Below are the juries for the British Fantasy Awards 2013. The main jury decides the categories of fantasy novel, horror novel, novella, short story, collection, anthology, magazine/periodical, comic/graphic novel and screenplay, while the non-fiction, artist, small press and newcomer (Sydney J. Bounds) awards have their own juries. The special (Karl Edward Wagner) award is decided by a vote of the British Fantasy Society committee.

The main jury
Esther Sherman
Matthew Hughes
Neil Williamson
Pauline Morgan
Ros Jackson

The non-fiction jury
Djibril al-Ayad
Jason Arnopp
Roz Kaveney

The artist jury
Daniele Serra
Jimmy Broxton
P.M. Buchan
Rachel Kendall
Rhian Bowley

The small press jury
Elaine Hillson
Elloise Hopkins
Dave Brzeski
Rachel Kendall
Rhian Bowley

The newcomer jury
Adele Wearing
Alison Littlewood
Jim Steel
Lizzie Barrett
Peter Tennant

Over the next month or so the juries will decide whether to add any “egregious omissions” to the shortlists produced by the voting of the British Fantasy Society and the attendees of FantasyCon 2012. The shortlists will then be announced, and the juries will go on to decide the winners, which will be announced at an awards ceremony held at the World Fantasy Convention 2013, which runs from October 31 to November 3 in Brighton.

The jury members were selected by the British Fantasy Awards Administrator, Stephen Theaker (bfsawards@britishfantasysociety.org), and approved by the committee of the British Fantasy Society.

Sir Terry Pratchett and Transworld Publishers launched a new award for aspiring debut novelists, in June last year. The Terry Pratchett Anywhere But Here, Anywhen But Now Prize. Since the deadline for submissions on the 31^st December 2012, the team have spent many hours reading, reporting and discussing over 500 entries that were submitted for the £20,000 advance publishing contract.

The shortlist are, in surname order:

The Unspoken Death of the Amazing Flying Boy by Jean Burdett

Bloodline by Sophie Constable

The Hive by Alexander Maskill

The Way Through the Woods by Robin Pearson

A Kill in the Morning by Graeme Shimmin

The Shadows of Annwn by Catherine Whittle

The six shortlisted books cover a breadth of topics and sub genres, imagination and alternate worlds. Each shortlisted entry was chosen for their skilful writing, vast imaginative powers and ability to tell a good story!

The winner will be judged by Sir Terry Pratchett, Rob Wilkins, Alex Veasey from Forbidden Planet, Simon Taylor, Editorial Director at Transworld Publishers and Lynsey Dalladay Sir Terry Pratchett’s Publicist. The winner will be announced on the 31^st May 2013.

Sir Terry Pratchett and Transworld Publishers would like to thank everyone who submitted an entry to the prize.

If you are a member of the British Fantasy Society (congratulations on your wise choice of association!) or if you attended the glorious celebration of fantasy that was FantasyCon 2012 in Brighton (wasn’t the weather good for October?), today is the final day to cast your votes in the British Fantasy Awards 2013.

Every vote matters! In every category!

If there is nothing you wish to vote for this year, even empty voting forms will be gratefully received, just so we know we reached you.

VOTE HERE!

The Kitschies, the prize for “novels containing elements of the speculative and fantastic” have revealed their shortlists for the most “progressive, intelligent and entertaining” books of 2012.

This year’s shortlisted books are narrowed down from 211 submissions, coming from over 40 publishers that range from literary stalwarts Granta to pulp imprint Angry Robot.

The Red Tentacle (Novel), judged by Rebecca Levene, Patrick Ness and Jared Shurin:

• Jesse Bullington, The Folly of the World (Orbit)
• Nick Harkaway, Angelmaker (William Heinemann)
• Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass (Macmillan Children’s)
• Adam Roberts, Jack Glass (Gollancz)
• Julie Zeh (translated by Sally-Ann Spencer), The Method (Harvill Secker)

The Golden Tentacle (Debut):

• Madeline Ashby, vN (Angry Robot)
• Jenni Fagan, The Panopticon (William Heinemann)
• Rachel Hartman, Seraphina (Doubleday)
• Karen Lord, Redemption in Indigo (Jo Fletcher Books)
• Tom Pollock, The City’s Son (Jo Fletcher Books)

The Inky Tentacle (Cover Art), judged by Lauren O’Farrell, Gary Northfield and Ed Warren:

• Tom Gauld, Costume Not Included by Matthew Hughes (Angry Robot)
• Oliver Jeffers, The Terrible Thing that Happened to Barnaby Brocket by John Boyne (Doubleday)
• Dave Shelton, A Boy and a Bear in a Boat by Dave Shelton (David Fickling Books)
• Peter Mendelsund, The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus (Granta)
• La Boca, The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman (Sceptre)

The winners will be announced in a ceremony at the Free Word Centre on 26 February. Winners will receive a total of £2,000 in prize money, as well as one of the prize’s iconic Tentacle trophies and bottles of The Kraken Rum.

