This year’s Dragon Con will include the presentation of a new award: The Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction, established in honor of the late writer and editor Eugie Foster. The Eugie Award will honor “irreplaceable” stories that “will become essential to speculative fiction readers.”
Foster, who passed away in 2014, was a prolific short fiction writer; her novelette “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” won the 2009 Nebula Award. Foster’s website announced the new award:
Celebrating the best in innovative fiction, this annual award will be presented for the first time in 2016—for works published in 2015—at Dragon Con, the nation’s largest fan-run convention.
The Eugie Award honors stories that are irreplaceable, that inspire, enlighten, and entertain. We will be looking for stories that are beautiful, thoughtful, and passionate, and change us and the field. The recipient is a story that is unique and will become essential to speculative fiction readers.
Eligible works are original speculative short fiction, no more than 20,000 words, published for the first time in the English language in the previous year. This is a juried award, with long list nominations coming from editors, reviewers, and select book readers. The five nominees for the inaugural award will be announced sometime before the recipient is selected, at Dragon Con 2016 (September 2-5).
