Using Awards Lists As a RA Tool: World Fantasy Awards Edition [with Bonus Must Watch Speech by Scott Edelman on EDI]

Last weekend, the World Fantasy Convention gave out their awards.

Again, as I have said many times before and for the first time here, Awards lists- of both nominees and winners- are one of your best RA and Collection Development resources.

Again, read here for how and why to use these lists to keep your collections up to date and your suggestions fresh and inclusive [since many of the award winners include diverse voices].

But this World Fantasy convention also featured comics legend and speculative fiction author Scott Edelman as a Guest of Honor. Scott is one of those people who goes to almost every convention. He is a walking encyclopedia of knowledge for the entire comics and speculative fiction industry and an amazing writer. He also hosts the original and engaging podcast Eating the Fantastic with the premise that he takes speculative fiction authors out for a meal and records their conversation while they eat. The result is fascinating. Scott is an easy person to talk to anyway [I have met him a few times], he is brilliant both in general and with his experience and knowledge in the industry, and he asks great questions.

He gets his interviewees to open up and really look deeply into their work. And, he has one of the most inclusive and diverse cast of interviewees I have ever seen in a book centric podcast. Again, click here for the show notes for all episodes.

Scott is a white male who admits his privilege, openly and freely. But, he uses his position as a respected elder statesman for good and gives voice to those who traditionally have been left out of the larger conversations.

Last weekend, he used his Guest of Honor speaking time to take that issue head on. Here is the video of the entire speech. From Scott himself:

On the afternoon of November 3, 2018, I gave a Guest of Honor speech at the World Fantasy Convention in Baltimore, Maryland, in which I shared a few things I've learned about conventions after 48 years of living my life there — what they’ve been, what they are, what they could be, and what they should be. (Please visit http://www.scottedelman.com/2018/11/0... for a transcript.)

Please watch this video. It is about inclusion and diversity and mentorship. It is about those with privilege reaching out to those without. It is about creating a welcoming environment for all at Cons. It is about truly being inclusive in all aspects of your Con- from accessibility, to diverse voices, to gender issues. He literally includes it all. But it is also about being this way in life. Being a good human all of the time. And it is all delivered with Scott's signature style: he is kind, the words are well written, and he is also not going to take no for an answer, yet he never chastises the viewer; he simply tells it like it is. This is not an idea he is presenting for consideration, it is how the world needs to be...all the time...for all.

Yay Scott.

Show this video to your coworkers. This would be a wonderful continuing education exercise for all staff, especially if you are planning any Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion training in your libraries, Scott's speech is a wonderful starting point to launch discussions precisely because of how he delivers it.

Now to the awards. Full report below via Tor.com

The winners for the 2018 World Fantasy Awards have been announced! This year’s awards ceremony was held at the World Fantasy Convention in Baltimore, MD with the theme of “Port in a Storm,” and included a celebration of the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Charles de Lint and Elizabeth Wollheim were honored with Lifetime Achievement Awards.

The full list of nominees follows, with winners in bold.

To be eligible, all nominated material must have been published in 2017 or have a 2017 cover date. Nominations came from two sources. Members of the current convention as well as the previous two were able to vote two nominations onto the final ballot. The remaining nominations came from the panel of judges. For this year’s awards, the judges were David Anthony Durham, Christopher Golden, Juliet E. McKenna, Charles Vess, and Kaaron Warren.

NOVEL

• Winner (Tie): The Changeling by Victor LaValle (Spiegal & Grau)
• Winner (Tie): Jade City by Fonda Lee (Orbit)
• The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty (Harper Voyager)
• Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymir by John Crowley (Saga Press)
• The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss (Saga Press)
• Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory (Bond Street Books CA/Knopf US/Riverrun UK)

LONG FICTION (10,000 to 40,000 words)

• Winner: Passing Strange by Ellen Klages (Tor.com)
• The Teardrop Method by Simon Avery (TTA Press)
• In Calabria by Peter S. Beagle (Tachyon Publications)
• Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones (Tor.com)
• The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang (Tor.com)

SHORT FICTION (under 10,000 words)

• Winner: “The Birding: A Fairy Tale” by Natalia Theodoridou (Strange Horizons, Dec. 18, 2017)
• “Old Souls” by Fonda Lee (Where the Stars Rise: Asian Science Fiction and Fantasy)
• “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™” by Rebecca Roanhorse (Apex Magazine, Aug. 2017)
• “Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand” by Fran Wilde (Uncanny Magazine, Sept.-Oct. 2017)
• “Carnival Nine” by Caroline Yoachim (Beneath Ceasless Skies, May 11, 2017)

ANTHOLOGY

• Winner: The New Voices of Fantasy, edited by Peter S. Beagle and Jacob Weisman (Tachyon Publications)
• Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales, edited by Ellen Datlow (Pegasus Books)
• The Book of Swords, edited by Gardner Dozois (Bantam Books US/Harper Voyager UK)
• The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories, edited by Mahvesh Murad & Jared Shurin (Solaris)
• The Best of Subterranean edited by William Schafer (Subterranean Press)

COLLECTION

• Winner: The Emerald Circus by Jane Yolen (Tachyon Publications)
• Wicked Wonders by Ellen Klages (Tachyon Publications)
• Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado (Graywolf Press)
• Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers by Tim Powers (Baen Books)
• Tender by Sofia Samatar (Small Beer Press)

ARTIST

• Winner: Gregory Manchess
• Victo Ngai
• Omar Rayyan
• Rima Staines
• Fiona Staples

SPECIAL AWARD – PROFESSIONAL

• Winner: Harry Brockway, Patrick McGrath, and Danel Olson for Writing Madness (Centipede Press)
• C. C. Finlay, for F&SF editing
• Irene Gallo, for Art Direction at Tor Books and Tor.com
• Greg Ketter, for DreamHaven Books
• Leslie Klinger, for The New Annotated Frankenstein (Liveright Publishing Corp.)

SPECIAL AWARD – NON-PROFESSIONAL

• Winner: Justina Ireland and Troy L. Wiggins, for FIYAH: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction
• Scott H. Andrews, for Beneath Ceaseless Skies: Literary Adventure Fantasy
• Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali and Jen R Albert, for PodCastle
• Ray B. Russell and Rosalie Parker, for Tartarus Press
• Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, for Uncanny Magazine

LIFE ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

• Charles de Lint
• Elizabeth Wollheim