The 2020 Aurora Award
On May 9, 2021 the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association announced this year’s list of Aurora Award Nominees. These awards are given to Canadian authors and artists of science fiction and fantasy for eligible novels, short stories, artwork, magazines, and film or television from the previous calendar year.
Several SF Canada members are on this year’s list, including Robert J. Sawyer, Susan Forest, Barb Galler-Smith, R. Graeme Cameron, Mark Leslie Lefebvre, and Derek Newman-Stille. But the list of amazing and talented artists is much longer! So, head over to the full list of nominees on the 2021 ballot and refill your reading list for the summer.
Voting for the Aurora Awards opens July 31, 2021 and will close on September 4, 2021. Winners will be announced in an online ceremony on October 16, 2021.
Learn more about the Aurora Awards at prixaurorawards.ca.
SF Canada extends our heartiest congratulations to Nalo Hopkinson on being named SFWA’s 37th Damon Knight Grand Master.
Nalo Hopkinson is an award-winning speculative fiction author, including Locus, Aurora, and Sunburst wins. She was born in Jamaica, but spent most of her life in Toronto. Hopkinson has authored novels and short stories, edited anthologies, and now works as a professor of creative writing at the University of California.
“Naming Nalo as Grand Master recognizes not only her phenomenal writing but also her work as an educator who has shaped so many of the rising stars of modern SFF.” – SFWA President Mary Robinette Kowal
This Award recognizes a lifetime achievement in speculative fiction and will be presented at the 56th Annual Nebula Conference and Awards Ceremony, held online the weekend of June 4–6, 2021.
The Sunburst Award Society announced this year’s winners on August 31, 2020.
Our heartiest congratulations go out to Silvia Moreno-Garcia, on winning the Adult Award for Gods of Jade and Shadow, to Allison Mills, winner of the Young Adult Award for The Ghost Collector, and to Rebecca Campbell, winner of the Short Story Award for “The Fourth Trimester is the Strangest” published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Additional applause goes to all the shortlisted and longlisted authors, including SF Canada member Edward Willett who was longlisted for his YA novel Master of the World.
The Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic is a juried award which recognizes exceptional writing in three categories: adult, young adult and short story. The awards are presented each fall to the best Canadian speculative fiction novel, book-length collection, or short story published any time during the previous calendar year.
Winners of this year’s Aurora Awards were announced Saturday August 15, via live video as part of the When Words Collide (WWC) convention.
The awards ceremony went online this year along with WWC in response to Covid-19. While we didn’t get the in-person magic of a banquet hall, these achievements are certainly every bit as impressive this year. And SF Canada members were well-represented winning both awards and a hall of fame induction.
Susan Forest won Best YA novel for Bursts of Fire. Diane L. Walton won Best Related Work for On Spec Magazine. R. Graeme Cameron won Best Fan Writing and Publication for Polar Borealis, Issues #9 through #12. And Marie Bilodeau co-won Best Fan Organizational for Can*Con.
Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association’s (CSFFA) Hall of Fame inductions included Cory Doctorow.
Huge congratulations to all the winners and nominees this year! And extra thanks to our own Mark Leslie Lefebvre for emceeing the event.
Congratulations to Colleen Anderson and Lisa Timpf! Each year, nominees for the Rhysling Award are selected by the membership of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. Winning works are regularly reprinted in the Nebula Awards Anthology from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc., and are considered in the SF/F/H fields to be the equivalent in poetry of the awards given for prose work — achievement awards given to poets by the writing peers of their own field of literature.
Colleen’s poem, “The Storm Witch“, appeared in the Winter Solstice issue of Eternal Haunted Summer and is nominated in the Long Poems category.
Lisa’s poem, “No Fairy Tale World” was published in New Myths 47 and is nominated in the Short Poems category.
SFPA members have until June 15 to vote on the winners.
Colleen Anderson writes both fiction and poetry and has had over 170 poems published in such venues as Grievous Angel, Polu Texni, The Future Fire, HWA Poetry Showcase and many others. She is a member of HWA and SFPA and has performed her work before audiences in the US, UK and Canada and has placed in the Balticon, Rannu, Crucible and Wax poetry competitions. Currently she is working on two poetry collections. Colleen also enjoys editing and co-edited Canadian anthologies Playground of Lost Toys (Aurora nominated) and Tesseracts 17, and her solo anthology Alice Unbound: Beyond Wonderland, was published in 2018. A Body of Work was recently published by Black Shuck Books, UK. Living in Vancouver, Colleen keeps an eye out for mold monsters and mermaids, and will be guest of honour in 2020 at the Creative Ink Festival (now postponed). Find her at www.colleenanderson.wordpress.com.
Lisa Timpf is a retired HR and communications professional who lives in Simcoe, Ontario. Her writing has been published in a variety of venues, including Chicken Soup for the Soul: My Very Good, Very Bad Dog as well as New Myths, Third Flatiron, Thema, and an anthology entitled Dogs of War. Lisa enjoys bird-watching, organic gardening, and golfing. The antics of her Border Collie, Emma, have provided inspiration for several of her stories. Read more of her work at lisatimpf.blogspot.com. You can also find her on Goodreads.
