Good Lord Bird

I'm thrilled to hear that James McBride's new novel, The Good Lord Bird just won the National Book Award! I've always thought he was a terrific fiction writer that didn't quite get his due from the literary establishment.

Miracle at St. Anna (Movie Tie-in) was a good read, an intricate novel of WW2 seen through the eyes of African-American soldiers. I didn't feel the Spike Lee movie did it justice, but I was still happy to see it get made.

Song Yet Sung, his second novel, was wonderful too. Historical again, but with a touch of prophecy and magic. I reviewed it for the Washington Post.

I really enjoyed The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother, his first nonfiction book. It was quite a touching autobiographical work. That one sold a bunch of copies and still does.

That's great, but it's got to be super-great to win the National Book Award, coming out on top of a rather impressive list of candidates. I haven't read it yet, but I know to expect good things.
Congrats, Mr. McBride.

Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Winners

Just wanted to bring your attention to another award announcement. The Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards have just been announced. These are, to quote their own information:

"The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award™ is the first national award presented to published writers of African descent by the national community of Black writers. This award consists of prizes for the highest quality writing in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry."

I've had the pleasure of working with Hurston/Wright quite a bit over the years. They've even been kind enough to throw some award recognition my way on occasion, for which I'm very grateful. This year I'm just a bystander, but I'm impressed by the list of finalists and by the open-mindedness of the judging.

In the Fiction Category, the Finalists were:

Crossbones, by Nuruddin Farah

Silver Sparrow, by Tayari Jones

Mr. Fox, by Helen Oyeyemi

You Are Free: Stories, by Danzy Senna

Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn Ward

Zone One, by Colson Whitehead

Do you know how impressive this list is, and how diverse? It includes a post apocalyptic zombie novel by a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" grant winner, a National Book Award winning novel about a family caught in a hurricane in the Gulf, a short story collection by a Whiting Award winner, a really hard to describe slipstream sounding novel by a British novelist, a very popular coming of age novel from the American South, and a novel by a Somali author who has been translated into seventeen languages!

It's pretty amazing. These six authors could be contenders on any list, but I find something inspiring about them being praised as wonderful works by a distinct voices, each of them successful in the own way.

By the way, Helen Oyeyemi won for Mr. Fox!

Here's a link to the H/W website list of nominees.

World Fantasy Awards

The World Fantasy Conference was great fun, as always. It's one of my favorite cons, and I just love it that walking into the lobby on the first day means greeting friend after friend. I met a ton of new people also, which is a treat. Means I'll have that many more friends to connect with next time!

Of course, I totally failed to take any photos, and I'm not going to exhaustively name drop. (Although, hanging out with the Australian contingent is highly recommended. Garth Nix is absurdly nice for someone that's sold millions of copies. Sean Williams, too.)

I will mention that, to my embarrassment, I had barroom conversation with Lavie Tidhar without 1) congratulating him on being nominated for the World Fantasy Award and 2) somehow managing to forget that I'd just bought his book and was very much looking forward to it. Not good con etiquette. I guess we had other things to talk about, though.

Oh, and then Lavie went on to win the big prize. Congrats, sir.

Okay, so a little name dropping. Not much, though.

Instead, I'll point you toward the WF Award winners. If you haven't checked them out already, take a look HERE.

Liternational Volume I, Issue 2

The new issue of Liternational is live!

They were kind enough to feature me as the guest author this time around. There's an excerpt from The Sacred Band. But you've read that, right?

So instead, go check it out for the other fiction and nonfiction. Looks like they've got some good stuff. And if you're an author yourself, I'd say Liternational is a great place to send your material!

Liternational Contest

Hey, so a weird thing happened. This online magazine, Liternational, asked me if I would be a judge for their fiction contest. I looked them over, corresponded for a bit, and said yes. It's a very new mag, but they look serious and ambitious. I like that.

Weird thing is that once I was on board they asked if they could name the contest after me. That gave me pause. Like... really? You know I'm not dead, right?

I was worried that it would presumptuous of me to accept such an honor, but they talked me into it. There's another judge on the nonfiction side of things, Kristen Iverson, so I'm not alone.

Anyway, if you've got some fiction you'd like to toss into the mix please do. Deadline is soon. I think they're quite open in terms of genre, from literary to work that's in other genres. In fact, I know that they began thinking they'd be mainly literary, but then found that some of the best stuff people were submitting was sff! Go figure. ;)

Sounds like they have a lot of submissions, too, so it's the real deal. No submission fees or any crap like that. So... what's the worst that could happen?

Well, you could win, I guess, and then have my name attached to yours forever! (Picture me cackling.) Details are HERE.

Not Loving Lovecraft

Nnedi Okorafor has a very interesting post regarding the statuette of her recent World Fantasy Award for Best Novel for Who Fears Death.

