Category Archives: Hugo Awards

Award Nominations & Virtual Award Ceremonies

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My new novel, Catfishing on CatNet, is up for a lot of awards this year, which is delightful. The pandemic, unfortunately, means that basically all the award ceremonies are going to be online. For the convenience of family, close friends, and extremely committed fans, I’m collecting here the schedule and links to all the virtual award ceremonies. This post will be updated as I get more information. (Some of these award ceremonies are not happening for months and their information right now is just, “we’re going virtual, more information coming.”)

I just want to say: I feel so incredibly honored by every one of these nominations. Looking at the other books in my category is an absolute delight in every single case, and I need to remember to call one of my local bookstores that’s doing mail order or delivery and order some of the ones I haven’t read yet because they look amazing. 

The Minnesota Book Awards, April 28th, 7 p.m.

Catfishing on CatNet is a finalist in the Young Adult Literature category of the Minnesota Book Awards, which are presented each spring by the Friends of the St. Paul Public Library.

The Minnesota Book Awards will be live-streamed online on April 28th at 7 p.m. More information here. I believe they’ll have a live-stream up on the page; they’ll also be streaming to YouTube and to their Facebook page. Finalists will be called on the phone in order to make acceptance speeches. If you register at the link as attending, you’ll be entered to win a set of all the winning books.

The Minnesota Book Awards did a series of “Meet the Finalists” events on Zoom, which you can watch on YouTube; they’ve set up a playlist. Minnesota has such an amazing array of incredibly talented and interesting writers.

Update: I won!

The Edgar Awards, April 30th, 10 a.m. CDT.

Catfishing on CatNet is a finalist in the Young Adult category for the Edgar Award, which is presented by the Mystery Writers of America to the best mysteries of the year. I was absolutely, totally floored to be nominated for this — although in fact one of the things I most love about YA is how seamlessly it can embrace multiple genres.

MWA is going to announce winners, a category at a time, on Twitter. (The MWA feed is @EdgarAwards.) We were all asked to submit a video of ourselves giving an acceptance speech, and I think the winners’ speeches will be uploaded to YouTube and linked. Anyway, watching the announcements roll out on Twitter tends to be how I watch awards shows I’m not attending in person regardless so I have to say, I love this option.

Update: I won!

The Nebula Awards, May 30th, 7 p.m. CDT.

Catfishing on CatNet is a finalist for the Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction. This is a science fiction award, given by SFWA (the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America). There is going to be a whole virtual Nebula Weekend, and the awards will be livestreamed. I don’t know a lot of details beyond the date and time, but as they’re announced I expect they’ll go up on SFWA’s website. (The programming for the virtual weekend is being announced May 15th, I think.)

Editing very quickly to add links:

https://events.sfwa.org/events/55th-annual-nebula-awards/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fTixQc410o

Update: I did not win. The Andre Norton award went to Riverland by my friend Fran Wilde.
Locus Awards, June 27th

Catfishing on CatNet is a finalist in the Young Adult category. The Locus Awards will take place at the Virtual Locus Awards Weekend. They’re planning some virtual programming but I don’t have any details yet on exactly how this will work.

Update: there should be a live link on the Locus Awards page sometime today (I think). The ceremony starts at 3 p.m. West Coast time (5 p.m. CDT, 6 p.m. EDT). I think it’s just going to be Connie Willis announcing the nominees and winners by category; they did not ask nominees for an acceptance speech or video, because editing everything together was going to be too much to try to get done when they also had a magazine to get out.

Update: I did not win. The Locus Award went to Dragon Pearl by my friend Yoon Ha Lee.

ITW Thriller Awards, July 11th.

The International Thriller Writers award the Thriller Awards each year, and Catfishing on CatNet is a finalist in the Young Adult category. The ITW is hosting a “Virtual ThrillerFest” on their Facebook page and will be announcing winners on July 11th. (More details to come.)

Update: the Thriller Award went to Tom Ryan for Keep This To Yourself.

The Hugo Awards, August 1st or 2nd.

