Category Archives: awards

“Super Frenemies” Nominated for Aurora Award!

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I’m thrilled to announce (after an agonizing two week embargo!) that my story “Super Frenemies” is nominated for this year’s Aurora Award in the Best English Short Fiction category. This is my second Aurora Award nomination: my story “Saturn in G Minor” was nominated in 2008.

AuroraWinner+NomineeLogos_2"“Super Frenemies” looks at a group of children who develop super powers as the result of a pandemic, and how schoolyard politics and power dynamics would play out if suddenly the bullied kids had the (super)power over the bully who tormented them for years. It was originally published in Caped: An Anthology of Superhero Tales (Local Hero Press, 2015).

I really love this story, and I’m so pleased that others did, too, and saw fit to nominate it for an Aurora. It was partly inspired by an idea from Harry Connolly, and partly from my three-year-old son’s growing love of superheroes. Though I’d been reading comics my whole life, it wasn’t until he started wanting to watch Superman and Batman cartoons that I truly realized how important violence is to superheroes, even the good guys…

The full list of the 2016 nominees can be found here. Congratulations to all the nominees! Looks like a fantastic ballot again this year.

A reading package of the nominated works (including “Super Frenemies”) will be available shortly, and voting will begin June 15. More details closer to those dates. The Aurora Awards will be presented during When Words Collide / Canvention 36 on the weekend of August 12-14, 2016 in Calgary.

– S.

“Saturn in G Minor” Wins 2015 Ictineu Award

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I’m very pleased to announce that my story “Saturn in G Minor” has won a 2015 Ictineu Award! What a great way to start the new year.

These awards are given to the best science fiction, fantasy and horror works of fiction published in Catalan during the previous year. “Saturn in G Minor” won for best short fiction translated into Catalan. It appeared in the Catalan-language magazine Catarsi (#15) in November 2014.

catarsi-cover

My thanks to the editors of Catarsi for taking the story for translation, and special thanks to Clara Boia, the story’s translator–who obviously did a great job!

I confess this comes as a complete shock, as I didn’t know I was even eligible for an award! I gather the award is judged 50% by popular vote and 50% by jury; a really interesting way to award such a prize, and it’s nice to know the story can appeal to both sorts of audiences.

I can’t seem to find a list of all the past winners in English, but I found this one in Catalan. Happily, Google will translate for you! Looks like George RR Martin, Haruki Murakami, Orson Scott Card, Mike Resnick, and Cat Rambo have all won this award, so I figure that’s pretty great company to be in!

An award is on its way in the mail, I’m told. I’ll post photos of it when it arrives.

– S.