Year-End Short Speculative Fiction Roundup: An Overview of Awards Eligibility Season

If you travel the subject fabrication and phantasy assemblage connected Twitter, Mastodon, Hive, Post — however galore are determination now? — oregon immoderate different societal media platform, you whitethorn person noticed caller threads wherever authors database their “awards eligible” enactment that published oregon has yet to beryllium published successful 2022. You whitethorn person besides noticed galore literate magazines posting nominees connected their societal media platforms, from Pushcart nominations to Best Microfiction and Best of the Net anthologies. I’ve written astir immoderate of these anthologies successful the past.

In precocious fall, usually sometime successful November, writers and literate magazines statesman to station these awards eligible works and grant nominations. This kickstarts the grant play for overmuch of the literate and subject fabrication and phantasy (SFF) community, particularly successful regards to abbreviated fiction.

But what does each this mean for you? Allow maine to shed immoderate airy connected this yearly tradition. 

This station volition absorption mostly connected the SFF community, but I volition interaction connected literate fabrication and horror, arsenic those are some communities and genres that person their ain awards. It’s besides important to enactment that determination is overlap, which is amazing. Many talented writers nutrient superb enactment crossed genres, and they’ll station their eligibility for the Nebula oregon Stoker awards portion besides being nominated for Pushcarts, which is much of a literate prize. Yes, that’s however badass they are. As I’ve said successful erstwhile posts erstwhile it comes to genre: The limits bash not exist!

Awards Eligibility: What Is It?

Let’s footwear it disconnected by laying immoderate groundwork. What is an awards eligibility thread? What are each these abbreviated fabrication roundups, recommended speechmaking lists, and longlists for?

To punctuation the talented writer and reviewer Maria Haskins, “an eligibility station is simply a database of the enactment you had published successful the existent year.” While immoderate whitethorn lone station works that are SFWA-qualifying oregon pro-paying, Haskins is close successful that all enactment published is valid. Own your work, writers!

These grant eligibility posts are looking up to next year. So the threads and posts you spot present are for awards announced successful 2023. Many magazines, similar Uncanny, will station each their eligible enactment for the year. Notable and emerging authors alike volition thread the abbreviated stories, novelettes, novellas, and/or novels they published, galore of them besides putting this database successful an easy-to-find blog station connected their writer website oregon Patreon.

I had the pleasance of interviewing A.C. Wise, renown abbreviated fabrication writer and writer of the novels Wendy, Darling and Hooked, astir awards eligibility season. Wise is 1 of a fistful of radical who annually compiles a large database of authors and their awards eligibility posts, successful summation to their ain eligible work.

“Year-end roundups and grant eligibility posts are a fantastic mode for authors to stock what they’ve published, and an fantabulous mode for readers (and peculiarly folks who enactment successful grant nominations) to drawback up connected what they mightiness person missed,” Wise said. “It’s besides a bully mode for authors to bespeak connected what they’ve accomplished successful a fixed year.”

Not lone writers bash station award-eligible enactment — truthful bash fan-writers, artists, podcasters, crippled writers and designers, and genre journalists. In SFF, these are each categories that tin beryllium considered for awards specified arsenic the Nebulas, Hugos, Ignyte awards, and more.

There are pros and cons to posting/tweeting eligibility enactment and nominations successful November, though. One con is that the attraction fixed to these eligible posts neglect issues and enactment published successful precocious November and aboriginal December. So support speechmaking those end-of-year issues and books published successful November and December!

Where to Find and Read Awards Eligible Work

It’s casual to get buried amidst each the 2022 released work, and abbreviated fiction, especially, is casual to overlook. For each the novels published successful 2022, determination are multitudes much novellas, novelettes, and abbreviated fabrication published successful magazines, from indie to pro-paying.

“Indeed, it’s casual for abbreviated fabrication to get overlooked, adjacent though there’s truthful overmuch astonishing abbreviated fabrication retired there,” Wise said. “Eligibility threads counterbalance that somewhat. I would besides promote anyone and everyone to stock the abbreviated fabrication they enjoy, either passim the year, oregon astatine the extremity of the year. Word of rima is 1 of the champion ways for folks to observe new-to-them stories and authors.”

When it comes to abbreviated fabrication shared and enjoyed passim the year, determination are a fewer publications, blogs, and reappraisal sites wherever 1 tin statesman uncovering awards-eligible work.

Short Fiction Reviews

Author Site Compilations

Newsletters & Patreons

Another large mode to to observe caller stories is to subscribe to your favourite writers’ newsletters and work astir them gushing implicit the enactment they discover. This is the connection of rima magic that Wise mentioned. There are a bazillion newsletters retired there, acold excessively galore to database here, but I’ll see a fistful of my idiosyncratic favorites, which scope crossed genre, from SFF to literate fiction. The cardinal takeaway present is to hunt for your favourite writers online and spot if they person a newsletter oregon a Patreon you tin support. If so, subscribe away.

• Peacock, Mantis, Shrimp by K.C. Mead-Brewer
• Why Be Happy When You Could Be Writing by Amber Sparks
• essay atlas by Cassie Mannes Murray
• With Love & Squalor by Esmé Weijun Wang
• South Indian Fugue State by M.L. Krishnan
• Author Newsletter by Natalia Theodoridou
• Genre Grapevine by Jason Sanford

Keep Reading, Keep Sharing

Finally, with the chaos and uncertainty that’s been Twitter, it does bring into question what mightiness beryllium the champion mode to stock the stories we enjoy, particularly successful regards to abbreviated fiction. Not that Twitter has been cleanable by immoderate means, but it has been a mainstay for galore genre readers and writers to stock work. Wise describes the complications:

“To a degree, Twitter has ever felt somewhat ephemeral, and it’s casual to miss posts amidst the sheer volume,” Wise said. “The Twitter algorithm besides tends to item definite tweets and hide others, truthful it’s not ever perfect for discoverability, oregon arsenic a lasting root to notation erstwhile radical are looking for what works are eligible.”

Whether oregon not you usage Twitter, it is important to stock the enactment you bask whenever you find it. On immoderate societal media platform, oregon successful texts to your household and friends, gush astir the stories that animate you. Because that is however they go much than conscionable eligible enactment — by sharing, they go beloved. Maybe adjacent nominated.

So, hopefully, with the supra lists, you are well-equipped to commencement your year-end speechmaking journey. If you are eligible to ballot successful immoderate of the upcoming awards — Nebulas, Hugos, Ignyte, Stokers, etc. — hopefully this volition assistance successful your hunt to uncovering large work. Keep speechmaking and sharing, my darlings.