The 2019 Aurora Award winners and Hall of Fame inductees!

Numerous SF Canada members were nominated in this year’s Auroras, including several winners! The Aurora Awards are Canada’s National Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards. The Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association (CSFFA) is a federally-registered society whose role is to give out the Aurora Awards annually. The Auroras are nominated by and voted on by CSFFA members from across Canada.

The Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Association also hosts the CSFFA Hall of Fame. It was created to honour people who have made a large contribution to Science Fiction and Fantasy in Canada. This year, three very deserving people were inducted into the Hall of Fame: Tanya Huff, Eileen Kernaghan (SFC member), and Richard Graeme Cameron (SFC member). SF Canada congratulates them!

Aurora Award winners were announced during an awards ceremony held at Can-Con 2019, October 19, 2019, in Ottawa ON. SF Canada members’ names are in bold below.

Best Novel
WINNER: Armed in Her Fashion, Kate Heartfield (ChiZine)
One of Us, Craig DiLouie (Orbit)
They Promised Me the Gun Wasn’t Loaded, James Alan Gardner (Tor)
Graveyard Mind, Chadwick Ginther (ChiZine)
The Quantum Magician, Derek Künsken (Solaris)
Witchmark, C.L. Polk (Tor.com Publishing)

Best YA Novel
WINNER: Cross Fire, Fonda Lee (Scholastic)
Children of the Bloodlands, S.M. Beiko (ECW)
Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks, ‘Nathan Burgoine (Bold Strokes)
The Sign of Faust, Éric Desmarais (Renaissance)
Finding Atlantis, JM Dover (Evil Alter Ego)
Timefall, Alison Lohans (Five Rivers)
The Emerald Cloth, Clare C. Marshall (Faery Ink)
Legacy of Light, Sarah Raughley (Simon Pulse)

Best Short Fiction
WINNER: Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach, Kelly Robson (Tor.com Publishing)
“A Hold Full of Truffles”, Julie E. Czerneda (Tales from Plexis)
“For A Rich Man to Enter”, Susan Forest (IGMS 4/18)
Alice Payne Arrives, Kate Heartfield (Tor.com Publishing)
“Critical Mass”, Liz Westbrook-Trenholm (Shades Within Us: Tales of Migrations and Fractured Borders)

Best Graphic Novel
WINNER: It Never Rains, Kari Maaren (http://itneverrainscomic.com/)
Krampus Is My Boyfriend!, S.M. Beiko (https://www.smbeiko.com/)
Woman World, Aminder Dhaliwal (Drawn and Quarterly)
Crash and Burn, Finn Lucullan & Kate Larking (Astres)
FUTILITY: Orange Planet Horror, Rick Overwater & Cam Hayden (Coffin Hop)

Best Related Work
WINNER: Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction, Dominik Parisien & Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, eds. (Uncanny)
By the Light of Camelot, J.R. Campbell & Shannon Allen, eds. (EDGE)
Gaslight Gothic: Strange Tales of Sherlock Holmes, J.R. Campbell & Charles Prepolec, eds. (EDGE)
Shades Within Us: Tales of Migrations and Fractured Borders, Susan Forest & Lucas K. Law, eds. (Laksa)
We Shall Be Monsters, Derek Newman-Stille, ed. (Renaissance)

Best Poem/Song
WINNER: “Ursula Le Guin in the Underworld”, Sarah Tolmie (On Spec #107)
“Echos”, Shannon Allen (By the Light of Camelot)
“Osiris”, Leah Bobet (Uncanny 11-12/18)
“How My Life Will End”, Vanessa Cardui (Shades Within Us: Tales of Migrations and Fractured Borders)
“Trips to Impossible Cities”, Sandra Kasturi (Amazing Stories Winter 2018)

Best Artist
WINNER: Samantha M. Beiko, covers for Laksa Media
Lily Author, cover art for Polar Borealis #8
James F. Beveridge, cover art for Tyche Books
Roger Czerneda, cover for Tales from Plexis
Dan O’Driscoll, covers for Bundoran Press
Lynne Taylor Fahnestalk, cartoons for Amazing Stories

Best Visual Presentation
WINNER: Deadpool 2
Bao
Murdoch Mysteries, 2018 episodes
Travelers, Season 3
Wynonna Earp, Season 3

Best Fan Writing and Publications
WINNER: “She Wrote It But…Revisiting Joanna Russ’ How to Suppress Women’s Writing 35 Years Later“, Krista D. Ball (reddit.com/r/fantasy)
“Travelling TARDIS“, Jen Desmarais (JenEric Designs)
“Mars vs. Titan“, Ron S. Friedman (Quora)
“Constructing the Future“, Derek Newman-Stille (Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction)
“Adios Cowboy“, Adam Shaftoe (www.adamshaftoe.com)
Books and Tea, Christina Vasilevski

Best Fan Organizational
WINNER: Derek Künsken & Marie Bilodeau, co-chairs, Can*Con
Sandra Kasturi, chair Chiaroscuro Reading Series: Toronto
Randy McCharles, chair, When Words Collide
Matt Moore, Marie Bilodeau & Nicole Lavigne, co-chairs, Chiaroscuro Reading Series: Ottawa
Sandra Wickham, chair, Creative Ink Festival

Best Fan Related Work
WINNER: The Worldshapers, Edward Willett
Business BFFs, S.M. Beiko & Clare C. Marshall
ChiSeries Toronto, Kari Maaren
Just Joshing, Joshua Pantalleresco
Speculating Canada, Derek Newman-Stille

Congratulations to everyone!

