The Speculative Literature Foundation (SLF) has announced that artist Michelle Feng is the winner of their 2022 Illustration of the Year.

“Feng’s winning piece will be featured throughout 2022 on the Speculative Literature Foundation’s website and on social media. In addition, it may be featured in limited edition SLF-related marketing materials, such as bookmarks and pins.”

Feng wanted to “combine visual elements from traditional village living structures with futuristic elements ...Read More

The Mystery Writers of America (MWA) announced several awards.

Laurie R. King has been named Grand Master, which “represents the pinnacle of achievement in mystery writing and was established to acknowledge important contributions to this genre, as well as for a body of work that is both significant and of consistent high quality.”

Reviewer Lesa Holstine won the 2022 Raven Award, which “recognizes outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside ...Read More

The 2022 Philip K. Dick Award finalists have been announced:

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has announced the 2022 Creative Writing Fellows, winners of the Literature Fellowships in Creative Writing which “provides $25,000 grants to published creative writers that enable the recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career advancement.”

This year’s recipients of genre interest include:

• Steve Almond
• Yohanca Delgado
• Calvin Gimpelevich
• Alexis Pauline Gumbs
• Aubrey Hirsch
• Nalo Hopkinson
• Violet Kupersmith
• Peyton Marshall

The Heinlein Scholarships are open for applications. There are four $4,000 scholarships awarded to “undergraduate students of accredited 4-year colleges and universities.”

The Virginia Heinlein Memorial Scholarship is “dedicated to a female candidate majoring in engineering, math, or biological or physical sciences.” The other three awards, The Robert A. Heinlein, Dr. Yoji Kondo, and Dr. Jerry Pournelle scholarships, “may be awarded to a candidate of any gender.”

The deadline for ...Read More

The Science Fiction Foundation has announced Kathryn Heffner’s “More Work for Mimeo-Mothers: Femme-Fans’ Labour in Post-War Fan Cultures” as the winner of the 2022 Peter Nicholls Essay Prize. The prize was inaugurated in 2001, and is “awarded to the best submission by a postgraduate or non-tenured researcher. (The latter within five years of their PhD.) The essays can be on any area of science fiction studies.”

For more information about ...Read More

Finalists for the 2021 Children’s and Young Adults Bloggers’ Literary Awards (Cybils) have been announced. Books of genre interest follow.

The Washington Science Fiction Association is now accepting nominations of works “published for the first time in the English language” in 2021 for its Small Press Award, given annually to an outstanding story of “imaginative literature” (17,500 words or fewer) published in the small press. The deadline for nominations is March 31, 2022.

Authors and small-press publishers are among those eligible to nominate, and need not be members of WSFA. ...Read More

Tulsa City-County Library’s African-American Resource Center and the Tulsa Library Trust have named Walter Mosley as the winner of the 2022 Sankofa Freedom Award.

The Sankofa Freedom Award is given to “a nationally acclaimed individual who has dedicated his or her life to educating and improving the greater African-American community.” It includes a $10,000 prize and an engraved medallion. The award will be presented in a ceremony on February 12, ...Read More

The 18 winning titles for the PEN Translates awards have been announced, including the following titles of genre interest:

• House Arrest, Hasan Alizadeh, translated by Kayvan Tahmasebian and Rebecca Ruth Gould (Arc Publications)
• The Gospel According to the New World by Maryse Condé, translated by Richard Philcox (World Editions)
• Fairy Tales Are For Everyone, translated by Anna Bentley (HarperCollins)

With support from Arts Council England, the award helps ...Read More

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) has announced Colin Coyle as the winner of the 2021 Kevin O’Donnell, Jr. Service to SFWA Award. The award is presented to “a volunteer of SFWA who best exemplifies the ideal of service to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.”

SFWA President Jeffe Kennedy remarks:

Summarizing all the ways that Colin has served SFWA feels almost impossible. He’s been ...Read More

The winners for the 2019 and 2020 Sidewise Awards for Alternate History were announced December 18, 2021 at Discon III in Washington DC.

2020 Long Form

Winners for the Hugo Awards, the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, and the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book were announced by DisCon III, the 79th World Science Fiction Convention on December 18, 2021 in Washington D.C, USA.

Best Novel

The African Speculative Fiction Society (ASFS) has announced the 2021 Nommo Awards winners at DisCon III. The awards were given to works “by Africans as defined by the ASFS and Nommo Awards Guidelines.”

PEN America has announced their 2022 Longlist. The awards “will confer over $350,000 to writers and translators. Spanning fiction, nonfiction, poetry, biography, essay, science writing, translation, and more, these Longlisted books are dynamic, diverse, and thought-provoking examples of literary excellence.” There are 11 awards, each announcing their long lists.

Kedrick Brown is the winner of the inaugural Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices, for stories between 1,000-5,000 words by “any writer over 18 years of age who customarily identifies as Black, has not published nor is under contract for a book, and has three or less paid fiction publications.” Finalists are Yazeed Dezele, Erika Hardison, and Jermaine Martin.

The announcement was made via Zoom during the Annual City Tech ...Read More

Winners of the 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards for the “best books of 2021,” as chosen by users of the site, have been announced. There are several winners of genre interest.

The Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS) has named the finalists for the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for Best Classic Fiction.

Four titles were also considered: The Winter of the World by Poul Anderson (Doubleday), “It’s a Good ...Read More

The BSFA (British Science Fiction Association) longlist nominations are open for works published in 2021. The process includes an “informal crowdsourced suggestion sheet” which is open to anyone, and a nomination form which is open exclusively to BSFA members.

For more information, see the BSFA website.

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 ...Read More

Japanese science fiction website VirtualGorillaPlus (VG+) has announced the winners of its 2021 Kaguya Sci-Fi Contest, judged by Terrie Hashimoto, Kanata Inoue, Katsuya Okumura, and Kaoru Sakasak:

Winners were chosen from 381 entries on the theme of “Colors of the Future.” The grand prize story was translated into ...Read More

AudioFile has announced its list of the best science fiction & fantasy audiobooks for 2021:

Shortlists for the 2021 Costa Book Awards, for books “by writers resident in the UK and Ireland,” have been announced. The Stranding by Kate Sawyer (Coronet) is on the four-title Costa First Novel Award shortlist. The High House by Jessie Greengrass (Swift) made the Novel Award shortlist. Anna Goodall’s Maggie Blue and the Dark World (Guppy) and Ross Montgomery’s The Midnight Guardians (Walker) are both finalists in the Children’s Book ...Read More

Dream Foundry, a “non-profit dedicated to bolstering the careers of nascent professionals working with the speculative arts,” has announced the finalists for its 2021 contests.

Writing Contest

The 2022 Joyce Carol Oates Prize has announced its 37-title longlist. The award honors “mid-career authors in fiction,” and the winner receives a $50,000 prize, given by the New Literary Project. Authors of genre interest, along with their most recent titles, include:

The winners of the 2021 Ditmar Awards for Australian SF were announced November 20, 2021 in an online ceremony.

The Asociación Española de Fantasía, Ciencia Ficción y Terror (AEFCFT) has announced the Winners for the 2021 Ignotus Awards (the Spanish equivalent of the Hugo Awards).