The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) has announced the addition of Poetry and Comics categories to the Nebula Awards.

Award eligibility begins in January 2025, and the first awards for the new categories will be presented at the 2026 Nebula Awards Ceremony.

In other news, SFWA is hiring for a full time position of Office Assistant, and a contract position of Nebula Awards Project Manager. They’re also looking ...Read More

Winners for the National Book Awards (NBA) have been announced.

The winner in the fiction category is James by Percival Everett (Doubleday), who sometimes writes SF. (See his entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.)

The American Library Association (ALA) has announced the shortlists for the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence for “the best fiction and nonfiction books for adult readers published in the U.S. in the previous year” with three fiction and three non-fiction titles.

The fiction shortlist includes James by occasional SF writer Percival Everett (Knopf). The non-fiction list includes Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of ...Read More

James by Percival Everett (Knopf) is the winner of the Barnes and Noble Book of the Year 2024, and fantasy novel Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell (Random House Children’s Books) is the winner for Children’s Book of the Year.

Shortlisted titles are nominated by Barnes and Noble booksellers. The winner was announced on November 15, 2024.

For more, see the Barnes and Noble website.

While you are here, please take ...Read More

Time magazine has released a list of 100 Must-Read Books of 2024. Works of genre interest include:

BizarroCon has announced the winners for the 2024 Wonderland Book Awards for Excellence in Bizarro Fiction.

Best Novel

• WINNER: Edenville, Sam Rebelein (William Morrow)

• The Last Night to Kill Nazis, David Agranoff (CLASH)
• Elogona, Samantha Kolesnik (WeirdPunk )
• Glass Children, Carlton Mellick III (Eraserhead)
• Soft Targets, Carson Winter (Tenebrous)

Best Collection

• WINNER: All I Want is to Take Shrooms and Listen to the Color of

Paul Ryan O’Connor is the winner of the Speculative Literature Foundation’s (SLF) 2024 Older Writers Grant, which gives $1,000 to writers “fifty years of age or older at the time of grant application, and is intended to assist such writers who are just starting to work at a professional level.”

O’Connor was awarded the grant for his unpublished novel Gumshoe Frankenstein.

Applications for the Older Writers Grant are considered ...Read More

The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS) has selected Hayao Miyazaki as this year’s recipient of the Forry Award for lifetime achievement in the SF field. Miyazaki is the founder of Studio Ghibli and has won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for Spirited Away (2001) and The Boy and the Heron (2023), and has received nominations for Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) and The Wind Rises (2013).

The award, ...Read More

The shortlist for the inaugural PEN Heaney prize in poetry has been announced. The list included two works with speculative elements:

• Hyena! by Fran Lock (Poetry Bus Press)
• A Tower Built Downwards by Yang Lian, trans. Brian Holton (Bloodaxe Books)

A collaboration between English PEN, PEN Ireland/PEN na hÉireann, and the Estate of Seamus Heaney, the award honors a single book of poetry published in the United Kingdom or Ireland ...Read More

The Ignyte Awards Committee has announced the winners of the 2024 Ignyte Awards, which “seek to celebrate the vibrancy and diversity of the current and future landscapes of science fiction, fantasy, and horror by recognizing incredible feats in storytelling and outstanding efforts toward inclusivity of the genre.”

Les Sentiers de recouvrance by Émilie Querbalec (Albin Michel Imaginaire) won the 2024 Prix Julia Verlanger.

The award is presented by the Foundation de France, and is awarded to “a science fiction work of adventure, fantasy or fantastique.” The award was created by Jean-Pierre Verlanger in memory of his wife, who wrote under the pseudonym Gilles Thomas.

The award was announced on November 3, 2024, during the Nantes Utopiales Festival. ...Read More

The six-title shortlist for the 2024 Booker Prize has been announced, with works of genre interest including James by Percival Everett (Mantle) and Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape)

The 13 finalists for the Barnes and Noble Book of the Year 2024 have been announced, and include historical novel The Women by Kristin Hannah (St. Martin’s), who sometimes writes fantasy; Huckleberry Finn reimagining James by Percival Everett (Knopf), who also writes SF; and fantasy novel Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell (Random House Children’s Books).

Shortlisted titles are nominated by Barnes and Noble booksellers. The winner will be announced on ...Read More

The Saltire Society announced the 2024 Scotland’s National Book Award shortlist during a livestreamed event in Edinburgh’s Old Town on October 30, 2024. Titles of genre interest follow.

Fiction Book of the Year

Actor and literacy advocate LeVar Burton was one of 19 recipients of the National Humanities Medals. The 2022 and 2023 medals were presented by President Biden on Monday, October 21, 2024, in a private ceremony at the White House.

The recipients include writers, historians, educators, and filmmakers. Presentation of the medals was followed by a reception “with remarks by President Biden, First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, National Endowment for the ...Read More

Winners for the 2024 Geffen Awards for best science fiction and fantasy published in Hebrew were announced by the Israeli Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy at Icon, held October 20-22, 2024 in Tel Aviv Israel.

Best Translated Fantasy Book

Light Bringer Project and Omega Sci-Fi have announced that the Roswell and New Suns Climate Fiction awards are on indefinite hiatus.

Omega Sci-Fi is celebrating their 10th anniversary this year, and will continue their two youth competitions, The Tomorrow Prize and The Green Feather Award. Submissions for both awards are open through February 14, 2025.

This year’s competition will come to a close during the Celebrity Readings and Honors event ...Read More

Finalists for the 2023 Kitschies, awarded for “the year’s most progressive, intelligent and entertaining fiction that contains elements of the speculative or fantastic,” have been announced.

The directors of the award have announced that this, their 15th year, will “be the final year of the prize, citing the increased time-commitment required both of the prize’s administrators and its judges. They note, however, that this year’s diverse lists make the perfect ...Read More

It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over by Anne de Marcken (New Directions) is the winner of the third Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, which includes a $25,000 cash prize, given “to a writer for a single work of imaginative fiction” and presented by the Ursula K. Le Guin Literary Trust.

The judges called the book

a work of quietly detonative imagination. Written in the guise of a ...Read More

The winner for the Endeavour Award was announced at OryCon 44, held October 18-20, 2024, in Portland OR.

The British Fantasy Society (BFS) has announced the winners of the 2024 British Fantasy Awards.