Speculative Literature News
News from the Speculative Literature writing community, including items from Locus Magazine, SFWA, etc. Please contact us if you would like to suggest a news source.
The shortlist for the 2025 Branford Boase Award for children’s books has been announced.
The 6-title shortlist features titles of genre interest, including:
- Peregrine Quinn and the Cosmic Realm, Ash Bond (Piccadilly)
- All the Hidden...
The winners of the 2025 Sir Julius Vogel Awards have been announced by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand (SFFANZ).
Best Novel
- WINNER: Echoes of Earthshine, Mel Harding-Shaw (Coruscate)
- A...
Author Nancy Kilpatrick, 78, died March 31, 2025. She was best known for her vampire fiction.
She was born May 6, 1946 in Philadelphia PA to parents George Christopoulos & Viola Hopkins and attended Temple University. After living in San Francisco and Chicago, she settled in Montreal...
Seattle Worldcon has announced that online voting for “the 2025 Hugo Awards, the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, and the Astounding Award for Best New Writer” is now open.
WSFS members can access the Hugo Awards voter packet and cast their ballot by logging in to the...
The 2025 Guggenheim Fellows have been announced by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Authors of genre interest announced as fellows include Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Marie-Helene Bertino, Sheila Heti, Miranda July, and Jonathan Lethem. Fellowships were awarded to 198...
The New York Public Library has announced its Young Lions Fiction Award finalists for 2025. Titles of genre interest in the five-title list include Ghostroots by ‘Pemi Aguda.
The $10,000 prize is awarded “each year to an American writer aged 35 or younger for...
Neil Gaiman has filed a demand for arbitration against Caroline Wallner, the woman who accused him of sexual misconduct while she lived on his property in...
Notice from the SFWA Board of Directors:
Recently, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) was contacted in regards to contracts potentially being offered to writers submitting to a variety of magazines including Analog, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and...
The six-title shortlists for the Jhalak Prizes have been announced. The shortlists include titles and authors of genre interest, such as My Friends by Hisham Matar (Viking) in the Prose category and Mayowa and the Sea of Words by Chibundu Onuzo (Bloomsbury) and...
The Horror Writers Association (HWA) has announced the recipients of its 2025 Specialty Awards.
Mocha Memoirs Press is the recipient of the Specialty Press Award, given “to a specialty publisher whose work has substantially contributed to the horror genre, whose publications display...
The shortlist for the inaugural PEN Presents x International Booker Prize has been announced. Titles, authors, and translators of genre interest include:
- YZ Chin for the translation of Storied Ruins, Teng Kuan Kiat
- Nayereh Doosti for the translation of ...
The shortlist for the 2025 Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, honoring the best SF/F work published in France in 2024, has been announced.
French Novel
- Les Nuits sans Kim Sauvage, Sabrina Calvo (La Volte)
- La Maison des...
Australian SF writer, critic, and scholar Damien Broderick, 80, died April 20, 2025 in Portugal. Broderick wrote over 70 books of fiction, non-fiction, and criticism.
Damien Francis Broderick was born April 22, 1944 in Melbourne Australia. He earned a PhD in the semiotics of fiction at...
Organization Overview
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization for published writers and industry professionals in the field of science fiction, fantasy, and related genres. Founded in 1965, SFWA runs the annual Nebula...
The winners of the 2024 British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Awards have been announced.
Best Novel
- WINNER: Three Eight One, Aliya Whiteley (Solaris)
- Calypso, Oliver K. Langmead (...
The 2025 Philip K. Dick Award winner has been announced: Time’s Agent by Brenda Peynado, with special citation for Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The award is presented annually to a distinguished work of science fiction originally published in paperback form in the...
Winners for the 2025 Premio Italia Awards have been announced, honoring accomplishments in the field of Italian fantasy and science fiction.
International Novel
- WINNER: L’eredità di Charlie [Starter Villain], John Scalzi (Fanucci...
The 2025 Aurora Awards ballot for works by Canadians has been announced. The Aurora Awards are nominated by members of the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association. The top five nominated works were selected, with additional works included when there was a tie for fifth place.
...
The Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS) has announced the five finalists for the Best Novel category of the Prometheus Awards, honoring “thematically pro-liberty” works published in 2024.
- Alliance Unbound, C.J. Cherryh & Jane S. Fancher (DAW) ...
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) has announced Eugen Bacon is the recipient of the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award “for distinguished contributions to the science fiction and fantasy community.”
The Solstice Award, created in 2008 and given at the...
The 2024 Aurealis Awards shortlist, recognizing the best in Australian speculative fiction, has been announced.
Best Science Fiction Novel
- Transported, Kate Fitzpatrick (New Found)
- Inheritance, Genevieve Gannon (...
Finalists for the 2025 Sir Julius Vogel Awards have been announced by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand (SFFANZ).
Best Novel
- A New God, Menilik Henry Dyer (Podium)
- Echoes of Earthshine, Mel...
by Ira Nayman
A few years ago, I was on a panel on Humorous SF at a convention (an occupational hazard, given what I write). I opened with well-rehearsed remarks about how there seemed to be a resistance to my beloved subgenre among major publishers. Before I could get...