Jared Shurin said  “We always look for books that challenge people’s expectations of the speculative and fantastic. Although the pool of publishers and authors grows more diverse every year, there’s still a lot of work to be done. We hope that The Kitschies helps spur more discussion about what makes great fiction.”

The prize, sponsored by The Kraken Rum, is now in its fourth year, with previous winners including Lauren Beukes, China Miéville, Donald Westlake and Patrick Ness.

Ahead of the 2012 Kitschies shortlist announcement, Jared over on Pornokitsch have been looking at the submission numbers and throwing up a few charts.

Jared writes:

“Before I get into my own superficial conclusions, it is important to note that I’m not claiming that our submissions are indicative of anything besides our submissions. But, at 200+ books, selected by the publishers (and occasionally prompted by the judges), there’s possibly some sort of loose/anecdotal correlation with the year’s genre output as a whole. 

• There’s a shocking lack of fiction in translation – statistically, a UK genre title is twice as likely to have a zombie than be first published in a non-English language. Sadly, I suspect this is probably true across the genre, and not just in our submissions pile. 
• Vampires and zombies are still going strong.
• Steampunk’s not going away either.
• Quite a few people predicted that angels and demons would be popular in 2012 (yup) and that superheroes and werewolves would be on the rise in 2013 (we’ll see).
• As the award ages, we’re now in a position where previous finalists (and winners) now have new books submitted. This year, we had six (plus two others with re-jacketed old books submitted for the Inky).
• “Mid-series” is also an interesting one, encompassing both outright, “picks up after the cliffhanger ending” sequels and self-contained novels that are set in existing worlds. How to judge a mid-series book seems a uniquely genre challenge: George RR Martin’s latest installment in A Song of Ice and Fire is an inevitable Hugo finalist, whereas “lit-fic” prizes deal with, at most, the occasional sequel (see: Hilary Mantel).  
• There was some discussion earlier this year about a self-publishing “avalanche” overwhelming the submissions piles of all book awards. Even with our liberal submissions policy – no fee, only two physical copies required – we only received seven self-published books. (Requiring physical copies, which can even take the form of stapled print-outs, isn’t meant to be a barrier, as not all of our judges have e-readers.) “

Check out the full post HERE

Two changes were made to the rules of the British Fantasy Awards at an EGM on 7 December 2012, held at the British Fantasy Society’s Christmas Open Night.

Following a proposal by BFS member Allen Ashley, this text was added to the rules:

Where practicable, the awards administrator will allow and encourage members, publishers and other interested parties to contribute to a list of eligible items, to be made available online before voting begins.

Following a proposal by BFS chair Lee Harris, this text:

The Awards Administrator may not be associated (either by writing, publishing or editing) with work nominated in any category.

was replaced with:

The Awards Administrator may not own or part-own any works shortlisted in any category. Where the Awards Administrator is associated (either by writing, publishing or editing) a work shortlisted in any category, the Awards Administrator will declare this association to the committee, who will independently verify the votes placed for that work, and that work’s eligibility to be shortlisted.

The updated awards constitution can be seen here.

The constitution that applied from 30 September 2012 to 7 December 2012 can be seen here.

The This Is Horror Awards 2012 are now open. Please send your votes to awards [at] thisishorror [dot] co [dot] uk with the subject line ‘Awards 2012 Votes’. To cast a vote simply write the category and your vote for each award. You are allowed to vote for your top two in each category. Voting closes at 12:01am GMT on Friday 4 January 2013.

For full list of categories and nominations please go HERE

The Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic is a juried award to recognize stellar writing in two categories: adult and young adult. The awards are presented annually to Canadian writers with a speculative fiction novel or book-length collection of speculative fiction published any time during the previous calendar year.

