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Winners of the French-language Prix Boréal have been announced.

Best Novel

• WINNER (TIE): Du ventre des montagnes, Fanie Demeule (Québec Amérique)
• WINNER (TIE): Entre nos mains, Elisabeth Vonarburg (Alire)

• Vespérale, Raphaëlle B. Adam & Ariane Gélinas (Alire)
• La maison du rang Lynch, Alexie Morin (Le Quartanier)
• L'herbe naïve, Esther Rochon (Alire)

Best Short Story

• WINNER: Autres Temps autres mers , Marie Labrousse (Solaris …Read More

David Shelley will give up his current role as head of an English language management structure on January 1 2027 to become executive chair of Hachette UK and Hachette Book Group. Accordingly, Ben Sevier is taking over as CEO of Hachette Book Group, moving on from his position as president and publisher of Grand Central Publishing.

Sevier stated, My decade leading the spectacularly talented teams across the Grand Central Publishing …Read More

Penguin Random House UK has announced an imprint for the new adult reader category, Dusk, focusing on romance, fantasy and crossover fiction. Carmen McCullough and Amina Parchment-Youssef will lead the imprint, which expects to publish it's first titles fall 2026.

McCullough told The Bookseller, Some of the most exciting energy in publishing today is coming from a generation of readers who don't see themselves, or their reading tastes, in traditional …Read More

The winners of the 2026 Colorado Book Awards were revealed at a ceremony located in Denver CO on September 26, 2026. Titles and authors of genre interest in categories with winners of genre interest include:

Science Fiction/Fantasy

• WINNER: Scorched Skies, E.J. Mellow (Montlake)

• Godwaker, Kendra Merritt (Blue Fyre)
• Redneck Revenant, David Slayton (Blackstone)

Mystery, Thriller & Horror

• WINNER: This is My Body, Lindsay King-Miller (Quirk)
…Read More

We, the Fleet by Alex T. Singer (Clarkesworld 5/25) is the winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best short science fiction story, presented by the J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction.

The second-place runner up was The Sack of Burley Cottage by Rich Larson (Reactor6/25/25). The third-place runner up was The Shadow on the Nest by Alaya Dawn …Read More

by Josh Heath

Read by the author  

Writing for games is a lot of fun. I’ve written a lot in the tabletop RPG industry, and a little bit on the video game side of things too. One of the less fun things is contracts. Your contract (you have one, right?) is probably the most important piece of paperwork you have. Your contract should lay out a lot of things (such as payment), and it should be very clear about who owns the intellectual property (IP) you are developing. A lot of creators over the years (in comics, TV, games, etc.) have not realized they were Work for Hire or Work Made for Hire and didn’t know what that means. Or they did know and are a little grumpy when they see no residual benefit from their creation years down the line. If you’re looking to work in the games industry, there are some things it’s helpful to know about Work for Hire before you start.

Rights, No Rights, and Things in Between

Most people working in games are contract freelancers, particularly in the TTRPG industry. If you’re one of the few full- or part-time employees working in games, you should also understand if you’re Work for Hire (probably) and how that impacts your ownership (or lack of it) around the things you’re developing. If you write words for someone else, you should always have a contract that details your rights as clearly as possible. This might be included in a standard employee document or it might exist as a separate IP document. 

Work for Hire: Usually No Rights

With a Work for Hire contract, you generally don’t have any rights to the IP you generate. The entity you work for, either an individual or a business, is the one who owns all the rights to the work you’ve developed. Legally speaking, they are the author, not you. There are a lot of nuances when it comes to IP, and I’m not a lawyer, so this is not, and is not intended as, legal advice and is for informational purposes only. My experience here is just from being a writer and a publisher. I’ve been on both sides of the Work for Hire contract.

You might be hired to write 20,000 words about a fantasy town, for example. That town may become super popular with fans. What if a movie or TV show, another game, or toys are made featuring your town? Under a Work for Hire contract, the company you worked for owns that town. It also profits from derivative media, and it can sell those rights in the future.

