Tor, Tor.com Publishing, and Den of Geek have announced TorCon, a virtual convention to be held June 11-17, 2020. TorCon will feature panels with more than 20 authors, including Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman, Christopher Paolini, and Brandon Sanderson.
TorCon is free, but registration is required to watch each panel. For registration links and more information, see the full announcement.
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Nominees for the 2020 CrimeFest Awards have been announced, including several authors and titles of genre interest.
Audible Sounds of Crime Award
H.R.F. Keating Award
Last Laugh Award
Best Crime Novel for Young Adults
PulpFest has announced the nominees for the 2020 Munsey Award, given “to an individual or institution that has bettered the pulp community.” Nominees are selected by the general pulp community, with the winner selected by a vote of past Lamont, Munsey, and Rusty Awards winners. The nominees are:
The World Fantasy Convention (WFC) has announced that this year’s WFC, scheduled for October 29 – November 1, 2020 in Salt Lake City, will be held as an entirely virtual event.
Plans have already begun to transition many of the traditional physical experiences you’ve come to expect from World Fantasy Convention. We’ll be ironing out the details in the coming months, but we hope to provide a variety of online ...Read More
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Winners for the 2020 Colorado Book Awards include the following titles of genre interest.
Science Fiction/Fantasy
Anthology/Collection
The New Zealand Cabinet Office published the 2020 Queen’s Birthday Honours list on June 1, 2020.
Writer Elizabeth Knox was appointed Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature, and filmmaker Taika Waititi was appointed Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to film.
For more information, see the complete list.
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The winners for the 2020 Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, honoring the best SF/F work published in France in 2019, have been announced:
French Novel
Foreign Novel
The Lambda Literary Foundation has announced the winners of the 32nd Annual Lambda Literary Awards (the “Lammys”), celebrating “the best lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender books.” Titles of genre interest follow.
LGBTQ SF/F/Horror
Numerous upcoming conventions and literary events have been postponed or canceled as part of efforts to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus that causes respiratory illness COVID-19. The situation remains in flux as the full extent of the pandemic remains to be seen. We will update this story and our convention listing with further information about cancellations and postponements as it becomes available.
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) announced the winners of the 2019 Nebula Awards at the 55th Annual Nebula Banquet on Saturday, May 30, 2020 at a virtual ceremony.
Novel
Uncle Hugo’s, the oldest independent science fiction and fantasy bookstore in the US founded in 1974, burned down during the recent riots protesting police brutality and racism in the wake of the shocking death of George Floyd during a police arrest in Minneapolis. As of May 30, at least 250 businesses across the Twin Cities had been damaged or destroyed. Some, including Uncle Hugo’s, were destroyed completely by fire or ...Read More
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The Locus Science Fiction Foundation has announced the top ten finalists in each category of the 2020 Locus Awards.
Winners will be announced June 27, 2020 at the virtual Locus Awards Weekend; Connie Willis will MC the awards ceremony. Additional weekend events include planned author readings and panels with leading authors. Supporting/virtual memberships are available and come with a Locus t-shirt.
SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL
SF Scholar Marshall B. Tymn, 82, died May 24, 2020 of pneumonia. Tymn was an essential figure in the field in the ’70s and ’80s, and did much to further the study of SF in academia. He won a Pilgrim Award for lifetime contributions from the Science Fiction Research Association in 1990, and the Robert A. Collins Service Award from the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts in ...Read More
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Penguin Classics plans to “celebrate science fiction as the essential genre of modern times” with a new series of science fiction classics. Titles launching in August include Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Flatland by Edwin Abbott, and Ten Thousand Light-years from Home by James Tiptree, Jr. Penguin also plans to publish well-known international science fiction translated into English, such as The Hair Carpet Weavers by Andreas Eschbach (Doryl Jensen, translator) ...Read More
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Jonathan Karp has been named president and CEO of Simon & Schuster, taking over after former president Carolyn Reidy died unexpectedly of a heart attack on May 12. He was promoted from president of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing, where he oversaw key books like What Happened by Hillary Clinton, Fear by Bob Woodward, and Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. He plans to “continue to build on the strong foundation ...Read More
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The Fire Starters by Jan Carson (Black Swan Ireland) is on the shortlist for the €20,000 Novel of the Year category in the inaugural Dalkey Literary Awards, given by the Dalkey Book Festival. There are also finalists in the €10,000 Emerging Writer category. Winners will be announced June 20, 2020 at a digital awards ceremony.
For more information, including the complete shortlists, see the Dalkey Literary Awards website.
While you ...Read More
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The Lambda Literary Board of Trustees has awarded the 2020 Visionary Award to playwright and author Jane Wagner. The Visionary Award “honors those who, through their achievements and passionate commitment, have contributed to the LGBTQ literary community in significant and tangible ways.” Wagner’s work of genre interest includes The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1986).
The members of the 2020 Lambda Literary Board of Trustees are ...Read More
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Finalists for the 2019 Australian Shadows Awards have been announced. The award is given by the Australian Horror Writers Association (AHWA) for “the finest in horror and dark fiction published by an Australasian within the calendar year.”
