Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic Longlist

From the press release email:

The Sunburst Award Committee is pleased to announce the 2018 longlist for the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. This year’s lists are comprised of a mixture of established authors, talented newcomers, and several past nominees.  Below are the longlisted works, with links where available:

Adult Fiction

• Janie Chang, Dragon Springs Road [HarperCollins Canada] 
• Joey Comeau, Malagash [ECW]
• David Demchuk, The Bone Mother [Chizine Publications]  
• Cory Doctorow, Walkaway, [Tor/Forge]  
• Kristyn Dunnion, Tarry This Night [Arsenal Pulp] 
• Omar El Akkad, American War [Penguin Random House]  
• Terri Favro, Sputnik's Children [ECW]
• Barbara Gowdy, Little Sister [HarperCollins Canada] 
• Fonda Lee, Jade City [Little, Brown Book Group]
• Elan Mastai, All Our Wrong Todays [Penguin Random House]   
• Ahmad Danny Ramadan, The Clothesline Swing [Harbour Publishing]  
• Emma Richler, Be My Wolff [Penguin Random House]  
• Eden Robinson, Son of a Trickster [Penguin Random House] 
• Adam Sternbergh, The Blinds [HarperCollins Canada]

Young Adult Fiction

• S.M. Beiko, Scion of the Fox [ECW]
• Kate Blair, Tangled Planet [Dancing Cat Books]
• Charis Cotter, The Painting [Penguin Random House]
• Cherie Dimaline, The Marrow Thieves [Dancing Cat Books]
• Catherine Egan, Julia Defiant [Penguin Random House]
• Ashley Graham, All the Stars Left Behind [Entangled Publishing]
• Fonda Lee, Exo [Scholastic]
• Lesley Livingston, The Valiant [HarperCollins Canada]
• Kari Maaren, Weave a Circle Round [Tor/Forge]
• Wendy Orr, Dragonfly Song [Allen and Unwin]
• Ursula Pflug, Mountain [Inanna Publications]

Short Story Fiction  

• Nathan Adler, "Valediction at the Star View Motel" [Love Beyond Body, Space and Time, Bedside Press]
• Rebecca Campbell, "On Highway 18" [The Magazine for Fantasy & Science Fiction, September/October 2017]
• Peter Darbyshire, "Casual Miracles" [Has the World Ended Yet? Wolsak & Wynn]
• David Demchuk, "Dragoi" [The Bone Mother, ChiZine Publications]
• Kate Heartfield, "Not Valid for Spain" [49^th Parallels, Bundoran Press]
• Claire Humphrey, "Yellowcat" [Grain Magazine #44.3, Spring 2017]
• Sandra Kasturi, "The Beautiful Gears of Dying" [The Sum of Us, Laksa Media]
• Rich Larson, "Spiked" [Abyss & Apex, June 2017]
• Karen Lowachee, "Meridian" [Where the Stars Rise, Laksa Media]
• Rati Mehrotra, "Hacker's Faire" [Cast of Wonders #239, March 2017]
• Matt Moore, "Goodbye is that Time Between Now and Forever" [The Sum of Us, Laksa Media]
• Julie Paul, "The Expansion" [Chapbook, The Rusty Toque]
• Kate Story, "Animate" [Cli Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change, Exile]
• Naru Dames Sundar, "The Weight of Sentience" [Shimmerzine #40, November 2017]
• Liz Westbrook-Trenholm, "Gone Flying" [The Sum of Us, Laksa Media]

The Sunburst Award official shortlist will be announced in late June. Sunburst Award winners will be announced in Fall 2018.

Novel Jury: Megan Crewe, Kate Heartfield, Dominik Parisien, Halli Villegas, and Heather Wood.

Short Story Jury: Candas Jane Dorsey, Emily Pohl-Weary, and Alexandra Renwick

2017 Sunburst Award Winners

Congratulations to this year's winners of the Sunburst Awards for excellence in Canadian literature of the fantastic. The winner of each category is in bold, followed by the other nominees. This information comes from their press release.

