Last night I attended the Aurealis Awards presentation, held for the first time in Sydney. Now I’m very tired and recovering from a hangover, so this won’t be a long post. It was great to catch up with so many friends again and celebrate the strength of speculative fiction in Australia. I’ll post a list of the winners below.
I had an additional honour in that I got to receive an award on behalf of someone that couldn’t be there. The Kris Hembury Encouragement Award this year went to Jodi Cleghorn, writer and publisher. You might recognise the name as I’ve blogged here a fair bit about 100 Stories For Queensland, that Jodi was instrumental in organising and publishing through her eMergent Publishing label. She also has a story of her own in Dead Red Heart, the anthology of Australian vampire stories from Ticonderoga Publications, which I’ve also blogged about as I have a story in there too. So I’ve been crossing paths a fair bit with Jodi over the last couple of years and it was my absolute pleasure to be able to receive the award on her behalf last night. She really deserved it. She didn’t know anything about it, and came back from a camping trip this morning to a flood of congratulations that completely spun her out. That’s what awards should be like!
The full winners list is as follows:
KRIS HEMBURY ENCOURAGEMENT AWARD: Jodie Cleghorn
PETER MCNAMARA CONVENORS’ AWARD: Helen Merrick
BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL: Transformation Space by Marianne de Pierres
BEST SCIENCE FICTION SHORT STORY: “The Heart of a Mouse” by K.J. Bishop
BEST FANTASY NOVEL: Power and Majesty by Tansy Rayner Roberts
BEST FANTASY SHORT STORY [TIE]: “The February Dragon” by L.L. Hannett & Angela Slatter and “Yowie” by Thoraiya Dyer
BEST HORROR NOVEL: Madigan Mine by Kirstyn McDermott
BEST HORROR SHORT STORY: “The Fear” by Richard Harland
BEST ANTHOLOGY: Wings of Fire, Edited by Jonathan Strahan and Marianne S. Jablon
BEST COLLECTION: The Girl With No Hands by Angela Slatter
BEST ILLUSTRATED BOOK/GRAPHIC NOVEL: Changing Ways: Book 1 by Justin Randall
BEST YOUNG ADULT NOVEL: Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey
BEST YOUNG ADULT SHORT STORY: “A Thousand Flowers” by Margo Lanagan
BEST CHILDREN’S FICTION(told primarily through pictures): The Boy and the Toy, Sonya Hartnett (writer) & Lucia Masciullo (illustrator)
BEST CHILDREN’S FICTION (told primarily through words): The Keepers, Lian Tanner
You can find out more about the awards and a full list of this year’s nominees at the Aurealis Awards site. Congratulations to all the nominees and winners.
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[...] or read the winners list below, courtesy of Alan Baxter [...]