2015 Eligibility Post for Me and 143 Other People

With regards to letting people know what work I’ve done over the past year, for consideration with regards to various things, I know I am my own best advocate (I know this thanks to the nudging and prodding of good friends. Thanks you guys.), but I would really much rather talk about the work of others. Can’t I do both?

Turns out this is my blog and I can do that! (Though it got a little out of hand. You want to see it done with grace and class? Go here.) Still here?  OK. SO.

I wrote a novel. Updraft is about man-made wings and finding one’s voice and one’s place in the world and about listening to the voices of others; it is also about economics, politics, the environment and giant invisible flying squid.  It is also a slightly pear-shaped novel in that it is crossover — suitable, as the delightful people at Genrify say, for handing to both young adult readers and adults alike. This puts it in an unusual state – what categories can it fit in? Here is me, hoping it doesn’t fall through the cracks instead.

Updraft is eligible for World Fantasy, Hugo, and Nebula awards, as well as other genre awards. (I can’t give you the whole book, but I can link to the first chapter.) Updraft has starred reviews from places like Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and great ones from NPR & Barnes & Noble. It was named among the Best of the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2015 at iO9.com and a Tor.com Reviewer’s Best of 2015 pick.

Several short stories. 

“Bent the Wing, Dark the Cloud,” Beneath Ceaseless Skies (September 3, 2015) Calli Viit unwound a green silk tether from three bundles of long bone battens and spread them on her worktable. If she picked the right ones quickly, she might avoid further angering her father. (read more)

“The Ghost Tide Chantey” Tor.com for National Poetry Month (April 8, 2015)Once, our island sang four chanteys: storm, shoal, hearth, haul. Seven tides graced our lee shore: ebb, low, slack, neap, high, perigee, spring. Now the lee shore lies barren. Now I sing one chantey and
new tides sweep the sand: iron, smoke, and bone.(read more)

“You are Two Point Three Meters from Your Destination,” Uncanny:  (Issue Three, Spring 2015) Commencing Route for Orpheus of Thrace. Proceed from Ciconian Coast meadow south–southwest to mouth of Eurotas River in Laconia, approximately eight hundred kilometers. Travel time to waypoint: seven days at your current speed(read more)

“How to Walk through Historic Graveyards in the Digital Age,” Asimov’s Science Fiction (April/May 2015) (made available in full online here)Officially, I don’t see anything I’m not supposed to. That’s in all the reports. That’s what I tell myself each night when I sneak into St. Paul’s cemetery like the local kids do. My eyes are still sensitive and weak from surgery, especially the right one. Even at night, light flickers at the edges of my vision, becoming open mouths, panicked hands, a fire-bright bird plummeting through a shattering roof. (read more)

Related Work: I co-edited a cookbook. I wrote essays that weren’t about Updraft (shocking!) and podcasted about 12 other amazing authors and editors. 

Ad Astra: The 50th Anniversary SFWA Cookbook, co-edited with Cat Rambo. Featuring recipes, histories, entertainments and more from 150 science fiction and fantasy authors, editors, agents, and publishers. Illustrations by Ursula Vernon and MCA Hogarth. To benefit the SFWA Legal Fund. In short: awesomeness you can eat.

Cooking the Books, year 3.5: Twelve interviews – text and podcast – with authors and editors including: Navah Wolfe, Joe Monti, Adam Christopher, Ilana C. Myer, Jaime Lee Moyer, Elizabeth Bear, Zen Cho, Aliette de Bodard, Karin Tidbeck, Amanda Downum, Ken Liu, Jodi Meadows, V.E. Schwab, and Scott Andrews.

A fair few articles and posts related to Updraft are here. Meantime, I also wrote critical pieces, cultural pieces, and interviewed other authors throughout the year. Among my favorite nonfiction pieces are this Washington Post essay and this Tor.com crossed-universe piece. Among the latter are my interview with Elizabeth Bear for SF Signal, an interview I did with Ann Leckie for GeekMom. And the new Book Bites!

OK. Now. I’m writing this knowing I can’t fit everyone in that I’d like to see considered for awards, so I’ll tell you straight off to also go to Cooking the Books and consider everyone there as well, and go check out the SFWA Suggested Nebula Reading List because there are so many great things there.

For the fiction, I’m going to give you 10 of each, in no particular order.

Short Stories: (Updated: Bolded titles are among my World-Fantasy reads)

1. Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight, Aliette de Bodard (Clarkesworld)
2. Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers, Alyssa Wong (Nightmare)
3. Damage, David D. Levine (Tor)
4. Pockets, Amal El Mohtar (Uncanny)
5. The Language of Knives, Haralambi Markov (Tor)
6. The Heat of Us, Sam Miller (Uncanny)
7. Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World, Caroline Yoachim (Lightspeed)
8. Variations on an Apple, Yoon Ha Lee (Tor)
9. Two To Leave, Yoon Ha Lee (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
10. Hold Time Violations, John Chu (Tor)

(Late-breaking: I just read Kat Howard’s The Universe Sung in Stars (Lightspeed) and really loved it too. And Rachel Swirsky’s slightly unsettling & lovely Tea Time (Lightspeed). SO – as it’s obvious I’ve missed many great reads, please add your favorites in the comments?!)