For a lot of projects, that’s fine. The large majority of games created, particularly in the TTRPG space, never go on to make any meaningful derivative media. When you work for hire, you help create something cool that people get to play in or with, and that gets you credits that often build up into more and more work. Nothing about this is bad. This is how nearly every writer gets their start in the games industry.

What About Rights?

When you create your own work, you own the rights to your creation. Some contracts, even if you work for hire, grant you some rights to your work as well. At minimum, you should always receive the right to credit for your work, even in a Work for Hire situation. Having your name on the product helps you get more work, proves you can work for others, and it’s nice to have your name on the game you helped create. There are some rare instances where ghost writing or non-credit is acceptable, but really, truly, they are so rare that I never recommend them to people. Always get your name on your work.

Contract Clauses to Consider

As a publisher who also works as a contract writer, I try to include a few of these clauses in contracts for my freelancers. You will almost always have to ask for them, but it never hurts to ask. I view these as modifications to a Work for Hire contract; some folks view them as functionally changing the contract into something that isn’t Work for Hire. Either way, it helps you decide if the project is right for you.

• Residual royalties for derivative media: This is often a clause that you can get in a TTRPG project, but much less common in a video game project. Derivative media can mean a lot of things: toys, movies, TV shows, games, cereal—basically anything that uses elements of the IP in a new product. It doesn’t have to be large, but this is a clause I really believe in. Even a 0.5 or 0.1 percent residual on derivative media can net you a lot of money if the project you’re working on hits the big time. I feel like this is a mandatory request, but it certainly isn’t something you’re guaranteed to get. Example clause: “If any derivative media is created using the work of [Writer/You], they will be due a royalty of [X percent] of gross proceeds from that project.” 
• Right to create derivative work: This is somewhat uncommon, but I’ve seen this clause before. It allows you to create additional projects of your own in the world you helped to create. This is particularly useful in TTRPG work, where you may want to develop an adventure, setting book, or support play material that builds on your previous work but doesn’t fit in a product the publisher is producing. Normally, the company who owns the work has the first right to publish it, and they have the right to refuse your publication of any derivative work completely. Example clause: “[Writer] has the right to produce derivative work, like adventures, supplements, and expansions based on their own material created for [Product/Product Line]. [Publisher] has the right to review and deny publication of this material and retains the right to purchase this work from [Writer] at the same or better rate paid for original work and publish said work.”
• Right of return for lack of publication: This is a weirder one, but one I recommend asking for too. In the somewhat rare case that your work never gets used, the right of return for lack of publication allows you to reuse the work you developed. This is particularly valuable if what you wrote is something discrete from the overall project. I did this with the very first TTRPG adventure I wrote. The publisher disappeared months after a successful Kickstarter, and three years later I reclaimed my rights to the adventure and published it. I had to email the publisher to make this request, and per my contract they had a set period to respond. If they had not responded at all, the rights would still have reverted to me. Example clause: “If [Work] is not published within [X Years, X months] then [Writer] may request the right to have their work returned to them without penalty or charge. This request must be made via email to [Address], and if no response is received within [X time] then [Publisher] is assumed to affirm the request. This work may then be published by [Writer] or any other entity, and [Publisher] will have no rights over that work in any form in the future.” There might also be a termination clause that ends the contract in these circumstances.

Hopefully this gives you a solid baseline around understanding your rights under Work for Hire. These sorts of projects are ideal for getting started in game writing. Good luck!

Explore more articles from Writing for Hire

 

Josh Heath is a tabletop games designer and the Chief Operations Officer of High Level Games. www.highlevelgames.ca He has worked for a bunch of different companies, including many work-for-hire situations over the years. He also acts as a coach to new tabletop game designers and writers looking to build relationships and experience in the industry.

