Category: Awards

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Shades Within Us wins the Alberta Book Publishing Award!

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Shades Within Us: Tales of Migrations and Fractured Borders, co-edited by SF Canada members Susan Forest and Lucas K. Law and published by Laksa Media, has won the Alberta Book Publishing Award in the speculative fiction category. This award is for the most outstanding work of the Alberta book publishing industry as adjudicated by experts and publishing professionals from across Canada.

Shades Within Us is the fourth anthology in Laksa’s “social causes” series and is nominated for this year’s Aurora Award. Others in this series are the Aurora-winning Strangers Among Us, the Aurora-winning The Sum of Us, and Where the Stars Rise.

Susan Forest grew up in a family of mountaineers and skiers, and she loves adventure. She also loves the big ideas found in SF/F, and finds fast-paced adventure stories a great place to explore how individuals grapple with complex moral decisions. Her latest novel is the recently-released Bursts of Fire. Susan is also an award-winning fiction editor, has published over 25 short stories (four, including her current “For a Rich Man to Enter,” nominated for Canada’s Prix Aurora Award), and has appeared at many international writing conventions. She loves travel and has been known to dictate novels from the back of her husband’s motorcycle.

Lucas K. Law is a Malaysian-born freelance editor and published author who divides his time and heart between Calgary and Qualicum Beach. With Susan Forest, he co-edited Strangers Among Us, The Sum of Us, and Shades Within Us. Lucas is the co-editor of Where the Stars Rise with Derwin Mak. He has been a jury member for a number of fiction competitions including Nebula, RITA and Golden Heart Awards. When he isn’t editing, writing, or reading, he is a corporate and non-profit organization consultant in business planning and development.

Purchase Shades Within Us today!

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Uncanny Magazine/Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction wins Hugo Award!

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SF Canada member Dominik Parisien was honored at Worldcon this past weekend when Uncanny Magazine won its fourth Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine (Publishers/Editors-in-Chief Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, Managing Editor Michi Trota, Podcast Producers Erika Ensign and Steven Schapansky, Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction Special Issue Editors-in-Chief Elsa Sjunneson-Henry and Dominik Parisien)!

As with the previous Destroy projects (Women, Queers, People of Colour), Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction takes the rallying cry of We are here and Our stories matter and looks to the future. The other projects all began by “destroying” science fiction, and this one is no different. By turning our attention to the future, we are able to explore concerns and realities in the present and amplify them, correct them, highlight the ways they might become better or worse if allowed to continue on their present course. Through science fiction, marginalized people are able to say, We are here, now, and we will be there later, too.

Dominik Parisien is also the co-editor, with Navah Wolfe, of the Shirley Jackson Award-winning Robots vs. Fairies and of The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales, which also won the Shirley Jackson Award and was a finalist for the World Fantasy award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Locus Award. Dominik’s fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Quill & Quire, The Fiddlehead, Exile: The Literary Quarterly, as well as other magazines and anthologies. He is a disabled, bisexual, French Canadian. He lives in Toronto.

Congratulations to all the Hugo Awards winners and finalists!

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Robots vs. Fairies wins Shirley Jackson Award!

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Robots vs. Fairies, edited by SF Canada member Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe, has won this year’s Shirley Jackson Award for best anthology!

The Shirley Jackson Awards annually recognize outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic. They are voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics. The awards are given for the best work published in the preceding calendar year in the following categories:  Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Single-Author Collection, and Edited Anthology. The awards were presented July 14, 2019 at Readercon.

As well, the anthology is a World Fantasy Award finalist! The awards will be presented at World Fantasy Con 2019 in Los Angeles October 31-November 3.

Robots vs. Fairies is a unique anthology of all-new stories that challenges authors to throw down the gauntlet in an epic genre battle and demands an answer to the age-old question: Who is more awesome—robots or fairies?

Dominik Parisien is also the co-editor, with Navah Wolfe, of The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales, which won the 2016 Shirley Jackson Award and was a finalist for the World Fantasy award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Locus Award. He also co-edited Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction with Elsa Sjunneson-Henry. Dominik’s fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Quill & Quire, The Fiddlehead, Exile: The Literary Quarterly, as well as other magazines and anthologies. He is a disabled, bisexual, French Canadian. He lives in Toronto.

Robots vs. Fairies is available in ebook and print versions through Saga Press.

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2019 Sunburst Award Longlist!

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Two SF Canada members are on the Sunburst longlist for 2019. The Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic is an annual award celebrating the best in Canadian fantastika published during the previous calendar year.

Edward Willett‘s Worldshaper [Penguin Random House Canada] is in the Young Adult novel category. One of Saskatchewan’s most prolific authors, Edward has published more than 60 books of science fiction, fantasy and non-fiction for children, teens and adults.  Willett also hosts The Worldshapers podcast, which focuses on the creative processes of other fantasy and science fiction writers.