Adult Fiction Award

• Claire Humphrey, Spells of Blood and Kin [Thomas Dunne Books]
• Ami McKay, The Witches of New York [Knopf Canada]
• Sylvain Neuvel, Sleeping Giants [Del Rey]
• Jo Walton, Necessity [Tor Books]
• Robert Charles Wilson, Last Year [Tor Books]

Young Adult Fiction Award

• Jonathan Auxier, Sophie Quire and the Last Storyguard [Puffin Canada]
• Lena Coakley, Worlds of Ink and Shadow [HarperCollins]
• Marina Cohen, The Inn Between [Roaring Brook Press]
• Catherine Egan, Julia Vanishes [Doubleday Canada]
• Ian Donald Keeling, The Skids [ChiTeen]

Short Story Award

• A.C. Wise, "The Sailing of the Henry Charles Morgan in Six Pieces of Scrimshaw (1841)" [initially published in The Dark, Issue 14]
• K.T. Bryski, “La Corriveau” [Strange Horizons, October 2016]
• James Alan Gardner, “The Dog and the Sleepwalker” [Strangers Among Us, Laksa Media Groups Inc.]
• Helen Marshall, “Caro in Carno” [The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu, Constable-Robinson UK & Running Press US]
• A.C. Wise, “The Men from Narrow Houses” [Liminal Stories, #1]

This year's jury consisted of: Nancy Baker, Michel Basilières, Rebecca Bradley, Dominick Grace, and Sean Moreland

Sunburst Award Longlist

Congratulations to the authors who find themselves on the 2017 longlist for the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic.

From their press release:
ADULT FICTION:

• Gail Anderson-Dargatz, The Spawning Grounds [Knopf Canada]
• Madeline Ashby, Company Town [Tor Books]
• Jay Hosking, Three Years With the Rat [Hamish Hamilton]
• Claire Humphrey, Spells of Blood and Kin [Thomas Dunne Books]
• Ami McKay, The Witches of New York [Knopf Canada]
• Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Certain Dark Things [Thomas Dunne Books]
• Sylvain Neuvel, Sleeping Giants [Del Rey]
• Jerome Stueart, The Angels of Our Better Beasts [ChiZine]     
• Jo Walton, Necessity [Tor Books]
• Robert Charles Wilson, Last Year [Tor Books]

YOUNG ADULT FICTION:

• Jonathan Auxier, Sophie Quire and the Last Storyguard [Puffin Canada]
• Karen Bass, The Hill [Pajama Press]
• Kate Blair, Transferral [Dancing Cat Books]
• Lena Coakley, Worlds of Ink and Shadow [HarperCollins]
• Marina Cohen, The Inn Between [Roaring Brook Press]
• Catherine Egan, Julia Vanishes [Doubleday Canada]
• Ian Donald Keeling, The Skids [ChiTeen]
• Arthur Slade, Flickers [HarperCollins]
• Jeff Szpirglas, Sheldon Unger vs The Dentures of Doom [Star Crossed Press]
• Moira Young, The Road to Ever After [Doubleday Canada]

SHORT STORY:

• Brad C. Anderson, “Naïve Gods” [Lazarus Risen, Bundoran Press]
• K.T. Bryski, “La Corriveau” [Strange Horizons, October 2016]
• James Alan Gardner, “The Dog and the Sleepwalker” [Strangers Among Us, Laksa Media Groups Inc.]
• Kate Heartfield, “The Seven O'Clock Man” [Clockwork Canada: Steampunk Fiction, Exile Editions]
• Rich Larson, “All That Robot...” [Asimov's, September 2016]
• Helen Marshall, “Caro in Carno” [The Mammoth Book of Original Cthulhu, Constable-Robinson]
• Michael Matheson, “Until There is Only Hunger” [Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling, Apex]
• Peter Norman, “The Night Stylist” [Pulp Literature, Issue 12]
• Kelly Robson, “The Eye of The Swan” [Tor.com, October 2016]
• Madeleine Thien, “The Second Waltz” [Catapult, June 2016]
• A.C. Wise, “The Men from Narrow Houses” [Liminal Stories, #1]
• A.C. Wise, “The Sailing of the Henry Charles Morgan in Six Pieces of Scrimshaw (1841)” [The Dark, #14]

Learn more about the award on their website.

Sunburst Award Winners

Congratulations to the winners of the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic:

Adult category

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

On a remote island in the Pacific Northwest, a Hello Kitty lunchbox washes up on the beach. Tucked inside is a collection of curious items, including the diary of a sixteen year-old Japanese girl named Nao Yasutani. Ruth, who finds the lunchbox, suspects that it is debris from Japan's devastating 2011 tsunami. Once Ruth starts to read the diary, she quickly finds herself drawn into the mystery of the young girl's fate.

In a manga café in Tokyo's Electric Town, Nao has decided there's only one escape from the loneliness and pain of her life, as she's uprooted from her U.S. home, bullied at school, and watching her parents spiral deeper into disaster. But before she ends it all, she wants to accomplish one thing: to recount the story of her great-grandmother, a 104-year-old Zen Buddhist nun, in the pages of her diary. The diary, Nao's only solace, is her cry for help to a reader she can only imagine.