For more information, see the Aurora Awards website.

“Our Villains, Ourselves: On SF, Villainy, and… Margaret Atwood?”

SF Canada Member Greg Bechtel’s semi-autobiographical essay on Margaret Atwood, Sad/Rabid Puppies, and villainy appears in Issue 5 of the grad student journal The Word Hoard. The essay examines SF writers’ sense of ourselves as noble “outsiders” to mainstream culture and literature, and how our aggrieved frustration with this perceived outsider-ness–while not entirely imaginary–may also reveal something about us as both SF writers and an SF community. In it, he argues that our choice of imaginary villains (and how we respond to them), may reveal more about us than we might like to admit, and that it may be productive–even necessary–to recognize the ways that even our “real world” villains are often largely imaginary.

You can download the .pdf of Greg’s essay at this link.

To download and read other articles or the entirety of this issue of The Word Hoard, visit the website here.

Greg is currently busy reviewing submissions for Tesseracts Twenty-One with co-editor Rhonda Parrish. You can find his website at http://gregbechtel.ca/.

EssentialEdits.ca

SF Canada member Robert Runté has recently launched a new companion editing company to SFeditor.ca: EssentialEdits.ca.

Essential Edits is a collective of several editors who share work so that we can better match the client and their project to the right editor. Essential Edits offers services for general fiction, speculative fiction, and memoir, as well as coaching services to help writers identify issues that are slowing their writing progress or preventing them from finishing work. In addition, Essential Edits offers help in the non-fiction department, with theses or dissertations, non-fiction books, journal submissions, and research writing.

Teachers and instructors can also access assistance with test construction and editing as well as teaching and assessment help.

SF Canada Members on Alberta Book Awards Shortlists

The recently-released shortlist for the 2014 Alberta Book Awards features a number of SF Canada members.

Sherry D. Ramsey’s debut novel, One’s Aspect to the Sun, published by Tyche Books, is one of three titles shortlisted in the Book of the Year – Speculative Fiction category.

Another Tyche title in this category is Masked Mosaic, an anthology of Canadian superhero tales. SFC contributors to the anthology include Claude Lalumiere (co-editor), David Perlmutter, Marie Bilodeau, Michael Matheson, Mike Rimar, Rhea Rose, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

SFC member Simon Rose’s non-fiction work, Canada in World War I: Roots of the Conflict, published by Weigl Educational Publishers, has also been shortlisted in the Education Book category.

The award recipients in ten categories will be announced during the Alberta Book Awards Gala on Friday, June 6, at the Fairmont Palliser Hotel in Calgary. Awards for Publisher of the Year, Book Illustration, and Lifetime Achievement will also be presented.

Full details of the awards and finalists can be found on the BPAA website at http://bookpublishers.ab.ca/

One's Aspect to the SunMaskedMosaicrootsoftheconflict

Third Person Press Launches Indiegogo Campaign

Grey Area front cover July112013Third Person Press, a small, independent press based on Cape Breton Island, NS, has recently launched an Indiegogo campaign in support of its upcoming release, Grey Area: 13 Ghost Stories. SFC member Sherry D. Ramsey is one-third of the press’s editorial staff, and explains the signficiance of the campaign:

The benefit of crowd-funding platforms, like Indiegogo campaigns, is that they provide up-front funding so that small, independent creators can avoid heavy debt loads and reliance on funding avenues that may dry up in the future.

Third Person Press’s mission is to find, nurture, publish, promote and pay regional writers of speculative fiction. We think we’re filling a niche in a way that lets new and established voices share their stories with a wider audience.

The Grey Area campaign includes perks such as laminated bookmarks, spooky post cards (“ghost cards”), print and/or ebook copies of Grey Area and the other titles from Third Person Press, limited-edition handmade jewelry, and original artwork. Special rewards for writers include online writing courses, editing services, and cover art. All perks are transferable; supporters can double their good karma by donating and giving the perks to someone else as a gift. Everyone will receive an acknowledgement of thanks with their name listed on the Third Person Press website and Facebook page as well as having the satisfaction of having encouraged and literally supported regional SFF writers.

The campaign runs until September 15th. All the details and the campaign video are on the main page here: http://igg.me/at/grey-area/x/1156437