The 41st Writers of the Future Awards and 36th Illustrators of the Future Awards gala event took place on April 10, 2025 at the Taglyan Complex in Los Angeles CA.
The Writers of the Future Golden Pen Award went to Randyn C.J. Bartholomew for story “Ascii”, and the Illustrators...
AWARDS
ISABEL ALLENDE won the 2025 Bodley Medal, awarded annually by the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University to “individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the worlds of books and literature, libraries, media and communications, science and...
The winners of the 2025 Fan Activity Achievement Awards (FAAns) were announced at Corflu 42, held April 11-13, 2025 in Las Vegas, NV.
Best Personal Zine
- This Here…
Best Genzine
- Banana Wings
...
The 2025 Whiting Award winners have been announced, including SF writer Elwin Cotman, one of four winners in the Fiction category.
The ten winners are identified as “emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama,” and each receives a $50,000 grant. The award was...
The house of artist, Hugo Award winner and base designer, and SFF community member Sara Felix exploded on April 13, 2025. The Austin Fire Department described the house as “completely leveled,” according to My San Antonio. Felix and her children were not inside the house at the time...
Hugo and British Fantasy Award-winner Sarah Gailey will be joining us as a Guest of Honor at the Locus Awards Weekend on June 21, 2025, in Oakland, California! We’re absolutely thrilled to welcome them. Gailey joins fellow Guest of Honor Tochi Onyebuchi and a lineup of amazing local creators for...
The Locus Awards team is so pleased to announce Guest of Honor Tochi Onyebuchi will be at the June 21, 2025 event in Oakland California. Onyebuchi has won Ignyte, World Fantasy, and New England Book Awards for his fiction, and has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and NAACP Image...
Welcome to the April edition of the SFWA Market Report.
Please note: Inclusion of any venue in this report does not indicate an official endorsement by SFWA. Those markets included on this list pay at least $0.08/word USD in at least one category of fiction. This...
The American Booksellers Association (ABA) has released an article that covers the U.S. “reciprocal tariffs” announced on April 2 and the expected effects on the publishing industry. A summary of the information follows:
The April tariffs, which follow February tariffs on...
The US Naval Academy’s library has removed 381 books from its collection after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office ordered the school to remove works promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The list largely consists of books that discuss race and gender. It includes...
The Romantic Novelists’ Association (RNA) has announced the shortlists for the 2025 Romantic Novel Awards. Titles and authors of genre interest include:
The Fantasy Romantic Novel Award
- The Love of Her Lives, C.J. Connolly (Joffe)...
The Horror Writers Association (HWA) has announced David Cronenberg, Dame Susan Elizabeth Hill, and Del and Sue Howison as recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award, presented periodically by the Board of Trustees to “an individual whose work has substantially influenced the horror...
The Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre (ALC) has announced its 2025 Book Award Winners, including Haruki Murakami as Cultural Personality of the Year for the 19th Sheikh Zayed Book Award (SZBA). The award recognizes “a prominent Arab or international figure (or organization) who has...
The National Space Society (NSS) has announced Joe Haldeman as recipient of the inaugural Arthur C. Clarke Memorial Award “for inspiring and educating the public about humanity’s journey to space.”
Haldeman will also be a featured guest at the 43rd International Space...
The Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS) has announced that The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills (Tachyon) is the 43rd winner of the Compton Crook Award.
The other finalists were:
- The Stars Too Fondly, Emily Hamilton (Harper Voyager...
The six-title shortlist for the 2025 International Booker Prize has been announced, with works of genre interest including On the Calculation of Volume (Book 1) by Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara J. Haveland (Faber), and Under the Eye of the Big Bird by...
The shortlist for the 2025 Dinesh Allirajah Prize for Short Fiction has been announced. The prize is “open to both published and unpublished writers and aims to seek out the best established and up and coming voices in the form.” The theme for the 2025 prize was “The Unspoken...
Finalists for the 16th annual Xingyun Awards for Chinese science fiction were announced by the World Chinese Science Fiction Association. Titles have been translated by Hu Shaoyan.
Best Novel
- The Planetary Rites, An Hao (New Star)
- ...
Author Kerry Greenwood, 70, died March 26, 2025. She was best known for her historical mystery series about Phryne Fisher, adapted as TV series Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, but she also wrote SF, along with historical fiction, books for young adults, and plays.
...
Seattle Worldcon 2025 has announced the Hugo Awards Base will be designed by Joy Alyssa Day, a professional glass sculpture artist.
Day specializes in blown glass sculptures that incorporate space elements and has designed awards for the aerospace, science, art, and literary communities....
Finalists for the Hugo Awards, the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, and the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book have been announced by Seattle Worldcon 2025, the 83rd World Science Fiction Convention. There were 1,738 valid nominating ballots received and counted from members of the...
Bestselling fantasy writer Terry Brooks announced his semi-retirement from writing in a post on his website and social media March 8, 2025. He also announced that author Delilah Dawson will become his co-author on the Shannara series going forward.
Brooks wrote,
Let’s start with a...
Winners of the 2025 Writers Guild Awards were announced February 15, 2025 during a ceremony at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills CA.
Winners of genre interest include Nickel Boys in the Adapted Screenplay category, based on the book by Colson Whitehead, and...
