The World Fantasy Convention has announced its finalists for this year’s World Fantasy Award. The awards are handed out annually to the best work of fantasy fiction published in the prior year.
This year’s awards will be handed out during a virtual ceremony as this year’s in-person WFC has been canceled due to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic.
The theme for this year’s convention is “Fairyland was Nothing Like This”, and features Stephen Gallagher, Anne Groell, David Cherry, C.J. Cherryh, Cindy Pon, and Stephen Graham Jones as guests of honor.
The judges for this year’s finalists are Gwenda Bond, Galen Dara, Michael Kelly, Victor LaValle, and Adam Roberts. The winners of the award will be announced during the virtual convention, which will be held between October 29th and November 1st.
Here’s the full list of nominees:
NOVEL
- Queen of the Conquered, by Kacen Callender (Orbit)
- The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E. Harrow (Redhook Books/Orbit UK)
- The Raven Tower, by Ann Leckie (Orbit)
- Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com)
- The Memory Police, by Yoko Ogawa (trans.Stephen Snyder) (Pantheon/Harvill Secker)
NOVELLA
- “The Butcher’s Table,” by Nathan Ballingrud (Wounds: Six Stories From the Border of Hell)
- Desdemona and the Deep, by C.S.E. Cooney (Tor.com)
- In an Absent Dream, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com)
- The Deep, by Rivers Solomon with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes (Saga
Press/Hodder & Stoughton UK) - Silver in the Wood, by Emily Tesh (Tor.com)
SHORT FICTION
- “For He Can Creep,” by Siobhan Carroll (Tor.com, July 10, 2019)
- “Read After Burning,” by Maria Dahvana Headley, (A People’s Future of the United States)
- “The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye,” by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny Magazine, July-Aug. 2019)
- “Blood is Another Word For Hunger,” by Rivers Solomon (Tor.com, July 24, 2019)
- “Postlude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” by Jerome Stueart (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction,
Mar./Apr. 2019) - “Everyone Knows That They‘re Dead. Do You?,” by Genevieve Valentine (The Outcast Hours)
ANTHOLOGY
- Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories, edited by Ellen Datlow (Saga Press)
- The Outcast Hours, edited by Mahvesh Murad & Jared Shurin (Solaris)
- The Mythic Dream, edited by Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe (Saga Press)
- New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color, edited by Nisi Shawl (Solaris)
- The Big Book of Classic Fantasy, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (Vintage Books)
COLLECTION
- Homesick: Stories, by Nino Cipri (Dzanc Books)
- Song For the Unraveling of the World: Stories, by Brian Evenson (Coffee House Press)
- Unforeseen, by Molly Gloss (Saga Press)
- A Lush and Seething Hell: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror, by John Hornor Jacobs (Harper Voyager)
- Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea: Stories by Sarah Pinsker (Small Beer Press)
ARTIST
- Tommy Arnold
- Galen Dara
- Julie Dillon
- Wendy Froud
- Kathleen Jennings
SPECIAL AWARD – PROFESSIONAL
- C. C. Finlay, for F&SF editing
- Leslie Klinger, for The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft: Beyond Arkham (Liveright)
- Ellen Oh, for We Need Diverse Books
- Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, for The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games (New York University Press)
- Sheree Renée Thomas, for contributions to the genre
SPECIAL AWARD – NON-PROFESSIONAL
- Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, Laura E. Goodin and Esko Suoranta, for Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science
Fiction and Fantasy Research - Michael Kelly, for Undertow Publications and The Year’s Best Weird Fiction
- Jonathan Strahan & Gary K. Wolfe, for the Coode Street Podcast
- Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, for Uncanny Magazine
- Terri Windling, for Myth & Moor
