The finalists for the 2019 World Fantasy Awards have been announced, including Lifetime Achievement recipients Hayao Miyazaki and Jack Zipes. The winners of the 2019 World Fantasy Awards will be announced at the World Fantasy Convention, October 31 – November 3, 2019 in Los Angeles, CA. This year’s theme is “Fantasy Noir,” which the World Fantasy Convention describes as blending “the setting, characters and plot structure of a Hardboiled Detective/Occult Detective mystery story with the more colorful elements of Fantasy and Science Fiction.”
The full list of finalists follows.
To be eligible, all nominated material must have been published in 2018 or have a 2018 cover date. Nominations came from two sources. Members of the current convention as well as the previous two were able to vote two nominations onto the final ballot. The remaining nominations came from the panel of judges. For this year’s awards, the judges were Nancy Holder, Kathleen Jennings, Stephen Graham Jones, Garry Douglas Kilworth, and Tod McCoy.
NOVEL
- In the Night Wood by Dale Bailey (John Joseph Adams/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
- The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley (MCD/Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang (Harper Voyager)
- Witchmark by C. L. Polk (Tor.com)
- Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse (Saga Press)
NOVELLA
- The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander (Tor.com)
- The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark (Tor.com)
- The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard (Subterranean Press)
- “The Privilege of the Happy Ending” by Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld, Aug. 2018)
- Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com)
SHORT FICTION
- “The Ten Things She Said While Dying: An Annotation” by Adam-Troy Castro (Nightmare Magazine, July 2019)
- “A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies” by Alix E. Harrow (Apex Magazine, February 2018)
- “Ten Deals with the Indigo Snake” by Mel Kassel (Lightspeed, October 2018)
- “The Court Magician” by Sarah Pinsker (Lightspeed, January 2018)
- “Like a River Loves the Sky” by Emma Törzs (Uncanny Magazine, March-April 2018)
ANTHOLOGY
- Sword and Sonnet, edited by Aidan Doyle, Rachael K. Jones, and E. Catherine Tobler (Ate Bit Bear)
- The Book of Magic, edited by Gardner Dozois (Bantam Books US/HarperVoyager UK)
- Best New Horror #28, edited by Stephen Jones (Drugstore Indian Press UK)
- Robots vs. Fairies, edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe (Saga Press)
- Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction, edited by Irene Gallo (Tor.com)
COLLECTION
- The Tangled Lands, by Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias S. Buckell (Saga Press/Head of Zeus UK)
- Still So Strange, by Amanda Downum (ChiZine Publications)
- An Agent of Utopia: New & Selected Stories, by Andy Duncan (Small Beer Press)
- How Long ’til Black Future Month? by N. K. Jemisin (Orbit)
- Phantom Limbs, by Margo Lanagan (PS Publishing)
ARTIST
- Rovina Cai
- Galen Dara
- Jeffrey Alan Love
- Shaun Tan
- Charles Vess
SPECIAL AWARD – PROFESSIONAL
- C. C. Finlay, for F&SF editing
- Irene Gallo, for Art Direction at Tor Books and Tor.com
- Huw Lewis-Jones for The Writer’s Map: An Atlas of Imaginary Lands (University of Chicago Press)
- Catherine McIlwaine for Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth exhibition (The Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford)
- Julian Yap, Molly Barton, Jeff Li, and James Stuart for Serial Box
SPECIAL AWARD – NON-PROFESSIONAL
- Mike Allen, for Mythic Delirium
- Scott H. Andrews, for Beneath Ceaseless Skies: Literary Adventure Fantasy
- Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, for Uncanny Magazine
- E. Catherine Tobler, for Shimmer Magazine
- Terri Windling, for Myth & Moor