Dominik Parisien’s “The River Street Witch” [Alice Unbound, Exile Editions] is in the Short Story category. Dominik is the co-editor, with Navah Wolfe, of Robots vs Fairies, and The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales, which won the Shirley Jackson Award and was a finalist for the World Fantasy award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Locus Award. He also co-edited Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction with Elsa Sjunneson-Henry. Dominik’s fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Quill & Quire, The Fiddlehead, Exile: The Literary Quarterly, as well as other magazines and anthologies. His latest publication is a poetry chapbook, We, Old Young Ones. He is a disabled, bisexual, French Canadian. He lives in Toronto.

The Sunburst Award official shortlist will be announced in late June, and winners will be announced in the fall of 2019.

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Candas Jane Dorsey inducted to Edmonton’s Arts and Culture Hall of Fame!

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SF Canada member Candas Jane Dorsey was recently inducted into Edmonton’s Arts and Culture Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame was established in 1986 to honour individuals and groups whose body of work in arts and culture have brought recognition to Edmonton through their artistic achievements. Candas was one of only four recipients honored this year.

Ursula K. Le Guin has described Candas as “brilliant as William Gibson, as complex as Gene Wolfe, with a humanity and passion all her own.” Quill & Quire contributor Greg Boyd remarked that “the best of her fictions are emotionally grounded in the Alberta landscape: its pure blue arch of sky is too expansive to enclose the imaginative spirit.”

A video profile of Candas by the Hall of Fame is on youtube here.

Candas is the author of several novels, collections of short fiction, and books of poetry, and her work has won the Crawford, Tiptree and Aurora Awards and several WGA awards. She is the founding president of SF Canada and a founding partner of Wooden Door and Associates, a professional communications company. She co-founded the publishing company The Books Collective, which released more than one hundred titles in fourteen years. She has been an active member of the literary community and other arts communities in Alberta for more than forty years. Her work as a creative writing teacher, writer in residence, and mentor has influenced many students and emerging writers. She has been a member of the Writers’ Guild of Alberta for many years and previously served on the organization’s Board of Directors. She has won a number of awards for her writing and community advocacy work, including the WGA’s Golden Pen in 2017, and she was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2018. Her most recent book is ICE and other stories, published by PS Publishing, England, in fall 2018, and she recently signed a three-book deal with ECW Press.

Congratulations, Candas!

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Sarah Tolmie’s The Little Animals

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SF Canada member Sarah Tolmie has recently released a new novel, The Little Animals.

Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, a quiet linen draper in Delft, has discovered a new world: the world of the little animals, or animalcules, that he sees through his simple microscopes. These tiny creatures are everywhere, even inside us. But who will believe him? Not his wife, not his neighbours, not his fellow merchants—only his friend Reinier De Graaf, a medical doctor. Then he meets an itinerant goose girl at the market who lives surrounded by tiny, invisible voices. Are these the animalcules also? Leeuwenhoek and the girl form a curious alliance, and gradually the lives of the little animals infiltrate everything around them: Leeuwenhoek’s cloth business, the art of his friend Johannes Vermeer, the nascent sex trade, and people’s religious certainties. But Leeuwenhoek also needs to cement his reputation as a natural philosopher, and for that he needs the Royal Society of London—a daunting challenge, indeed, for a Dutch draper who can’t communicate in Latin.

Publishers Weekly’s starred review says:

Tolmie intricately weaves together the best of historical and weird fiction in this delicate tale of science and miracles…Tolmie balances careful characterization with rich historical detail, subtle humor, and energetic prose. Her central characters are suffused with color, and her prose captures the joys and uncertainties of life-changing discoveries. This delightful novel is not to be missed.

The Little Animals is available in trade paperback and ebook from
•Aqueduct Press and its partner bookstores and distributors
•amazon.com/amazon.ca
•Barnes & Noble

And Sarah has more exciting news! She was recently one of seven finalists for Canada’s Griffin Poetry Prize, one of Canada’s most prestigious literary awards. Sarah’s The Art of Dying, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press, was praised by the jury as a “multifaceted meditation on mortality beneath its deceptively simple lyric surface.” The author herself was singled out as an “irreverent feminist” in the tradition of Dorothy Parker and Stevie Smith. “The Art of Dying” is available through McGill-Queen’s University Press , Indigo, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

And even more news! Sarah’s poem, “Ursula Le Guin in the Underworld” (On Spec issue 107 vol 28.4) is nominated for the Aurora Award in the Best Poem/Song category. Find out how to vote here.

Sarah is an Associate Professor in the English Department of the University of Waterloo. She received her PhD at Cambridge. Her work with virtual reality and dance explores links between movement and proprioception the body’s sense of itself and its limits in space and narrative and poetic structures and pathways.

Find more of Sarah’s poetry and fiction at her website.