The post Who Owns the Rights to the Work? appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

The longlists for the Singapore Literature Prize (SLP) have been announced. Titles and authors of genre interest in the Prose category include:

• The Mystical Mister Kay, Meihan Boey (Epigram)
• The Waiting Room, Choo Yi Feng (Epigram)
• Sister Snake, Amanda Lee Koe (Ecco)
• When They Burned the Butterfly, Wen-yi Lee (Tor)
• Be Your Own Bae, Daryl Qilin Yam (Epigram)
• Utama, Ng Yi-Sheng (Epigram)

The Prose judges are Kamal Al-Solaylee, …Read More

The Bookseller has announced the shortlists for the second annual British Audio Awards, also called the Speakies, a prestigious new awards dedicated to celebrating excellence in audiobooks and audio drama, brought to you byThe BooksellerandThe Stage. Categories, titles, and authors of genre interest include:

Science Fiction & Fantasy

• Femme Feral, Sam Beckbessinger, narrated by Imogen Church (Bloomsbury Archer)
• The Last Starborn Seer, Venetia Constantine, narrated by Maxim Ays …Read More

Union Square & Co. has launched Singularity, a new line of paperback novellas led by Union Square editorial director Mika Kasuga. They plan to publish 10-12 titles each year of high-impact, one-sitting fiction.

Works of genre interest scheduled for Fall 2026 include Zero Lives Remaining by Adam Cesare, a new edition of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison, and The Waiter by Kwan …Read More

The six-title shortlist for the 2026 Booker Prize has been announced, with works and writers of genre interest including The End of Everything byM. John Harrison (Serpent's Tail) and The Disappearers by Marlon James (Riverhead).

Harrison, James, and other shortlisted authors receive£2,500. The winner, to receive £50,000, will be announced November 9, 2026.

For more information, including the complete longlist, see the Booker Prize website.

For previous titles of genre …Read More

by Eowyn Scott

Read by Robert Greenberger

Imagine breaking your arm while backcountry skiing. A hiker finds you, sees your injury, and informs you that skiing is dangerous, so it’s your fault you broke your arm. The hiker might be right, but pointing fingers doesn’t fix your broken arm, and you’ll likely wish they would just go away. Too many people approach climate change conversations like the hiker, focusing on the problem rather than the solution. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Especially not in fiction. 

Audience and Goal

When including climate change in your story, whether as part of worldbuilding or central to the plot, your first step should be to consider your audience and what you want them to take away from your story. Do you want to express your frustration by reminding politicians who’s at fault or do you want to give a climate-anxious reader hope and inspire them to action? 

Yale completed a study on how Americans think about climate change and found that we fall into six categories, going from most aware and most motivated to least aware and least motivated. They call this “Global Warming’s Six Americas.” 

According to Yale’s climate communication website, from 2015 to 2025, “the Disengaged, Doubtful and Dismissive audiences have remained relatively similar in size over the past decade.” And, as of 2025, 69% of Americans fell into the Alarmed, Concerned, and Cautious sections.

Knowing the Disengaged, Doubtful, and Dismissive have remained stable for so long means they likely won’t be changing their mind or reading any climate fiction. So, for our cli-fi audiences, if you are looking to inspire your readers to act, focus on the Alarmed, Concerned, and Cautious because they are the ones who will have the most to gain from your story. Especially because among these groups, many don’t know what to do with their concern.

Less Fear, More Hope

Fear can be a powerful motivator. But as we saw in the Yale study above, more than two-thirds of the country is already afraid. So, consider what it might do to your audience if you lean into hope, rather than piling on more fear.

Don’t avoid showing the impacts of climate change and/or the steps that led to those impacts in your world. Sometimes the pain and struggle must be felt to be believable and have the kind of impact that moves your readers. But the causes should be a smaller percentage of your story. If you focus on the problem rather than the solution, you risk your reader shutting down, or at least shutting your book. If you want readers to feel empowered, give them hope and help them believe they can make a difference.

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy is an excellent example of a complex story that paints a very real picture of the devastating impacts of climate change, but the plot centers on a resilient family doing everything they can to survive, protect one another, and care for the island they inhabit. One of the characters says this very poignant quote: “Maybe we will drown or burn or starve one day, but until then we get to choose if we’ll add to that destruction or if we will care for each other.”