Best Novel
Best Short Fiction
George R.R. Martin (and two other investors) have purchased 18 miles of abandoned railway connecting the historic depot in Lamy NM with Santa Fe. He plans to restore the line as a tourist attraction and film shooting venue by 2022.
For more, see Martin’s announcement.
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J.K. Rowling will publish a new children’s book, The Ickabog, with free chapters appearing online every weekday in 34 installments from May 26 – July 10, 2020.
The complete version will be published in November 2020 by Scholastic in the US and Little, Brown in the UK, with all royalties being donated to “help groups who’ve been particularly impacted by the pandemic.”
Rowling is holding an illustration competition for ...Read More
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Numerous authors, editors, and publishers are offering free material for readers stuck in isolation, including several of genre interest.
J.K. Rowling, Bloomsbury, Audible, Overdrive, Pottermore, and Scholastic launched the “Harry Potter at Home” initiative, making the ebook and audiobook of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone free, and issuing a general read-aloud license for teachers so they can read from the book on video. There are also special activities for ...Read More
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The Neukom Institute for Computational Science at Dartmouth College has awarded the $5,000 2020 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award for Playwriting to Drive by Deborah Yarchun.
A second-place prize, with a $750 honorarium, was awarded to Override by Elizabeth Keel.
The Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards program was established in 2017 as an open competition to honor and support creative works around speculative fiction. The playwriting award is offered to ...Read More
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The International Board on Books for Young People awarded the 2020 Hans Christian Anderson Award to author Jacqueline Woodson. Awarded biyearly, the Hans Christian Anderson Awards “recognize lifelong achievement and are given to an author and an illustrator whose complete works have made an important, lasting contribution to children’s literature.” Woodson’s work of genre interest includes Harbor Me (2018) and “The Other Half of Me” in Tomorrowland: Ten Stories about ...Read More
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Romance Writers of America is retiring its RITA Awards and introducing a new award called The Vivian. Named after RWA founder Vivian Stephens, the new award “recognizes excellence in romance writing and showcases author talent and creativity. We celebrate the power of the romance genre with its central message of hope–because happily ever afters are for everyone.” A task force will present a proposed format for the Vivian at the ...Read More
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The British Book Awards, or Nibbies, will hold a virtual awards ceremony on June 29, 2020. The original award ceremony, planned for May 18, 2020, was postponed due to disruption caused by the COVID-19 outbreak.
While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like to keep the ...Read More
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The shortlist for the 2020 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, given by The Orwell Foundation to novels and short story collections published in the UK which explore major political and social themes through a fictional lens, includes three titles of genre interest.
The judges
The shortlist for the 2020 Encore Award, given by the Royal Society of Literature to the best second novel of the year, includes one title of genre interest. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the award, each of the four shortlisted authors will receive a £500 prize.
The judges for 2020 are Edmund Gordon, Nikita Lalwani, and Eley Williams. The winner of ...Read More
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B. Sharise Moore won a $5,000 grant, one of several given to artists and writers around the world by the Sustainable Arts Foundation. Her debut novel, YA historical fantasy Dr. Marvellus Djinn’s Odd Scholars, is forthcoming from MVmedia.
For more information, including the list of finalists and recipients, see the Sustainable Arts Foundation website.
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Read moreLarissa Lai, author of The Tiger Flu (Arsenal Pulp), won the $5,000 Jim Duggins Mid-Career Novelist prize, for “LGBTQ-identified authors who have published multiple novels, built a strong reputation and following, and show promise to continue publishing high quality work for years to come.” Judges were Brian Leung and Shani Mootoo.
For more information, see the official announcement.
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John Joseph Adams will step down as editor of Nightmare magazine after issue #100 in January 2021, with with author and editor Wendy N. Wagner taking over. Adams will remain editor of Lightspeed and publisher of both magazines.
Adams said:
If you’re a diligent Nightmare reader, you’re already familiar with her editorial contributions: She was the guest editor for our Queers Destroy Horror! special issue back in 2015. But in ...Read More
Read moreChinese SF writer Ye Yonglie, 79, died May 15, 2020 in Shanghai. He published over 50 books, including SF, children’s books, mysteries, and popular science. He was often called the “Chinese Isaac Asimov” for his prolific output of fiction and non-fiction.
Ye Yonglie was born August 30, 1940 in Wenzhou, China. He began writing from a young age, with his first poem published at age 11, and attended Beijing University, ...Read More
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The Odyssey Writing Workshop has announced recipients of several of its scholarships available for students attending in 2020.
Scott Gray won the Miskatonic Scholarship, funded by George R.R. Martin and covering full tuition and housing for a promising new writer of Lovecraftian cosmic horror.
Vikram Ramakrishnan won the Walter & Kattie Metcalf Singing Spider Scholarship, funded by Pam Metcalf Harrington, covering full tuition for “a fantasy writer whose novel excerpt ...Read More
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