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 deadline has been extended until the end of this week to book your place at the British Fantasy Awards Banquet on the Sunday afternoon, 30 September 2012, at FantasyCon. Always the grand finale of the convention, this is when the British Fantasy Society will announce the winners of this year’s prestigious British Fantasy Awards. Once bookings are closed we cannot take any further reservations.

The Banquet will be held in the Royal Albion Hotel’s Regency Lounge from 1:00pm until around 4:00pm on 30 September, when it will be followed by the traditional Dead Dog Party in the convention bar. There are only a small number of places remaining, and these will be allocated on a first-come basis.

To book your Banquet meal, please go to: http://www.fantasycon2012.org/banquet.php where you will find a full choice of menu and details of how to pay.

Please note that you MUST be a registered attendee of FantasyCon 2012 when you book your Banquet meal, unless you are a British Fantasy Award nominee for this year.

Publishers and individuals who wish to pre-reserve a table should e-mail banquet [at] fantasycon2012.org and supply a list of the ten people that they will have on their table. Each person should have a meal booked and paid for before the table reservation is made.

FantasyCon 2012 is being held at the Royal Albion Hotel in the historic seaside town of Brighton, East Sussex, over the weekend of 27 – 30 September 2012. We now have fewer than 40 memberships remaining, so if you haven’t joined up yet, then please do so now. All you have to do is go to the “How to Join” page on the website (www.fantasycon2012.org/join.php), submit the form with your details and then pay via the PayPal buttons. Alternately, you can print out the form and mail it with a cheque to the address given. A limited number of Saturday-Only memberships are also now available.

Locus Online reports the winners of the Mythopoeic Awards, recently presented at Mythcon 43. The 2012 Mythopoeic Award winners were:

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature: Lisa Goldstein, The Uncertain Places (Tachyon Publications)

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature: Delia Sherman, The Freedom Maze (Big Mouth House)

Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies: Carl Phelpstead, Tolkien and Wales: Language, Literature and Identity (Univ. of Wales Press, 2011)

Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies: Jack Zipes, The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films (Routledge, 2011)

Full details from the Mythopoeic Society’s website  HERE

American Horror Story has picked up 17 nominations for the 64th annual Emmy Awards. It has been nominated in the following categories:

• Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie (Connie Britton as Vivien Harmon)
• Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie (Frances Conroy as Moira)
• Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a movie (Jessica Lange as Constance Langdon)
• Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie (Denis O’Hare as Larry Harvey)
• Art Direction for a Miniseries or Movie (“Open House” [Part 7])
• Art Direction for a Miniseries or Movie (Part 1)
• Casting for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special
• Costumes for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special
• Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Miniseries or a Movie
• Hairstyling for a Miniseries or a Movie
• Main Title Design
• Makeup for a Miniseries or a Movie (Non-Prosthetic)
• Prosthetic Makeup for a Series, Miniseries, Movie or a Special
• Sound Editing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special (“Piggy, Piggy”)
• Sound Mixing for a Miniseries or a Movie (“Piggy, Piggy”)
• Stunt Coordination

Other genre TV series picking up nominations include Grimm (1 nomination), Game of Thrones (12 nominations) and The Walking Dead (3 nominations).

The Awards will be presented on Sunday 23 September 2012 during a ceremony in the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles.

For a full list of all nominees go HERE

The nominees for the 2011 Sidewise Award for Alternate History have been announced. The Sidewise Awards have been presented annually since 1995 to recognize excellence in alternate historical fiction. This year’s panel of judges was made up of Stephen Baxter, Evelyn Leeper, Jim Rittenhouse, Stu Shiffman, Kurt Sidaway and Steven H Silver.

The nominees are:

Short Form:

• Michael F. Flynn, The Iron Shirts (Tor.com)
• Lisa Goldstein, Paradise Is a Walled Garden (Asimov’s, 8/11)
• Jason Stoddard, Orion Rising (Panverse 3, edited by Dario Ciriello, Panverse Publishing)
• Harry Turtledove, Lee at the Alamo (Tor.com)

Long Form:

• Robert Conroy, Castro’s Bomb (Kindle)
• Robert Conroy, Himmler’s War (Baen Books)
• Jeff Greenfield, Then Everything Changed (Putnam)
• Ian R MacLeod, Wake Up and Dream (PS Publishing)
• Ian McDonald, Planesrunner (Pyr)
• Ekaterina Sedia, Heart of Iron (Prime)
• Lavie Tidhar, Camera Obscura (Angry Robot)

The Sidewise Awards for Alternate History were conceived in late 1995 to honor the best allohistorical genre publications of the year. The first awards were announced in summer 1996 and honored works from 1995. The award takes its name from Murray Leinster’s 1934 short story Sidewise in Time, in which a strange storm causes portions of Earth to swap places with their analogs from other timelines.

This year’s nominees include previous winners Harry Turtledove (1997, 2002), Michael F. Flynn (2007), Ian R. MacLeod (1998, 2005), and Robert Conroy (2009). Jason Stoddard was previously nominated in 2005. First time nominees include Lisa Goldstein, Jeff Greenfield, Ian McDonald, Ekaterina Sedia and Lavie Tidhar.

The winners will be announced at Chicon 7, this year’s Worldcon, in Chicago, Illinois during the weekend of 30 August 2012.

For more information, see the website HERE

There were several ‘genre’ winners at the 2012 British Academy Television Awards, held at London’s Royal Festival Hall on 27 May.

As previously announced, Steven Moffat (Doctor Who, Sherlock) received a special BAFTA for his “outstanding creative writing contribution to television”. Sherlock also scooped an award when Andrew Scott won Best Supporting Actor for his role as Sherlock’s arch nemesis Moriarty.

The recently cancelled fantasy horror series The Fades won Best Drama Series, while the darkly comedic drama Psychoville won the Best New Media Award.

A full list of all the winners can be found HERE

Photo (c) BBC

The 2011 Nebula Award winners were announced by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America on 19 May 2012. Winners include Among Others by Jo Walton (Best Novel), the Best Novellette was What We Found by Geoff Ryman (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September/October 2011) and the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation was given to the  Doctor Who episode The Doctor’s Wife written by Neil Gaiman.

For the full list of nominees and winners see the SFWA website HERE

The winners of the 2011 Aurealis Awards have been announced. These Awards recognise the achievements of Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror writers.

A full list of the winners is provided on SFScope HERE

The World Horror Convention 2013 will be hosted by the Horror Writers Association, and will incorporate the Bram Stoker Awards. The event will be held in New Orleans from 13 – 16 June 2013. The event is billed as the Bram Stoker Awards Weekend incorporating World Horror Convention 2013, and it has its website HERE.

The convention will be held at the historic Hotel Monteleone in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Membership sales will begin in the second half of 2012, as will voting for the WHC Grandmaster Award. Guests of Honour will be announced in due course.

For further details as they arise visit the website HERE