Reminder: Sara Douglass Book Series Award closes August 31

Posted on August 1, 2018 by

A reminder to ensure all eligible series for the Sara Douglass Book Series Award are entered by August 31, 2018.

Unlike the rest of the main Aurealis Awards categories (which close December 7), the Sara closes in August:

    1. because it only considers series that have already concluded in previous years, and,
    2. to allow the panel time to read the quantity of work entered.

There have already been nearly 30 series submitted, ranging from two books to seven books each, but there are many more we know are eligible!

 

 

Remember, there are NO restrictions on when the series BEGAN, for the Sara, only when it is considered concluded. A series is eligible for the Sara if it is considered CONCLUDED during the eligibility period – this year, that means series ending in 2015, 2016 or 2017. The phrase used – “considered concluded” – is important. The expectation is that publishers and authors have no CURRENT expectation of there being further books in the series. We know sometimes a new book comes out several years later, when inspiration strikes unexpectedly!

The same rules about reprints applies though, as per the other Aurealis Awards categories, that is, if the series was originally published in the 1990s but it was reprinted (eg: as an omnibus) in 2017, that does not mean it is eligible for the Award. The exception would be if a new work was added to the series within the eligibility period of 2015/16/17.

The panel has already begun their reading and the judges are very excited about the quality of the entries so far.

Don'tForget

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Aurealis Awards entry update

Posted on July 12, 2018 by

We’ve just posted an update of entries for the 2018 Aurealis Awards. With fewer than 200 entries across the categories so far, we know we have a fair way to go, and our judges truly appreciate all eligible work being entered as early as possible! See the current list here.

Authors, please check with your publisher to ensure they are entering your work, or make arrangements to submit it yourself – we aim to be as inclusive as possible and absolutely hate to see things left out.

Entries for the Aurealis Awards close December 7, 2018 for all eligible Australian work first published in the 2018 calendar year.

Entries for the SARA DOUGLASS BOOK SERIES AWARD close August 31, 2018.

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2018 Aurealis Awards are open for entry

Posted on June 1, 2018 by

MEDIA RELEASE – for immediate distribution

1 June 2018

2018 Aurealis Awards now open for entries

2018 Aurealis Awards overseers the Continuum Foundation (ConFound) announces that the 2018 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 2018 and 31 December 2018.

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 in the first half of the year by August 2018, 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.

The Sara Douglass Book Series Award, for series ending between 2015-2017, is also being run this year. Entries for this special award close on 31 August, 2018. More information is available at https://aurealisawards.org/the-sara-douglass-book-series-award/

Finalists of all award categories will be announced early in 2019 and winners announced at a ceremony to take place in Melbourne 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.

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Sara Douglass Book Series Awards open to entries

Posted on May 27, 2018 by

The judging panel now welcome entries for the 2018 Sara Douglass Book Series Award.

The 2018 Award covers all series ending between January 2015 and December 2017. Please see more information below and on the Sara page.

ABOUT THE AWARD

  • This year, the Sara covers series ending (in original publication) between January 2015 and December 2017. 
  • The current judging year is deliberately excluded. This permits an earlier submissions deadline to allow adequate time for the judges to consider all works entered.
  • Entries close August 31, 2018 (please note this is different to the rest of the Aurealis Awards).

GENERAL ELIGIBILITY

  • For the purpose of the Sara Douglass Book Series Award, a “series” is defined as a continuing ongoing story told through two or more books, which must be considered as ending in one of the years covered by the judging period.
  • This award is to recognise that there are book series that are greater as a whole than the sum of their parts – that is, the judges are looking for a series that tells a story across the series, not one that just uses the same characters/setting across loosely connected books. It is anticipated that shortlisted works will be best enjoyed read in succession, with an arc that begins in the first book and is completed in the last.
  • The series may be in any speculative genre within the extended bounds of science fiction, fantasy or horror (that is, if a book would be considered on an individual basis for one of the novel, or possibly novella, categories in the Aurealis Awards, the series may be considered here).
  • The Sara Douglass Book Series Award does not replace or depose individual books being entered in the usual categories – it is a supplementary Award.
  • As is also the case with the rules for Illustrated Work/Graphic Novel and serialised novels, if a series is considered finished and entered at the conclusion of (for example) book three, but then is continued in future works, the future works *may* be entered as a series at a later point, but the first trilogy (for example), if previously entered in the Series award, may not be considered again. As an example – if the first three books of Sara Douglass’s Wayfarer Redemption series (Battleaxe / Enchanter / Starman) had been entered in the Sara Douglass Book Series Award in the year following the publication of the final book, the subsequent trilogy continuing the story (Sinner / Pilgrim / Crusader) could have been entered in a later year, but the first three could not be considered again as a series of six. However, if the first three books had never been considered for the Sara Douglass Book Series Award, all six could have been entered at the conclusion. Essentially, parts of an extended series may only be considered once for this Award (although as noted, individual books are still eligible for regular Aurealis Awards categories in their year of publication).
  • There is no entry fee for this special Award category, but all books must be supplied to the judging panel by the entrant (publisher or author).

ENTER HERE

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Announcing the 2018 Aurealis Awards Judging Panels

Posted on May 26, 2018 by

Every year, we are fortunate that people from all over Australia volunteer their time and expertise to judge for the Aurealis Awards. They are amazing, they work extremely hard, and each year bring you the best of the best Australian spec fic has to offer. There were a record number of applications for judging positions this year, giving us the opportunity to share the load more widely and draw in a range of new experiences to our panels. Please welcome this year’s wonderful teams!