Solutions

Not all cli-fi should be utopian, but it can be an opportunity to showcase creativity and ingenuity. Fantastical solutions can inspire readers to create real-world advancements, much as sci-fi has led to many modern technologies (e.g., digital billboards from Blade Runner and smartphones from Star Trek). Enable people to visualize new possibilities, rather than fearing things they often cannot control.

The solarpunk subgenre showcases thriving societies where technology and nature grow in harmony. We don’t have to choose nature or technology. We can choose both. Becky Chambers’s A Psalm for the Wild-Built depicts characters living harmoniously with nature on a moon after Earth was deemed uninhabitable due to climate catastrophe. However, the tone of the book is calm, contemplative, and hopeful.

If you want readers to build a better world, try showing them what that could look like. 

Genre Superpower

A superpower of sci-fi and fantasy is its ability to tackle tough topics in a digestible and entertaining way, as seen in this Climate Fiction Book List. SFF naturally creates a level of distance between the reader and the subject matter, so when you add suspension of disbelief on top of that, readers are more willing to engage with tough topics that might otherwise be triggering or stressful. 

N.K. Jemison’s Broken Earth trilogy is an example of apocalyptic cli-fi full of natural disasters, but follows characters whose magic allows them to manipulate the earth and fight back. By using a secondary world and infusing it with magic and unrelenting resilience, the story is more digestible than a comparable story would have been in contemporary fiction.

Conclusion

Be intentional with your audience and your goal when including climate change in your writing. Consider how you want to accomplish that goal and then use your genre to your advantage. 

For more resources on writing climate fiction, check out the Good Energy: A Playbook for Screenwriting in the Age of Climate Change. The website is geared toward screenwriters, but its resources could benefit any kind of writer.

Remember, don’t be like the hiker. Rather than enumerating where we went wrong, show how we could get it right. Portray resilient characters who have the power to make their worlds better, and maybe your readers will realize they have that power too.

Explore more articles from Writing from Science

Eowyn Conain Scott has an MFA in Creative Writing for Young People and was a resident at the Dylan Thomas Summer School in Wales. Her essay “Home Bittersweet Home” was a finalist in a Women on Writing essay contest. Her writing is informed by her BS in psychology, passion for the environment, and background as an educator. Eowyn completed NNOCCI’s five-week Climate Communications Crash Course and taught climate science at a research institute for three years. When she’s not writing or running a mentoring program for teens, she’s out exploring nature with her husband and pup.

The post Taking the Catastrophe Out of Climate Change: Using Fiction to Give Readers Hope appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

Longlists for the National Book Awards (NBA) have been announced. Categories, authors, and books of genre interest include:

Fiction

• Paradiso 17, Hannah Lillith Assadi (Knopf)
• Red Ants, Kimberly Blaeser (Counterpoint)
• Pretend You're Dead and I Carry You, Julián Delgado Lopera (Liveright)
• Python's Kiss, Louise Erdrich (Harper)
• The Disappearers, Marlon James (Riverhead)
• Passengers, Alexander Maksik (Europa)
• The Renovation, Kenan Orhan (Farrar, Straus)
• Mad Eden, Morgan Thomas (MCD)

Young …Read More

Montréal 2027, the 85th World Science Fiction Convention, has added Linda D. Addison and Cory Doctorow as guests of honor. Doctorow will be toastmaster for Montréal 2027.

Addison and Doctorow join previously announced guests of honor Chris Barkley, Jeph Jacques, Yves Meynard, and Jo Walton. Montréal 2027 Worldcon will be held September 2-6, 2027 at the Palais des congrès de Montréal in Québec, Canada. For more information, see the …Read More

The National Book Foundation hasannounced that it will present Salman Rushdie with the 2026 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (DCAL) at this year's National Book Awards Ceremony on November 18, 2026. Author Kiran Desai will present the award.