Young Adult category

The Cats of Tanglewood Forest by Charles de Lint

Lillian Kindred spends her days exploring the Tanglewood Forest, a magical, rolling wilderness that she imagines to be full of fairies. The trouble is, Lillian has never seen a wisp of magic in her hills--until the day the cats of the forest save her life by transforming her into a kitten. Now she must set out on a perilous adventure that will lead her through untamed lands of fabled creates--from Old Mother Possum to the fearsome Bear People--to find a way to make things right.

The Sunburst Award Society Announces Their 2014 Shortlists

From the Press Release:

The Sunburst Award Society announced the short-lists for this year's awards.

The short-listed works in the adult category are:
Sister Mine by Nalo Hopkinson (Grand Central Publishing)
River of Stars by Guy Gavriel Kay (Penguin Group Canada) 
This Strange Way of Dying by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Exile Editions) 
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (Penguin Group Canada) 
The Demonologist by Andrew Pyper (Simon & Schuster)

The short-listed works in the young adult category are:
Sorrow's Knot by Erin Bow (Scholastic Inc.)
The Cats of Tanglewood Forest by Charles de Lint (Little Brown Books)
Homeland by Cory Doctorow (Tom Doherty Associates)
The Path of Names by Ari Goelman (Scholastic Inc.)
Urgle by Meaghan McIsaac (Cormorant Books)

Additionally, the jury has chosen to include a list of honourable mentions.
Honourable Mentions
The n-Body Problem by Tony Burgess (Chizine Publications) 
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (McClelland & Stewart)
The Oathbreaker's Shadow by Amy McCulloch (Doubleday Canada)
Wild Fell by Michael Rowe (Chizine Publications) 
Beyond the Rift by Peter Watts (Tachyon Publications)

The awards will be presented in the fall of 2014.

Sunburst Award Winners Announced

From their press release: 

The Sunburst Award Committee is pleased to announce that the winner of its 2013 adult award is Maleficium by Martine Desjardins; translated by Fred A. Reed and David Homel (Talonbooks, 9780889226807) and the winner of its 2013 young adult award is Seraphina by Rachel Hartman (Doubleday Canada, ISBN – 9780385668392)

About Maleficium, the Sunburst jury said: Rumour and speculation have it that there is hidden, somewhere in the archives of the Archdiocese of Montreal, a book so dangerous that the Church denies its existence. A copy has been found amongst papers of the author’s family, however, and its interlocking stories—originally told under the seal of confession—are here presented. Gorgeous and multilayered, Maleficium is a complex, devious, and vivid novel, in which all the senses, and most of the deadly sins, are invoked to exquisite and diabolical effect. Situated where Maria Monk meets the Arabian Nights, it weaves together elements at a thousand knots per square inch, its darkness of frame and intricacy of structure combining to subvert the pattern by the final chapter.

About Seraphina, the Sunburst Jury said: In the kingdom of Goredd, humans and dragons have co-existed in an uneasy peace for four decades, but tensions still run high. The dragons are able to present themselves in human shape, which gives them some safety, but cannot protect them from all elements of a society which forever see them as the other. Into this world comes Seraphina, a young and gifted musician who joins the royal court as the anniversary of the peace treaty nears, and a member of the royal family is murdered, apparently by dragons. Seraphina finds herself drawn into the investigation, which puts her in danger from both sides, for reasons she dare not reveal. This is a grand and enchanting tale, as rich and intricate as a medieval tapestry, told beautifully. Hartman's wildly imaginative, well-drawn, and intricate world of dragons and men is definitely a world that bears watching, and Seraphina is a fine, fitting heroine, making her independent way while struggling with a legacy which can be both a blessing and a curse.

...

The other shortlisted works for the 2013 adult award were:

Finton Moon by Gerard Collins (Killick Press)

Over the Darkened Landscape by Derryl Murphy (Fairwood Press)

The Blondes by Emily Schultz (Doubleday Canada)

Westlake Soul by Rio Youers (ChiZine Publications)

The other shortlisted works for the 2013 young adult award were:
Bright’s Light by Susan Juby (HarperCollins)

Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen)

The Green Man by Michael Bedard (Tundra Books)

Rebel Heart by Moira Young (Doubleday Canada)

...

The Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic is an annual award celebrating the best in Canadian fantastic literature published during the previous calendar year.

The winners receive a cash prize of $1,000 as well as a medallion which incorporates the Sunburst logo. 

The Sunburst Award takes its name from the debut novel of the late Phyllis Gotlieb, one of the first published authors of contemporary Canadian speculative fiction.

For additional information about the Sunburst Award, the nominees and jurors, as well as previous awards, eligibility and the selection process, please visit the website at www.sunburstaward.org.