CHILDREN’S PANEL
Miffy Farquharson (panel convenor)
Kerry Armstrong
Liz Barr
Mim Crase
Sharon Smith

YA NOVEL PANEL
Caitlin Chisholm (panel convenor)
Alexa Shaw
Andrew Finegan
Elizabeth Fitzgerald
Michael Barrett

YA SHORT STORY PANEL
Linda Sengsourinho (panel convenor)
Anna Hepworth
Caitlin Wardle
Elspeth Lamorte
Heidi Kneale

FANTASY NOVEL PANEL
PRK (panel convenor)
Kimberly Chandler
Jake Kalago
Laura Birch
Nathan Phillips

SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL PANEL
Cathie Tasker (panel convenor)
Astrid Edwards
Dianne De Bellis
Lorraine Cormack
Simon Petrie

HORROR NOVEL / NOVELLA PANEL
Heather Iveson (panel convenor)
Christine Yunn-Yu Sun
Craig Hildebrand
Eugen Bacon
Hayley Baxter

FANTASY NOVELLA PANEL
Mark Fazackerley (panel convenor)
E E Montgomery
Jennifer Rowland
Rachel Nightingale
Stuart Dunstan

FANTASY SHORT STORY PANEL
Rob Porteous (panel convenor)
Earl Livings
Georgina Ballantine
Paige Belfield
Paula Boer

SCIENCE FICTION NOVELLA PANEL
Gene Melzack (panel convenor)
Chloe Townson
Chris Lampard
Natalie Haigh
Zohal Arbabzada

SCIENCE FICTION SHORT STORY PANEL
Zara Baxter (panel convenor)
Brie Hawthorne
Fergus McCartan
Joanna Kasper
Lindsey Hodder

HORROR SHORT STORY PANEL
Emma Kate (panel convenor)
Glenn George
Holly Harper
Michael Grey
Tom Woodward

ANTHOLOGIES / COLLECTIONS PANEL
Carol Ryles (panel convenor)
Deb Gates
Dorothy-Jane Daniels
Ion Newcombe
Jessica Harvie

ILLUSTRATED WORK / GRAPHIC NOVEL PANEL
Lynne Green (panel convenor)
Jess Howard
Justin Randall
Shel Sweeney
TR Napper

SARA DOUGLASS BOOK SERIES AWARD
Katharine Stubbs
Stephanie Gunn
Tehani Croft

We will be posting their bios on the Judges page of the website very soon, so you can get to know them a little better.

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Aurealis Awards Returning to Melbourne

Posted on May 23, 2018 by

AA logo

MEDIA RELEASE – for immediate distribution – 23 May 2018

Aurealis Awards coming back to Melbourne

After almost 15 years, the Aurealis Awards, Australia’s premier awards for speculative fiction, are finally coming back to Melbourne where it all started. The owner of the Aurealis Awards, Chimaera Publications – publishers of the Aurealis magazine and book imprint – have reached agreement for Continuum Foundation Inc (ConFound) to administer the Awards for the next three years.

The Awards’ founder, Dirk Strasser says, “When the Aurealis Awards had its humble beginnings in Melbourne way back in 1995, no one could have imagined they would end up crisscrossing Australia. With Awards ceremonies in Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra and most recently Perth, they’ve become truly national. We look forward to ConFound building on the work of the other organisations, most recently WASFF, that have run the Awards with enthusiasm and professionalism, and taking the Aurealis Awards to even greater heights.”

CONTINUUM FOUNDATION INC

CHIMAERA PUBLICATIONS

Further information:

aurealisawards@gmail.com

https://aurealisawards.org/

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Aurealis Awards 2018 Call for Judges

Posted on April 9, 2018 by

Applications are now closed for the 2018 Aurealis Awards judging panels. 

we want you

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 2018 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 electronic 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.

We aim to offer judges complimentary or discounted entry to the annual Awards ceremony for current judges, but this cannot be confirmed at this stage.

Categories are: 

  • Science Fiction Novel
  • Science Fiction Short Story / Novella (two categories judged by one panel)
  • Fantasy Novel
  • Fantasy Short Story / Novella (two categories judged by one panel)
  • Horror Novel / Novella / Horror Short Story (three categories judged by one or two panel, depending on availability of judges)
  • Young Adult Novel / Young Adult Short Story (two categories judged by one panel)
  • Children’s Fiction
  • Collection / Anthology (two categories judged by one panel)
  • Illustrated Book / Graphic Novel

The Aurealis Awards accepts electronic entries in all categories. Judges must be willing to accept and read entries in this format. Willingness and ability to read electronically 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, 2018 and December 31, 2018 eligible for entry. Shortlists from each panel will be required by February 2019 (firm dates will be advised), and prospective judges should be aware that this may be an intensive process.

Dates for Judging (to be confirmed):

  • May/June 2018 – entries open
  • Early December 2018 – entries close
  • December 31 2018 – final entries must be received by judges
  • February 2019 – shortlists and finalists must be decided
  • 2019 – Awards ceremony (details to be advised)

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 22 April, 2018. 

The judging positions are open to Australian residents only.

 

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