The DCAL Medal was created in 1988 to recognize a lifetime of literary achievement. Prior recipients of genre interest include Ursula K. Le Guin, Toni Morrison, and Walter Mosley. The …Read More

by Will McDermott

Read by Misha Grifka Wander

If you write narrative content for a video, role-playing, or board game—or even write fiction within a game world or for an intellectual property (IP) like Marvel or Star Wars—you will likely be asked to sign a Work for Hire (WFH) contract. These contracts have several major differences from fiction contracts you may have signed when writing your own original fiction. If you’re looking to make the leap from writing original fiction to working within a licensed game or entertainment property, this article will break down some of the differences you can expect to find between writing for yourself versus writing for someone else.

Rights Ownership

Chief among these differences is that you will not own the material you create for that IP. Essentially, you are playing in someone else’s sandbox. WFH contracts almost always stipulate that any materials you deliver under that contract are owned by the license holder upon delivery.

Here is an example taken from such a clause: “Author assigns and transfers all intellectual property rights in the work, and the ownership of and sole rights to the intellectual property rights in the work shall be vested in [COMPANY] from the date of delivery of the work.”

Some WFH contracts will take this a step further by specifying that the WFH contractor freely assigns all rights to the work to the company even when other laws, contracts, or qualifications may say otherwise. Plus, a WFH contract may stipulate you give up your rights to derivative works based on the content delivered. This means later authors working in the IP can freely use any character, locales, plot points, etc. that you created. You no longer own or control their use.

Lastly, some WFH contracts state that revisions are at the sole discretion of the company. Here is an example: The company may “publish, produce, or market work in whatever form or format it deems fit in its entire discretion.”

WFH writers rarely retain any rights to their work, but I have seen one contract that included specific clauses dictating how the author could reprint their story after first use. This involved seeking permission in writing from the company and following their rules about the use of those elements of the story derived from the IP.

Confidentiality Clauses

The other major addition to most WFH contracts is a section on confidentiality. This is especially prevalent in the game industry due to the intense competition between game companies. They must guard their secrets (game titles, release dates, settings, game mechanics, etc.) for many reasons. For example, they don’t want competitors to get wind of an upcoming product and try to beat them to market. They also don’t want to undercut their marketing efforts until the time is right to begin releasing information.

These companies have a vested interest in ensuring that their contractors keep any proprietary information confidential. Here is an example confidentiality clause: “Contractor shall not provide, leak, disclose, or use Confidential Information acquired in connection with this Agreement to any third party without prior written consent.”

The rest of the confidentiality clause details what information is considered confidential (often covering a very broad swathe), when and how much information the contractor can disclose (usually nothing until after the game has been officially announced), and, most importantly, the ramifications and remediation the company may seek if the contractor leaks confidential information. Most often, the immediate result will be termination, but the company could take legal action as well.

Many WFH contracts also demand the contractor return or destroy all confidential information provided to them once the work has been completed. I have rarely seen these clauses enforced, but it is a good idea to remove this material from your physical and digital files at the end of the contract to avoid any unintentional leaks (say if your laptop gets stolen or your files hacked).

Even when you sign a contract with a section on confidentiality, you may also be required to sign a non-disclosure agreement. NDAs are common practice in the game industry and IP tie-in fiction. This topic is discussed in another article in this series, but it’s important to note that NDAs and confidentiality agreements do not prevent you from discussing the contract with your attorney, or any payments or royalties with your accountant.

Other Differences

Rights and confidentiality are the main differences between original fiction and WFH contracts, but here are a few other items to consider: 

• Royalties and scope: Most WFH contracts pay a flat fee for the work, and there will be no provision for royalties. The scope of the work required (500 trivia questions, 100 quest cards, etc.) will be spelled out in the contract or an addendum, along with deadlines. You will often get paid for milestones and/or final delivery, and that will be the end of it. When writing fiction for a game world, you may or may not get royalties depending on the publisher and your status—some tie-in publishers do pay an advance and/or royalties, but not all. 
• Author credit: Whether your name will appear on the game is heavily dependent on the company. Some game companies do not include any credits in their games and attribute the creation of the game to the entire design studio. Other game companies celebrate all contributors on a credits page in the rulebook. Either way, there may be no clause in the contract that ensures your name will be attached to the product.
• Author copies: Many WFH contracts don’t stipulate that you be provided a copy of the game or published product. Many companies do provide these anyway, but you may need to request that copy once it has been published. The common fiction contract practice of providing author copies (especially when the pay is low) is notably absent from WFH contracts. 

