Tiptree – We Have A Winner

Email arriving overnight announcing the results of this year’s James Tiptree Jr. Award which, as most of you will know, rewards “works of science fiction or fantasy that explore and expand our understanding of gender and gender roles”.

The winner this year is When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore, and a very fine winner it is too. I reviewed it here. It is beautifully written, and managed to teach me something about trans history as well.

Given how young McLemore is, I’m sure that she’s going to go on to produce some fabulous books in the future and I’m very much looking forward to reading them. This one is very personal for her, so I don’t know that we’ll see anything more quite like it, but you never know.

As regular Tiptree watchers will know, the award also produced an Honor List of books that didn’t quite appeal to the jury as much as the winner, and a Long List of other recommended reads. This year’s Honor List looks like this:

  • Hwarhath Stories, Eleanor Arnason
  • Borderline, Mishell Baker
  • “Opals and Clay”, Nino Cipri
  • Will Do Magic for Small Change, Andrea Hairston
  • “The Night Bazaar for Women Becoming Reptiles”, Rachael K. Jones
  • Every Heart a Doorway, Seanan McGuire
  • Too Like the Lightning, Ada Palmer
  • The Core of the Sun, Johanna Sinisal
  • Everfair, Nisi Shawl

I’ve read several of those and found them all very interesting. A couple are on my Hugo ballot.

For more details about the winner and Honor List, and for the Long List (which also has some very good books on it), see the official Tiptree website.

Tucked away at the bottom of the press release is information about the jury. It says:

Each year, a panel of five jurors selects the Tiptree Award winner. The 2016 judges were Jeanne Gomoll (chair), Aimee Bahng, James Fox, Roxanne Samer, and Deb Taber.

Reading for 2017 will soon begin. The panel consists of Alexis Lothian (chair), E.J. Fischer, Kazue Harada, Cheryl Morgan, and Julia Starkey.

So I guess that’s official now. I shall have more to say about that in a day or two. For now I’m just saying a huge thank you to the Motherboard for this honor.

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