The statuette is a bust of H.P. Lovecraft. Sound okay to you? Well, it's not so cut and dry if you're an African American. (Or if you're sensitive to the legacy of racism.)

Wonder what I'm talking about? Let Nnedi - with some help from China Mieville - explain.

Who Fears Nnedi?

I was thrilled to learn that Nnedi Okorafor's novel, Who Fears Death, has just won this years World Fantasy Award. Yay, Nnedi! I'm not surprised. To quote the blurb I offered her a couple years back...

"WHO FEARS DEATH is urgently topical, at times brutal, and always wholly original. It’s no surprise she’s been racking up awards. There are more to come, surely."

Also, I'm just as thrilled that my friend and Stonecoast MFA Program colleague, Elizabeth Hand, won in the novella category for "The Maiden Flight of McCauley's Bellerophon".

Congrats to you both!

The British Fantasy Society Awards 2011

As I'm soon to be a fantasy writer living in Britain, I've got an eye toward what's happening over there these days.

The shortlist for the BFS Fantasy Awards have just been announced. Interesting list to me, notable in that there are so many names on it I don't recognize. A look at the Best Novel category gives me some idea of why. It seems to be highly Horror inclined...

Take a look:

BEST NOVEL (AUGUST DERLETH FANTASY AWARD)

Apartment 16 – Adam Nevill

Demon Dance – Sam Stone

The Leaping – Tom Fletcher

Pretty Little Dead Things - Gary McMahon

The Silent Land – Graham Joyce

HERE's the Website.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation Awards

When I was in France a couple years back for Imaginales I met loads of very cool sff authors. Quite a few were French, and another handful were German. Talking to them about their work, I was bummed that I'd probably not be able to read it any time soon. Why? Because it's so bloody hard for non-English language writers to get translated into English. It happens, sure, but not for the majority of writers out there.

I wish that weren't so. I can only imagine that they'd bring perspectives and styles and themes that would liven up English-language sff.

Oh well... I promise to work on my French.

All of that is preface to the mention that I just got an email promoting the Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation Awards. These are for sff works written in other languages and translated into English. There's some progress! Looks like they're new.

Go check them out HERE. Maybe you'll find something you'll like...

Nebula Nominees!

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) has just announced the nominees for the 2010 Nebula Awards!

There are plenty of categories, but I always turn my eyes first to the Novel category. This year, I see some very worthy titles on the list, including a few by some friends. I'll play no favorites here, though. I'll just state the facts (and provide randomly selected cover art).

The Novel Finalists are:

The Native Star, M.K. Hobson (Spectra)

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (The Inheritance Trilogy), N.K. Jemisin (Orbit UK; Orbit US)

Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)

Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor (DAW)

Blackout and All Clear, Connie Willis (Spectra)

The complete list is available HERE, at the SFWA website.

Hurston/Wright Award Winners

Just wanted to mention that this year's Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Awards have just been announced.

Details HERE.

National Book Award Finalists

Another bit of award news. This year's National Book Award Finalists have just been announced.

Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America

Jaimy Gordon, Lord of Misrule

Nicole Krauss, Great House

Lionel Shriver, So Much for That

Karen Tei Yamashita, I Hotel

I've read earlier novels by Carey and Krauss, but the others are new to me.

More info HERE if you want it.

(http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2010.html)

Nobel For Mario

Hey, so Mario Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize for Literature today. Don't know if you've read him, but I was a big fan of his as an undergraduate. I loved his early stories and novels. He was a big influence on my early writing efforts. I haven't been as much of fan recently, but I'm still happy to hear of his Nobel win.

I wrote about him not too long ago, a short piece in The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books, edited by J. Peder Zane. Here's what I wrote:

Appreciation of The Green House, by Mario Vargas Llosa

I remember wandering through the world literature section of my university library, feeling a bit lost, recognizing few names. On the recommendation of my writing instructor I was searching for a Peruvian novelist named Mario Vargas Llosa. I found a coverless edition of The Green House, one with no blurbs, no review quotes, no author photo or biography. The surprises found inside, then, were complete and unforgettable.

With The Green House Vargas Llosa began to explore the ongoing battle that started the moment European culture collided with that of the Americas. The novel is populated by all segments of Peruvian society: people of Latin origins, Indians indigenous to the country, immigrants cast ashore on Peru for myriad reasons, from nuns and Fathers to prostitutes and pimps. There’s even a Brazilian rubber-baron-warlord-leper of Japanese ancestry. It ranges from the depths of the rain forest to windblown desert outposts. It’s a novel in which crimes are committed without remorse, conveyed with the brutal honesty of an author confronting the duplicitous exploitation tainting his nation.

This is rendered in prose as varied as its cast: inner monologue, assimilated dialogue, objective third person or an omniscient point of view, with multiple time lines, concurrent plots and scenes repeated in layering montage. Honestly, it’s rarely an easy read. One can see the influence of Faulkner, of Sartre and Flaubert, but the manner in which Vargas Llosa transmuted Western influences to enrich his tale remains remarkable.

