Entries for the 2020 Aurealis Awards have closed. A complete list of the 850 entries received across the 15 categories can be found here.
Entries for the Convenors’ Award for Excellence are open until December 31, 2020. Please note this Award is not open to entries that would be eligible in the regular Aurealis Awards categories. More information can be found here.
Good luck to our judges in their reading and deliberations!
Entries for the 2020 Aurealis Awards close TODAY, December 14, 2020.
Remember, this deadline covers all work published between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2020
Visit the website to check the Entries list and enter your work.
The deadline is FINAL and no entries may be submitted after this date.
Don’t miss out!
2020 Aurealis Awards now open for entries
2020 Aurealis Awards overseers the Continuum Foundation (ConFound) announces that the 2020 Aurealis Awards are now open for entries.
The Aurealis Awards, Australia’s premier awards for speculative fiction, are for works created by an Australian citizen or permanent resident, and published for the first time between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2020.
Full guidelines and FAQ can be found on the Aurealis Awards website:
https://aurealisawards.org/rules/
https://aurealisawards.org/faq/
We strongly encourage publishers and authors to enter all works published so far this year by September 30, 2020, then subsequent publications as they are released; our judges appreciate having time to consider each entry carefully.
The Aurealis Awards judges welcome electronic entries in all categories, including novels, short stories, novellas, illustrated work / graphic novels, collections, anthologies, children’s and young adult fiction. The Aurealis Awards management team recognises the financial burden of entering multiple works in multiple categories to some authors, editors and publishers at independent small presses. We accept epub and mobi files, although PDF may be provided if no other format is available (particularly for graphic works). Print may also be supplied.
Finalists of all award categories will be announced early in 2021 and winners announced at a ceremony to take place in the first half of the year. For more information on the awards or for the entry form, visit the Aurealis Awards website at https://aurealisawards.org/.
For more information contact the judging coordinator Tehani Croft at aajudges@gmail.com.
We are very pleased to welcome our 2020 Aurealis Awards judging panels. All our judges are volunteers and we are extremely grateful for their hard work and professionalism throughout the process. The Awards would not exist without them!
ANTHOLOGIES / COLLECTIONS PANEL
Andrew Finegan
David Versace
Jemimah Brewster
Rob Porteous (Convenor)
Tehani Croft
CHILDREN’S PANEL
Caylee Tierney
Eugen Bacon (Convenor)
Kate Lomas Glendenning
Mia Macrossan
Nicole Gosling
FANTASY NOVEL PANEL
Beth Mason
Linda Sengsourinho (Convenor)
Lorraine Cormack
Nathan Phillips
Paula Boer
FANTASY SHORT STORY PANEL
Annette McQuarrie
David Reiter
Heidi Kneale (Convenor)
Melody Beier
Rick Keuning
FANTASY NOVELLA PANEL
Alexa Shaw
Amy Laurens
Brie Hawthorne
Mark Fazackerley (Convenor)
Shannon Kelly
HORROR PANEL
Dianne De Bellis (Convenor)
Hillary Albertson
Jan-Andrew Henderson
Karen Seeneevassen
Sofia Casanova
ILLUSTRATED WORK / GRAPHIC NOVEL PANEL
Benjamin Corby
Iurgi Urrutia
Joanna Kasper (Convenor)
Kaaron Warren
Rachel Cramp
SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL PANEL
Emma Jane Phillips
Jess Gately
Natalie Haigh
Stephanie Gunn (Convenor)
Tansy Roberts
SCIENCE FICTION SHORT STORY PANEL
Christine Yunn-Yu Sun
Elizabeth Luchjenbroers
Mark Lingane
Tamantha Smith
Thomas Wilson (Convenor)
SCIENCE FICTION NOVELLA PANEL
Cathie Tasker (Convenor)
Darren Nash
Lynda Young
Mark Phillips
Sarah Cabot
YA NOVEL PANEL
Bron Swasbrick
Justine Barker
Maureen Flynn
Miffy Farquharson (Convenor)
Sue Wright
YA SHORT STORY PANEL
Bianca Maybe
Christine Armstrong
Deb Gates
Ellie Macavei
Rachel Aitken (Convenor)
Thanks so much to the ConFound team who made this happen! If you missed the ceremony last week, you can now view it in all its glory 🙂
Please read the following information carefully before submitting your application as we cannot make exceptions to the requirements.
