This morning, the British Fantasy Society released its shortlist for this year’s British Fantasy Awards, an annual prize awarded to the best works published in the UK in the last year.
The finalists are submitted by BFS members, and are then deliberated on by teams of jurors. This year’s awards will be announced during the society’s annual convention, FantasyCon, which will be held between September 24th and 26th at The Jury’s Inn Hotel in Burmingham.
Here’s the full short list:
Best Newcomer (The Sydney J. Bounds Award)
Jurors: Mohsin Siddiqui, Rhian Bowley, Shellie Horst, Tom Lloyd, Sammy Smith
- Tiffani Angus, for Threading the Labyrinth (Unsung Stories)
- Dan Coxon, for Green Fingers & Only the Broken Remain (Black Shuck Books)
- Sean Hogan, for Three Mothers, One Father (Black Shuck Books)
- Kathleen Jennings, for Flyaway (Tordotcom)
- Simon Jimenez, for The Vanished Birds (Titan)
- Rym Kechacha, for Dark River (Unsung Stories)
Best Film / Television Production
- Birds of Prey
- The Boys: What I Know (Season 2, episode 8)
- The Haunting of Bly Manor: The Romance of Certain Old Clothes (Season 1, episode 8)
- The Invisible Man
- The Lighthouse
- Saint Maud
Best Non-Fiction
Jurors: David G Wilson, Trudy Lynn, Susan Maxwell, Jessica Lévai, Kevin McVeigh
- The Full Lid, Alasdair Stuart, ed. Marguerite Kenner
- It’s the End of the World: But What Are We Really Afraid Of?, Adam Roberts (Elliot & Thompson)
- Notes from the Borderland, Lynda E. Rucker (in “Black Static”, TTA Press)
- Ties that Bind: Love in Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Francesca T Barbini (Luna Press Publishing)
- The Unstable Realities of Christopher Priest, Paul Kincaid (Gylphi Limited)
- Women Make Horror: Filmmaking, Feminism, Genre, ed. Alison Peirse (Rutgers University Press)
Best Artist
Jurors: Paul Yates, Kayden Weir, Alex Gushurst-Moore, Tatiana Dengo Villalobos
- Warwick Fraser-Coombe
- David Rix
- Vincent Sammy
- Daniele Serra
Best Comic / Graphic Novel
Jurors: Rebecca Gault, Alicia Fitton, Edward Partridge, Michele Howe, Hannah Barton
- The Daughters of Ys, Jo Rioux & M.T. Andersen (First Second)
- DIE Vol. 2: Split the Party, Kieron Gillen & Stephanie Hans (Image Comics)
- John Constantine: Hellblazer, Vol. 1: Marks of Woe, Simon Spurrier & Aaron Campbell (DC Comics)
- The Magic Fish, Trung Le Nguyen (Random House Graphic)
- Rivers of London: The Fey and the Furious, Ben Aaronovitch & Andrew Cartmell (Titan)
- Venus in the Blind Spot, Junji Ito (VIZ Media LLC)
Best Magazine / Periodical
Jurors: Samuel Poots, Vanessa Jae, Adri Joy, Devin Martin, Kate Coe
- Black Static
- The Dark
- FIYAH
- Ginger Nuts of Horror
- Shoreline of Infinity
- Strange Horizons
Best Independent Press
Jurors: Rowena Andrews, Anna Slevin, Ann Landmann, Cheyenne Heckermann, Amy Brennan
- Black Shuck Books
- Flame Tree Press
- Luna Press Publishing
- Unsung Stories
Best Audio
Jurors: Jackson Eflin, Kat Kourbeti, Tam Moules, Arden Fitzroy, Pete Sutton
- Breaking the Glass Slipper, Megan Leigh, Lucy Hounson & Charlotte Bond
- The Magnus Archives, Rusty Quill
- PodCastle, Escape Artists
- PseudoPod, Escape Artists
- The Sandman, Dirk Maggs & Neil Gaiman (Audible Originals)
- Stellar Firma, Rusty Quill
Best Anthology
Jurors: Abbi Shaw, Lauren McClelland, Caroline Oakley, Emma Varney, Ginger Lee Thomason
- After Sundown, ed. Mark Morris (Flame Tree Press)
- Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women, ed. Lee Murray & Genevieve Flynn (Omnium Gatherum Media)
- Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora, ed. Zelda Knight & Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki (Aurelia Leo)
- Shadows & Tall Trees, Vol. 8, ed. Michael Kelly (Undertow Publications)
Best Short Fiction
Jurors: Laura Braswell, Danny Boland, Steve J Shaw, Allyson Bird, Alia McKellar
- “8-Bit Free Will”, John Wiswell (in PodCastle 654, Escape Artists)
- “Daylight Robbery”, Anna Taborska (in Bloody Britain, Shadow Publishing)
- “Infinite Tea in the Demara Café”, Ida Keogh (in London Centric: Tales of Future London, Newcon Press)
- “We Do Like to be Beside”, Pete Sutton (in Alchemy Press Book of Horrors 2, Alchemy Press)
Best Collection
Jurors: Raquel Alemán Cruz, Chris White, Carrianne Dillon, Aaron S. Jones, Hannah Zurcher
- Bloody Britain, Anna Taborska (Shadow Publishing)
- Only the Broken Remain, Dan Coxon (Black Shuck Books)
- The Watcher in the Woods, Charlotte Bond (Black Shuck Books)
- We All Hear Stories in the Dark, Robert Shearman (PS Publishing)
Best Novella
Jurors: Timy Takács, Phillip Irving, Ellis Saxey, Kshoni Gunputh, Alasdair Stuart
- The Flame and the Flood, Shona Kinsella (Fox Spirit)
- Honeybones, Georgina Bruce (TTA Press)
- The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water, Zen Cho (Tordotcom)
- Ring Shout, P. Djèlí Clark (Tordotcom)
- A Song for the End, Kit Power (Horrific Tales Publishing)
- Triggernometry, Stark Holborn (Rattleback Books)
Best Horror Novel (The August Derleth Award)
Jurors: Rhian Drinkwater, Judith Schofield, Fabienne Schwizer, Ben Appleby-Dean, Ai Jiang
- Beneath the Rising, Premee Mohamed (Rebellion)
- The Hollow Places, T. Kingfisher (Titan)
- Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Jo Fletcher Books)
- The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham Jones (Titan)
- Plain Bad Heroines, Emily Danforth (The Borough Press)
- Survivor Song, Paul Tremblay (Titan)
Best Fantasy Novel (The Robert Holdstock Award)
Jurors: Aoife Roantree, Steven Poore, Sue York, S.D. Howarth, Kate Towner
- The Bone Shard Daughter, Andrea Stewart (Orbit)
- By Force Alone, Lavie Tidhar (Tor Books)
- The City We Became, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)
- Dark River, Rym Kechacha (Unsung Stories)
- The Once and Future Witches, Alix E. Harrow (Orbit)
- Threading the Labyrinth, Tiffani Angus (Unsung Stories)
Congratulations to all of the nominees!
Update, July 29th, 8:25AM: A prior version of this article misspelled Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki’s name. We regret the error.