And – I wondered – if this Peruvian writer could do this what else might be happening out there? By inspiring that question The Green House drew me into a much more complete world of literature. I’ve been grateful to Vargas Llosa ever since.

Here's a brief Reuters article, if you want some biographical info. (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69647V20101007)

And here's a longer Huffington Post piece. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/07/mario-vargas-llosa-wins-n_0_n_754052.html)

My Tiara...

...is my tiara no more.

Sad to say, but today I packaged up my John W Campbell Tiara and mailed it to Jay Lake. He'll be taking it to Australia to present to the new winner - to be announced on the night in Worldcon in Melbourne. Also called AussieCon 4.

I'd love to actually be going, but I'm already traveling to Scotland around the same time with the family, so it's not really a possibility for me.

It's been a good year, though. I'll never forget that Campbell Award night. Magic. Really magic...

Nebula Winners!

They've been announced. You can see them HERE on the SFWA site.

Hugo Nominees 2010

The Finalists have been announced! If you haven't already, take a look at the whole list HERE.

In the best novel category specifically (the one that always interests me the most), here's the lineup:

Boneshaker, Cherie Priest (Tor)

The City & The City, China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)

Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America, Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)

Palimpsest, Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra)

Wake, Robert J. Sawyer (Ace; Penguin; Gollancz; Analog)

The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)

Congrats to you all! I don't reckon I'll be in Australia for the ceremony, but I'll follow it with interest on line. Of course, the winner isn't announced until Worldcon in August, so you've plenty of time to do the reading and come up with your own opinions!

Nebula Awards Final Ballot

It's just gone up! The titles in the novel category (where my attention always goes) are:

The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi (Nightshade, Sep09)

The Love We Share Without Knowing, Christopher Barzak (Bantam, Nov08)

Flesh and Fire, Laura Anne Gilman (Pocket, Oct09)

The City & The City, China Mieville (Del Rey, May09)

Boneshaker, Cherie Priest (Tor, Sep09)

Finch, Jeff VanderMeer (Underland Press, Oct09)

For the rest, take a look HERE. Congrats to them all!

Jedediah Berry

I just want to congratulate Jedediah Berry on winning the 2010 William L. Crawford Award for his first novel The Manual of Detection.

I haven't read the novel yet, but I had the pleasure of hanging out with Jedediah at Readercon last year. Very good guy. I'm looking forward to checking this out. You should too!

Here's the Locus Announcement.

Me On Suvudu

I'm up with a mini-essay over there. It's called "Thoughts on Winning the John W Campbell Award". Please click over and take a look.

It's HERE.

Tiara and the Kids

I was going to offer you a tiara picture, but my computer really isn't letting me upload them. Pain in the butt. I can, however, link to my wife's blog. She's got a few photos up. This was a family affair you know. *Note: I've just managed to sneak a few photos in here, but there are a couple more at Gudrun's site.

The fact that Gudrun and the kids were there was one of the absolute best parts of the entire Worldcon/Hugo/Campbell experience. Before the ceremony, they were so nervous and excited. At the pre-Hugo party, Maya put her energy into doodling and came up with this funky cat....

Apparently an artist (I'm not sure who) happened by and paused to gawk over it. Cool.

As they sat beside me in the auditorium during the ceremony they kept looking at me, looking at the screen, looking at mom. Sage couldn't stop his legs from wiggling and squiggling. And when they called me name... Ah, man. Sure, I was excited, but the kids were balls of energy. During my speech I mentioned them all by name, and could see Sage's hair bouncing up and down as he jumped. Awesome.

The first photo of me... well, bare in mind that the auditorium was enormous. I mean, they had these two massive jumbo-tron screens on either side of the stage - that's what that first photo is of. It's me with about a ten foot smile on. There were rows and rows of people. I was just trying to make sure they all knew I was happy...

You'll also see me and Maya and Sage on stage at the Hugos. It felt really wonderful to be able to pull these guys up and share the stage with them for a moment. Had the pleasure of introducing them to GRRM also. Was nice because they had a hand in developing my Wild Cards character, and the man himself got to thank them for that and ask them a few questions. I don't suppose it hurt my status in the family to have stood next to Neil Gamain, and to have held his Hugo! The photo of us side by side is pretty blurry, but so was my mind right about then...

It was all so good that after the ceremony Maya developed an instant, pounding headache. They had to leave the after-party early. But still, we all enjoyed it.

Now, let me say this as well. As happy as I am about all of this I also think I have a pretty good grip on what it does and does not mean. No delusions of grandeur here, just joy at all the pieces falling together in my favor for once. I'll post about this soon. I've promised to write on the topic for Suvudu. When I do I'll let you know.

Okay, I'm off to mow the lawn. It's a lot more fun in a tiara...