We are seeking expressions of interest from Australian residents who would like to judge for the 2020 Aurealis Awards. Judges are volunteers and are drawn from the Australian speculative fiction community, from diverse professions and backgrounds, including academics, booksellers, librarians, published authors, publishing industry professionals, reviewers and enthusiasts. The only qualification necessary is a demonstrated knowledge of and interest in their chosen category (good time management skills and an ability to work in a team in an online environment are also essential).
All judges must be willing and able to read digital entries in either mobi or epub format, which we accept in all categories. Graphic Novel entries may also be submitted in PDF. Print is still sometimes sent by entrants but we do not require it.
Panel sizes may vary among categories – and from year to year – depending on the perceived workload required and the availability of judges for a particular category. However, each panel will consist of at least three judges, one of which will be the panel convenor.
Being an Aurealis Awards judge involves reading entries for one panel (which may comprise more than one category). This may consist of several dozen novels and/or more than a hundred short stories / novellas in the process of evaluating the year’s entries. The reading load can become quite heavy at the end of the judging period although we endeavour to obtain works as soon as they are published. Judges may keep their reading copies of entries. Convenors of each panel are also required to participate in the judging of the Convenors’ Award for Excellence, which involves additional consumption of material.
Categories are:
The Aurealis Awards accepts digital entries in all categories. Judges must be willing to accept and read entries in this format. Willingness and ability to read digitally is an essential aspect of the judging role.
It is vital that judges be able to work as part of a team and meet stringent deadlines. Most of the judges’ discussions are conducted via a private online forum or email.
Entries to the awards close in early December, with all work published between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2020 eligible for entry. Shortlists from each panel will be required by February 2021 (firm dates will be advised), and prospective judges should be aware that this may be an intensive process.
Dates for Judging (to be confirmed):
All discussions are confidential between the judges in each panel and the judging coordinator and/or the Aurealis Awards management team, as required. The Aurealis Awards judging coordinator will have no input into these decisions except to mediate panel issues.
Judges from previous Aurealis Awards processes are welcome – indeed encouraged – to re-apply. But, in the interests of transparency and impartiality, no one may judge the same category for more than two consecutive years, and a break of two consecutive years is required before a judge can reapply to be a judge in that particular category again.
Please complete the form below by Sunday 16 August, 2020.
The judging positions are open to Australian residents only.
The Aurealis Awards management team, on behalf of the Continuum Foundation, would like to congratulate the winners of this year’s Awards. We also take this opportunity to thank the judging panels for all their hard work making the difficult decisions of shortlists and the winning works, ConFound liaisons for organising the first ever online ceremony, and all the creators and publishers who continue to make the Aurealis Awards Australia’s premier speculative fiction award each year.
