, their publishing division Simon & Schuster will report to Viacom CEO Robert Bakish (it previously reported to the head of CBS). S&S head Carolyn Reidy told her staff, “I always say that with change comes opportunity, and we will now be proudly associated with an even more formidable portfolio of brands and content. ...Read More
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Gollancz and author Ben Aaronovitch, in partnership with NaNoWriMo and the Good Literary Agency, have announced a writing prize “to support Black, Asian & ethnic minority writers in the UK in the genres of scifi, fantasy & horror.”
Submissions for short story or novel beginnings from 5,000 to 10,000 words will open October 1, 2019 and close January 31, 2020. Prizes will include £4,000, a critique, and a year-long mentoring ...Read More
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Gavin Grant & Kelly Link of Small Beer Press are taking over White Square Books in Easthampton MA, and will reopen the shop as Book Moon in early October 2019. The store will carry new and used books, with a specialty in Small Beer Press titles. Grant says, “Small Beer Press will continue to publish books — we have titles planned for the next 2-3 years and don’t anticipate much ...Read More
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The winner, finalists, and honorable mentions for the Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction have been announced:
Winner
Honorable Mention
Finalists
The Salam Award, “a short story award to promote science fiction and related genres of writing in Pakistan,” is an annual award open to original fiction of 10,000 words or fewer written ...Read More
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