Update: Edited to correct the spelling of Rivqa’s name – sorry Rivqa!

Awards Season

Several of the major Australian genre awards are upon us, with nominations recently announced for the Aurealis and Ditmar Awards. CSFG members were well-represented on the shortlists:

In the Aurealis Awards shortlist:

  • Kimberley Gaal featured with two nominations for Best Young Adult Short Story (“In Sheep’s Clothing” from Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #61, and “The Nexus Tree” from the CSFG anthology The Never Never Land). Congrats Kim!
  • Clare McKenna and Kaaron Warren will be facing off for Best Science Fiction Short Story for “The Marriage of the Corn King” (Cosmos) and “Witnessing” (The Canary Press Story Magazine #6) respectively
  • Tehani Wesselly has been nominated as editor for Best Anthology for Focus 2014: highlights of Australian short fiction (FableCroft Publishing)

In the Ditmar Awards shortlist:

  • Cat Sparks has been nominated for Best Novella or Novelette for “Hot Rods”, Lightspeed Science Fiction & Fantasy 58
  • Alan Baxter has been nominated for Best Short Story for “The Chart of the Vagrant Mariner”, in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Jan/Feb 2015
  • Tehani Wesselly as co-editor has been nominated for Best Collection for Cranky Ladies of History, edited by Tansy Rayner Roberts and Tehani Wessely (FableCroft Publishing)
  • Shauna O’Meara has been nominated for Best Artwork for her beautiful cover for CSFG’s own The Never Never Land
  • Rivqa Rafael and Tim Napper have both been nominated for Best New Talent
  • Tehani Wesselly has also picked up nominations for the William Atheling Award for Criticism or Review for her collaborative review project Reviewing New Who and Squeeing Over Supergirl

In a bit of unusual news for CSFG, Donna Maree Hanson (under her Dani Kristoff pen name) is a finalist in the Australian Romance Readers Association 2015 awards for her paranormal romance novel Spiritbound!

Congratulations to all the nominees and good luck for the upcoming awards!

Books

Kaaron Warren shared the very exciting news of a new book deal with Australian speculative fiction publisher IFWG, who will be publishing her novel The Grief Hole later in 2016.

Gillian Polack’s new non-fiction work History and Fiction: Writers, their Research, Worlds and Stories is out from Peter Lang International Academic Publishers in the UK in April-May. The book is about how writers use history in their fiction and includes interviews with a number of CSFG authors.

Short Stories and Flash Fiction

Tim Napper has been busy lately: he has sold short stories to Lontar: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction and Grimdark Magazine (appearing in issue #6, out now). His previously announced story ‘The Flame Trees’ is coming out in Asimov’s Science Fiction in April or May. Tim has also sold two translated stories to Austrian magazine Visionarium and the Hebrew-language SF site Blipanka.

Rivka Rafael has a short story forthcoming in Twelfth Planet’s anthology Defying Doomsday.

Zena Shapter’s short story ‘Let the Tempest Hold Me Down’ will be free to read from 24 March at Sci Phi Journal. Zena adds “Sci Phi Journal is an online science fiction and philosophy magazine that ‘explores questions of life, the universe, and anything that delves into the deep philosophical waters of science fiction universes. Oh, and I’m also supposed to encourage peeps to subscribe (in March!) because the journal’s authors get paid a percentage of subscription fees.”

David Versace has a flash fiction story in the February releases at EGM Shorts called ‘Incidental’.

Literary Festivals

Canberra’s Noted Festival is coming up in March. Kaaron Warren will be running a workshop on getting away from the desk to find inspiration for writing horror: Where the Wild Words Are

Academia

Finally, congratulations to Donna Maree Hanson, who started her PhD studies at the University of Canberra in February.