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Finalists Announced for the 2018 World Fantasy Awards

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Leah Rachel von Essen

Senior Contributor

Leah Rachel von Essen reviews genre-bending fiction for Booklist, and writes regularly as a senior contributor at Book Riot. Her blog While Reading and Walking has over 10,000 dedicated followers over several social media outlets, including Instagram. She writes passionately about books in translation, chronic illness and bias in healthcare, queer books, twisty SFF, and magical realism and folklore. She was one of a select few bookstagrammers named to NewCity’s Chicago Lit50 in 2022. She is an avid traveler, a passionate fan of women’s basketball and soccer, and a lifelong learner. Twitter: @reading_while

Finalists for the 2018 World Fantasy Awards have been announced. These awards honor fiction and artists with nominated material published in 2017 or with a 2017 cover date. I am personally excited to see many books that fellow friends and I adored nominated, including Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin for The Djinn Falls in Love, Carmen Maria Machado for Her Body and Other Parties, and Sofia Samatar for Tender: Stories.

World Fantasy Awards StatueThe first World Fantasy Convention was held in Rhode Island in 1975. Last year was the first that the Awards had a newly designed trophy, and it honored many SFF greats. This year’s winners will be announced at the World Fantasy Convention, which is November 1–4, 2018, in Baltimore. The theme this year is “Port in a Storm,” which will include celebrating the 200th anniversary of the science fiction classic, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. 

NOVEL

  • 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)
  • The Changeling by Victor LaValle (Spiegal & Grau)
  • Jade City by Fonda Lee (Orbit)

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

    SHORT FICTION (under 10,000 words)

    • “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)
    • “The Birding: A Fairy Tale” by Natalia Theodoridou (Strange Horizons, Dec. 18, 2017)
    • “Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand” by Fran Wilde (Uncanny Magazine, Sept.–Oct. 2017)
    • “Carnival Nine” by Caroline Yoachim (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, May 11, 2017)

    ANTHOLOGY

    COLLECTION

    ARTIST

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

    SPECIAL AWARD – PROFESSIONAL

    • 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

    • Scott H. Andrews, for Beneath Ceaseless Skies: Literary Adventure Fantasy
    • Justina Ireland and Troy L. Wiggins, for FIYAH: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction
    • Khaalidah Muhammed-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