The 2013 Sunburst Award jurors have now been announced. They are: Rebecca Bradley, Tony Burgess, Shari Lapeña, Barbard Roden and Leon Rooke. Full details HERE

The 2012 World Fantasy Award winners have been announced at the World Fantasy Convention in Toronto, Canada. This year’s judges were John Berlyne, James P. Blaylock, Stephen Gallagher, Mary Kay Kare, and Jacques Post. The winners are:

2012 World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Awards
winner Alan Garner
winner George R.R. Martin

Novel
winner Osama, Lavie Tidhar (PS Publishing)
Those Across the River, Christopher Buehlman (Ace)
11/22/63, Stephen King (Scribner; Hodder & Stoughton as 11.22.63)
A Dance with Dragons, George R.R. Martin (Bantam; Harper Voyager UK)
Among Others, Jo Walton (Tor)

Novella
winner “A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong”, K.J. Parker (Subterranean Winter 2011)
“Near Zennor”, Elizabeth Hand (A Book of Horrors)
“Alice Through the Plastic Sheet”, Robert Shearman (A Book of Horrors)
“Rose Street Attractors”, Lucius Shepard (Ghosts by Gaslight)
“Silently and Very Fast”, Catherynne M. Valente (WSFA Press; Clarkesworld)

Short Story
winner “The Paper Menagerie”, Ken Liu (F&SF 3-4/11)
“X for Demetrious”, Steve Duffy (Blood and Other Cravings)
“Younger Women”, Karen Joy Fowler (Subterranean Summer 2011)
“A Journey of Only Two Paces”, Tim Powers (The Bible Repairman and Other Stories)
“The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees”, E. Lily Yu (Clarkesworld 4/11)

Anthology
winner The Weird, Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, eds. (Corvus; Tor, published May 2012)
Blood and Other Cravings, Ellen Datlow, ed. (Tor)
A Book of Horrors, Stephen Jones, ed. (Jo Fletcher Books)
The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities, Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, eds. (Harper Voyager US)
Gutshot, Conrad Williams, ed. (PS Publishing)

Collection
winner The Bible Repairman and Other Stories, Tim Powers (Tachyon and Subterranean Press)
Bluegrass Symphony, Lisa L. Hannett (Ticonderoga)
Two Worlds and In Between, Caitlín R. Kiernan (Subterranean Press)
After the Apocalypse, Maureen F. McHugh (Small Beer)
Mrs Midnight and Other Stories, Reggie Oliver (Tartarus)

Artist
winner John Coulthart
Julie Dillon
Jon Foster
Kathleen Jennings
John Picacio

Special Award—Professional
winner Eric Lane, for publishing in translation – Dedalus books
John Joseph Adams, for editing – anthology and magazine
Jo Fletcher, for editing – Jo Fletcher Books
Brett Alexander Savory & Sandra Kasturi, for ChiZine Publications
Jeff VanderMeer & S.J. Chambers, for The Steampunk Bible

Special Award—Non-professional
winner Raymond Russell & Rosalie Parker, for Tartarus Press
Kate Baker, Neil Clarke, Cheryl Morgan & Sean Wallace, for Clarkesworld
Cat Rambo, for Fantasy
Charles Tan, for Bibliophile Stalker blog
Mark Valentine, for Wormwood

Congratulations to all the winners and nominees!

Before the 2013 awards get started, we are asking members, publishers and any other interested parties to help us in building (and correcting) an informal list of eligible items. Inevitably, the list will be incomplete, but it should prod our members’ thoughts in appropriate directions.

Contributions to the list can be made, and corrections suggested, here.

The resulting eligibility list can be seen here.

You don’t have to be a member of the BFS or a FantasyCon attendee to contribute. Feel free to supply details of your own work. We’d be grateful to anyone spreading the word about this on Twitter, Facebook or their blog.

If you have a large number of items to add (for example if you’re a publisher or the editor of a magazine), you may find it easier to supply them in a spreadsheet to the awards administrator (see below). Just be sure to include a column listing the appropriate categories.

Note that the resulting list is an informal eligibility list. There is no prestige in appearing on it. People whose items appear on the list must not describe themselves as British Fantasy Award nominees, or as having been longlisted for the British Fantasy Award. Members will not be limited to voting on items that appear on the list.

For any queries as to the eligibility rules, please see the British Fantasy Awards constitution. If any questions remain, please contact the awards administrator, Stephen Theaker (bfsawards@britishfantasysociety.org).