BEST CHILDREN’S FICTION
The Dog Runner, Bren MacDibble (Allen & Unwin)
BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL / ILLUSTRATED WORK
Black Magick, Greg Rucka & Nicola Scott (Image Comics)
BEST YOUNG ADULT SHORT STORY
The Jindabyne Secret, Jo Hart (Deadset Press)
BEST HORROR SHORT STORY
“Vivienne and Agnes”, Chris Mason (Beside the Seaside – Tales from the Day Tripper)
BEST HORROR NOVELLA
“Into Bones Like Oil”, Kaaron Warren (Into Bones Like Oil)
BEST FANTASY SHORT STORY
“Dragon by Subscription”, Tansy Rayner Roberts (Patreon, self-published)
BEST FANTASY NOVELLA
“‘Scapes Made Diamond”, Shauna O’Meara (Interzone 280)
BEST SCIENCE FICTION SHORT STORY
“Wreck Diving”, Joanne Anderton (Aurealis #123, Chimaera Publications)
BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVELLA
“‘Scapes Made Diamond”, Shauna O’Meara (Interzone 280)
BEST COLLECTION
Collision: Stories, J S Breukelaar (Meerkat Press)
BEST ANTHOLOGY
Mission: Critical, Jonathan Strahan (Ed.) (Solaris)
BEST YOUNG ADULT NOVEL
Aurora Rising, Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff (Allen & Unwin)
BEST HORROR NOVEL
The Rich Man’s House, Andrew McGahan (Allen & Unwin)
BEST FANTASY NOVEL
Angel Mage, Garth Nix (Allen & Unwin)
BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL
Aurora Rising, Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff (Allen & Unwin)
CONVENORS’ AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE
Watermarks: Science Fiction, Mitigation and the Mosaic Novel Structure in Australian Climate Fiction, Jason Nahrung (PhD thesis, University of Queensland)
This year the Awards ceremony will be held online via Zoom, and will take place THIS SATURDAY! There are limited places available to join live, so if you would like to attend, please make sure you register. The event is hosted by Kat Clay and Eugen Bacon.
Time: 7.00 pm
Date: Saturday 25 July, 2020
Online @ https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEucuGoqToqE9ebQsuFPnb3pa8XrDW5m3eG
We encourage you to “frock up” – pyjamas and sequins sound appropriate! – and bring your party cocktails! We can’t be together in person, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun.
If you have queries relating to the event, please contact aajudges@gmail.com
Save the date for the online Aurealis Awards ceremony, which will take place at 7pm AEST on Saturday July 25, 2020.
Details of how to join the party to follow soon!
Each year we make the eligible nominations received for the annual Convenors’ Award for Excellence public. There are several reasons for this:
It is very important to note that this list is NOT a shortlist – it is simply a list of the eligible entries we received for the Award this year (please note also that these can be self-nominated). The convenors consider all eligible entries in deciding the winner, but there is no shortlist generated, and only the winner will be presented at the ceremony.
A reminder what this award is for:
The Convenors’ Award for Excellence is awarded at the discretion of the convenors for a particular achievement in speculative fiction or related areas in that year that cannot otherwise by judged for the Aurealis Awards.
This award can be given to a work of non-fiction, artwork, film, television, electronic or multimedia work, or one that brings credit or attention to the speculative fiction genres.
This approachable book is about vibrant storytelling of speculative fiction that crosses genre. Unlike a typical genre studies work, this is a cross-disciplinary book that scrutinises the characteristics of science fiction, fantasy and horror, and considers the potential of literary speculative fiction.
The Romans is a 30,000 word monograph investigating the 1965 Doctor Who story of that name. It is #32 in Obverse Book’s Black Archive range, a series predominantly entrusted to British writers. (A notable exception being John Toon, who won a Sir Julius Vogel Award for #15.) The Black Archive has generally met with acclaim, and The Romans in particular has been positively reviewed. It is a serious but accessible piece of scholarship that both adds to the canon of Doctor Who non-fiction and furthers Australia’s credentials as a respected source for academic studies in speculative fiction.
Watermarks is a PhD (creative writing) thesis awarded by the University of Queensland in 2019. It examines the benefits of the application of science fiction approaches and tropes to climate fiction with the aim of breaking down barriers to understanding climate change and adopting mitigation measures. In particular, it looks at mosaic fiction, and examines three Australian texts – Things We Didn’t See Coming (Amsterdam), Clade (Bradley) and Nightsiders (Isle) – as case studies that draw on the mosaic form and SF to create affective and effective climate fiction. The thesis advances the study of the writing of and the role of science fiction and climate fiction, as well as adding to the profiles of the three case studies through rigorous examination.
