Silver medallion with Chimaera logo and text reading Aurealis Awards Winner
The Aurealis Awards management team, on behalf of the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild, would like to congratulate the winners of this year’s Awards. We also take this opportunity to once again thank the judging panels for all their hard work making the difficult decisions of shortlists and the winning works, the CSFG committee for organising the 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
Dragon Skin, Karen Foxlee (Allen & Unwin)
BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL / ILLUSTRATED WORK
The Curiosities, Zana Fraillon & Phil Lesnie (illustrator) (Hachette Australia)
Holly and the Nobodies, Ben Pienaar (Hellbound Books LLC)
BEST FANTASY NOVEL
Dark Rise, C S Pacat (Allen & Unwin)
BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL
Waking Romeo, Kathryn Barker (Allen & Unwin)
SARA DOUGLASS BOOK SERIES AWARD
Blood and Gold [Crown of Rowan (enovella, 2014); Daughters of the Storm (2014); Sisters of the Fire (2016); Queens of the Sea (2019)], Kim Wilkins (HarperCollins)
CONVENORS’ AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE
Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950-1985, Andrew Nette & Iain McIntyre (Eds.) (PM Press)
You are cordially invited to the Aurealis Awards presentation ceremony to be held at the Civic Hellenic Club in Canberra on Saturday May 28, 2022. We hope you’ll be able to attend in person, but a reminder that the event will also be streamed live on Facebook (details coming soon).
The ceremony will commence from 5:00pm with drinks and canapes, with the award presentation to commence from 5:30pm. Dress is anything from Smart Casual to Weird As You Want.
In addition, the Aurealis committee will host a Writers’ Development Afternoon at the venue. There’s an early draft of the program below. The afternoon will not only be a chance to meet and catch up with your peers and friends in the community, but also to hear about the state of the industry and learn from your colleagues. Come join us, whether it’s your first time at a community event or you’re seeing old friends again after what seems like a decade!
We hope you can be a part of the Aurealis Award ceremony, either in person or online. It won’t be the same without you!
The Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild (CSFG) will be hosting the 2021 Aurealis Awards ceremony on Saturday 28 May, 2022.
When: 5.30pm, Saturday 28 May
Where: The Hellenic Club, 13 Moore Street, Civic
The ceremony will also be live streamed.
Details regarding ceremony ticketing coming soon!
But don’t just plan for the Aurealis Awards ceremony! The CSFG Committee has decided to expand the event to include a Writers’ Development Afternoon to make it a more memorable and worthwhile trip for our interstate peers. The theme will be “The New Unnormal – Weird as we want”. More information to follow.
A huge thanks to our amazing judges, who have read an enormous number of entered works to pare it down for these excellent shortlists. It’s always a massive job, and they’ve done it in the midst of a truly awful few months in the world.
Congratulations to all the finalists – there was fantastic competition across the board this year, with some panels receiving well over 100 entries, and increased numbers in some of our traditionally smaller categories. We’re delighted to announce the shortlists, and encourage our followers to investigate the finalists to find some great reads!
Aurealis Awards Finalist badge
BEST CHILDREN’S FICTION
The Boy Who Stepped Through Time, Anna Ciddor (Allen & Unwin)
Stellarphant, James Foley (Fremantle Press)
Dragon Skin, Karen Foxlee (Allen & Unwin)
The Curiosities, Zana Fraillon & Phil Lesnie (illustrator) (Hachette Australia)
Elsewhere Girls, Emily Gale & Nova Weetman (Text Publishing)
Barebum Billy, Nicholas Snelling (BAD DAD Publishing)
BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL / ILLUSTRATED WORK
The Curiosities, Zana Fraillon & Phil Lesnie (illustrator) (Hachette Australia)
Treasure in the Lake, Jason Pamment (Allen & Unwin)
Mechanix, Ben Slabak & Edoardo Natalini (Cloud 9 Comix)
Killeroo: Semper Fidelis, Matthew Soall & Ignacio Di Meglio (illustrator) (OzComics)
BEST YOUNG ADULT SHORT STORY
“The Woods Echo Back”, Tania Fordwalker (Beneath Ceaseless Skies #331)
Winter [The Road to Winter (2016); Wilder Country (2017); Land of Fences (2019)], Mark Smith (Text Publishing)
Blood and Gold [Crown of Rowan (enovella, 2014); Daughters of the Storm (2014); Sisters of the Fire (2016); Queens of the Sea (2019)], Kim Wilkins (HarperCollins)
Information about this year’s Awards ceremony will follow as soon as we confirm dates and location.