Novelettes: (Do Novelettes get packed in with Novellas for World Fantasy? If so, bolded titles are World-Fantasy considerations for Novellas too)

1. Our Lady of the Open Road, Sarah Pinsker (Asimov’s)
2. The End of the War, Django Wexler (Asimov’s)
3. And You Shall Know Her By Her Trail of Dead, Bo Bolander (Lightspeed)
4. And if the Body Were Not the Soul, A.C. Wise (Clarkesworld)
5. The Oiran’s Song, Isabel Yap (Uncanny*) (originally listed as F&SF – fixed now)
6. The Deepwater Bride, Tamsyn Muir (F&SF)
7. Ambiguity Machines: An Examination, Vandana Singh (Tor)
8. Grandmother Nai-Lelit’s Cloth of Winds, Rose Lemberg (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
9. Ballroom Blitz, Veronica Schanoes (Tor)
10. Ginga, Daniel José Older (Tor)

Novellas: (Updated: Bolded titles are among my World-Fantasy picks)

1. Waters of Versailles, Kelly Robson (Tor)
2. The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn, Usman Malik (Tor)
3. Binti, Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com)
4. Domnall & The Borrowed Child, Sylvia Spruck Wrigley (Tor.com)
5. Envy of Angels, Matt Wallace (Tor)
6. The Four Thousand, The Eight Hundred, Greg Egan (Asimov’s)
7. The Bone Swans of Amandale, CSE Cooney (Mythic Delerium)
8. Of Sorrow and Such, Angela Slatter (Tor)
9. The Shootout Solution, Michael R. Underwood (Tor)

*** Kai Ahsante Wilson’s Sorcerer of the Wildeeps has been moved to novels ****

Novels & Collections
I feel like I didn’t read nearly enough novels this year. I will try to do better next year. There are So Many Great Novels that I tried to hit several I haven’t seen come around as much on the best of lists, plus a few I couldn’t not list because they’re wonderful. (Bolded titles are World-Fantasy eligible)

1. The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin
2. Karen Memory, Elizabeth Bear
3. The Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron Saves the World Again, A.C. Wise
4. The House of Shattered Wings, Aliette de Bodard
5. The Grace of Kings, Ken Liu
6. Silver on the Road, Laura Ann Gilman
7. Dark Orbit, Carolyn Ives Gilman
8. A Daughter of No Nation, A.M. Dellamonica
9. Uprooted, Naomi Novik
10. Planetfall, Emma Newman
11. Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, Kai Ashanti Wilson (Tor.com) 

Please also read & consider & keep an eye out for (with no eye to order or publication type): Kate Elliot (Black Wolves *which I haven’t finished yet but it’s wonderful!, Court of Fives), Lawrence M. Schoen (Barsk), Ramez Naam (Nexus, Crux, & Apex), Adam Rakunas (Windswept), Greg Van Eekhout (Dragon Coast series), Fonda Lee (Zeroboxer), Tina Connolly (Seriously Wicked), J. Kathleen Cheney (The Golden City series), Ilana C. Myer (Last Song Before Night), Seth Dickinson (The Traitor/The Traitor Baru Cormorant), Nicole Feld (short stories), Daryl Gregory (Everything. Seriously), Beth Cato (The Clockwork Crown), Jon McGoran (Deadout), Jaime Lee Moyer (Against a Brightening Sky), Shveta Thakrar (short stories and poetry), Adam Christopher (Made to Kill), Arkady Martine (short stories), Sunil Patel (short stories and reviews), SL Huang (short stories), Nisi Shawl, Mary Robinette Kowal, Max Gladstone, Tade Thompson….

More:

Fan Writers – The often-unsung heroes of genre. They make all the things go: Natalie Luhrs, Liz Bourke, Paul Weimer, Stefan Raets, K. Tempest Bradford, Kristin Centorelli, Aidan Moher, John DiNardo.

Fancasts – Skiffy & Fanty, RocketTalk, Tea & Jeopardy, Krypton Radio, Midnight in Karachi, Sword & Laser.

Related Work – A.C. Wise – Women To Read at SFSignal, Natalie Luhrs – Bad Life Decisions, Jim C. Hines & co. – Invisible 2.

Editors (short form): Julia Rios, Scott Andrews, Sheila Williams, C.C. Finlay, Trevor Quachri, Ellen Datlow, Michael & Lynne Thomas, A.C. Wise & Berni Mozjes, Lee Harris.

(I’m not listing long-form editors due to my obvious bias this year in favor of my own editor Miriam Weinberg. That’s W-E-I-N-B-E-R-G.)

Semi-Pro & Pro Magazines: Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Uncanny, Unlikely Story, Asimov’s, F&SF, The Booksmugglers, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed.

PLUS! If Independent Bookstores Had Their Own Award*: Doylestown Bookshop – Doylestown PA, Big Blue Marble – Mt. Airy/Philadelphia, Borderlands – San Francisco, Mysterious Galaxy – San Diego, University Bookstore – Seattle, Wellesley Books – Wellesley MA, Toadstool Bookshop – Millford NH, Northshire Bookstore Saratoga & Manchester, Atomic Books -Baltimore MD, Main Point Books – Villanova PA.

AND: Best Would-You-Rather Host: John Scalzi.

*stop me before I make more awards…

(Updated 6/6/16 to break out fantasy for WFC)