Why Sign a WFH Contract

The reality is that if you want to write for the game industry, you will often have to sign a WFH contract. It’s the way that business is done in this industry. The good news is that many game companies seek external writers because they don’t employ staff writers, so there is a decent amount of work out there for contract writers. Plus, the video, board, and role-playing game industries all run on reputation. You will hear about companies that don’t treat their contract writers well. Ask me. I have tales.

Explore more articles from Writing for Hire

Will McDermott turned a love of science fiction and games into a writing career. He has published nine novels, 30 short stories, and helped create numerous worlds, characters, and stories for card, board, and video games. His fiction is often set in gaming universes, including Magic: The Gathering, Warhammer 40K, Renegade Legion Universe, and Mage Wars. Will is known for bringing larger-than-life characters alive, including Warhammer’s Kal Jerico and Mad D’onne, Magic’s Balthor the Stout, and Night Stalker’s Carl Kolchak. Check out willmcdermott.com for more.

The post Work for Hire vs. Fiction Contracts appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

MILESTONES

WENDY N. WAGNER is stepping down as editor-in-chief of Nightmare Magazine and senior editor of Lightspeed to focus on her own writing. Founding editor John Joseph Adams will resume the role at Nightmare starting with the January 2027 issue; in her place, associate publisher Christie Yant will assume the role of senior editor.

 

BOOKS SOLD

C. RHOAD ELLIS sold The Poison Vein, first in the Saga of …Read More

The Sunburst Award Society hasannounced Helen Marshall, author of The Lady, The Tiger and the Girl Who Loved Death (Titan) [amazon / bookshop], as the winner of this year's Sunburst Awardfor Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic.

Other shortlisted works include:

• The Works of Vermin, Hiron Ennes (Tor) amazon / bookshop
• Horsefly, Mireille Gagné, tr. Pablo Strauss (Coach House) amazon / bookshop
• Wild Life, Amanda Leduc (Random …Read More

The Indiana Authors Awards have announced the 2026 winners. The awards celebrate the best books by Indiana authors written in eight different categories and published during the previous two years. Works from the Genre category follow.

Genre

• WINNER: Departure 37, Scott Carson (Artia/Emily Bestler)

• Breath of Oblivion, Maurice Broaddus (Tor)
• Sisters of Fortune, Anna Lee Huber (Kensington)
• Veil, Jonathan Janz (Blackstone)
• The Lost Heiress, Elizabeth Klehfoth (Lake Union)

Winners …Read More

The post 2026 Indiana Authors Award Winners appeared first on Locus.

The HWA (Horror Writers Association) has undergone several changes throughout August and early September. Many of these changes were announced via video message by the organization's president, Lisa Wood, as well as a September 6 text update on their Facebook page.

• Due to timing conflicts with World Fantasy convention, the HWA general meeting has been moved to 3:30pm, October 3.
• Wood stated, We have dissolved the Executive Director position …Read More

  The post Updates from the HWA Board appeared first on Locus.

The August 30 LAcon V WSFS business meeting voted to censure and place bans of varying lengths on four officials for their actions related to the 2023 Worldcon : Dave McCarty, the 2023 Hugo administrator, Yao Chi, a 2023 Hugo co-administrator, Shi Chen, a 2023 Worldcon co-chair, and Ben Yalow, also a 2023 Worldcon co-chair.

According to a recap of the session posted by Business Meeting Chair Jesi Lipp, future …Read More

The post Four Chengdu Worldcon Officials Banned appeared first on Locus.