The entry form for the 2021 Aurealis Awards, closing on Tuesday 14 December 2021, can be found here.
ALL WORK due for publication up to December 31 MUST be entered by the deadline of midnight December 14 – no exceptions can be made, and work published in the final weeks of December are ONLY eligible this year. They cannot be carried into 2022, so if you have something coming out in the next two weeks, enter it NOW!
Entries for the 2021 Aurealis Awards close on December 14!
It’s essential that ALL work published (or planned for publication) between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2021 is entered by this deadline.
Check out the list of current entries here, and enter your Australian speculative fiction work in the Aurealis Awards here.
If you have a publication due out in late December, please enter it NOW. If publication is delayed into 2022 we can remove it from consideration in this year’s Awards, but we are NOT able to enter carry over work published late in the year into the following year.
There is now less than one month until entries close for the 2021 Aurealis Awards. It’s important to remember that ALL eligible Australian work published for the first time between January 1 and December 31, 2021 must be entered by December 14, even work intended for publication after the December 14 cut off date.
If you have any work scheduled for publication after December 14, enter it NOW! If publication is delayed, we can easily remove the entry, but we are unable to make exceptions afterwards if work is not entered by the December 14 deadline.
Entries for the Sara Douglass Book Series Award close shortly.
If you or someone you know had an Australian speculative fiction series of at least two books that was considered finished in 2018, 2019 or 2020, make sure it is entered!
Entry for this Award is free, and judges prefer digital files for reading.
We are delighted to announce that the 2021 Aurealis Awards are now open for immediate entry.
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 2021 and 31 December 2021.
We strongly encourage publishers and authors to enter all works published already this year by September 30, 2021, then subsequent publications as they are released; our judges appreciate having time to consider each entry carefully.
Entries for the Aurealis Awards main categories close on December 14, 2021.
Full guidelines and FAQ can be found on the Aurealis Awards website:
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 2022 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 forms, 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 2021 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!
Judging Coordinator: Tehani Croft, assisted by Joanne Anderton
ANTHOLOGIES / COLLECTIONS PANEL (two separate categories judged by one panel) Amy Laurens Clare May Jemimah Brewster Penelope Cottier Rowena Specht-Whyte (Convenor)
CHILDREN’S PANEL Elizabeth Luchjenbroers Eugen Bacon (Convenor) Kate Lomas Glendenning Miffy Farquharson T R Napper
FANTASY NOVEL PANEL Bronwyn Swasbrick Cathie Tasker (Convenor) Caylee Tierney Deb Gates Rachel Aitken
FANTASY SHORT STORY PANEL Cary Lenehan Ella Kurz Jan-Andrew Henderson (Convenor) Karen Seeneevassen Paula Duggan
FANTASY NOVELLA PANEL David Brine Lynda Young Melody Beier (Convenor) Ruth Lawlor Shannon Kelly
HORROR NOVEL/NOVELLA PANEL (two separate categories judged by one panel) Alannah Pearson Allister Smith Benjamin Corby Emma Cutting Mark Lingane (Convenor)
HORROR SHORT STORY PANEL Blake Curran Bryn Smith Caitlin Chisholm (Convenor) Leah Rose Sharita Russell
ILLUSTRATED WORK / GRAPHIC NOVEL PANEL Bryn Hepworth Iurgi Urrutia (Convenor) Jacqueline Wheadon Jess Gately Mia Macrossan
SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL PANEL Anna Hepworth Dianne De Bellis (Convenor) Dorothy-Jane Daniels Jesse Greyson Patrick Keuning
SCIENCE FICTION SHORT STORY PANEL David James Emilie Morscheck Louise Nice Mark Phillips Paula Boer (Convenor)
SCIENCE FICTION NOVELLA PANEL Christine Yunn-Yu Sun Mark Fazackerley (Convenor) Natalie Haigh Rebecca Sutherland
YA NOVEL / SHORT STORY PANEL (two separate categories judged by one panel) Amanda Diaz Andrew Finegan (Convenor) Emma Phillips Linda Sengsourinho Sarah Custance
Aurealis Awards 