Catfishing on CatNet is a finalist for the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, which is given with the Hugo Awards but is technically not a Hugo Award. (The good news for Lodestar Finalists: that means we go first, right after the Astounding Award, I think.) The Hugo Awards along with the Lodestar and the Astounding Award are nominated by the members of the World Science Fiction Society — which is to say, the members of WorldCon. Anyone who wants can buy a supporting membership to ConZealand and vote (and! you generally get a voter’s packet with electronic copies of most of the nominated works.)

ConZealand announced in March that they were moving to a virtual convention. They did a lovely job streaming the Hugo nomination announcements; they are planning a livestream of the awards that sounds similar to how the Nebulas did it, except they are also requesting that all nominees send a just-in-case back-up video in case the technology falls apart. (I can’t find a schedule on their website yet, so I’m not actually sure which day it’ll happen.)

Update: I won!

The Dragon Awards, Labor Day Weekend

Catfishing on CatNet is a finalist for the Dragon Award. This is an award usually given at DragonCon (but everything’s virtual this year.) Anyone at all can register to nominate and vote in the Dragons, and if you’d like to go register to vote for Catfishing on CatNet (or one of the other YA/MG books on the ballot) plus anything else on the longer ballot that you think is worthy of an award this year, you can register here. I am not sure when and how winners will be announced, other than “Labor Day weekend.”

The Anthony Awards, October 17th

The Anthony Awards are a mystery award given by Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention, which would have been held in Sacramento, California this year but is instead (like everything else) virtual. Catfishing on CatNet is a finalist in the YA category. The awards, and the convention, are named after Anthony Boucher, a mystery, horror, and science fiction writer and editor who died in 1968.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Q. Is it a total bummer not being able to go to the awards ceremonies?
A. I am both very disappointed and also very aware that in the context of a catastrophic global pandemic, there are people with much worse problems than “my trip to Los Angeles to maybe win an award is now cancelled.”

Q. How many of these were you going to go to in person?
A. Well, the Minnesota Book Awards, obviously. (Those would have been in downtown St. Paul. I just about could have walked.) I was also planning to go to New York for the Edgars (and to see my nephews!) and to Los Angeles for the Nebulas (and to see a friend who lives there!) I was probably not going to make it to ConZealand. New Zealand is a very long, expensive trip from Minnesota, and I would love to go to New Zealand sometime but I’d really rather go in February, when it’s summer there and winter here. I know, I know, New Zealand has very mild winters, but August is usually one of the nicest months in Minnesota and February is typically the worst.

ETA: You know something I’m discovering that’s sort of weird. With SF/F, I know a lot of people. Not literally everyone, but most of the people I don’t know, I have a friend who does. With Mystery and Thriller, I hardly know anyone. It feels sort of like being the new student at a very large high school. (I do appreciate the fact that mystery writers joke about murder a lot. This is a form of humor I deeply appreciate.) But it would have been really nice to get to go to the Edgars, ThrillerCon, and BoucherCon, just for the opportunity to meet a bunch of people face-to-face and have a stronger sense of being part of this new community. As it is, I’m connecting with people online a bit but it’s harder.

Q. Are you going to dress up in cocktail attire like the Minnesota Book Awards suggested?
A1. YES, I will be wearing EXTREMELY FANCY CLOTHING and you should most definitely picture me accordingly.
A2. If you’re holding a cocktail, that means you’re in cocktail attire, right?

 

Trip Report II: Dublin 2019, An Irish WorldCon

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I tend to really resist writing convention reports because if I try to name-check everyone I met, I will inevitably forget someone and then they might swear enmity against me for life and that would make me sad. So I’m just going to say up front that I’m not going to try to name everyone I met.

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Trip Report, Part 1: Cork & Killarney

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I was up for a Hugo Award this year, which provided us with a stupendous excuse to take a family vacation in Ireland and Iceland. (Icelandair is both a budget airline and clearly an arm of the Icelandic Bureau of Tourism since they let you arrange a multi-day stopover in Iceland at no extra cost, and inundate you with on-board advertisements designed to sell you on the idea. HORSES! NORTHERN LIGHTS! SCENERY!)

We went over about a week before the convention started. Ed and I visited Ireland 20 years ago — before we had kids — and Dublin was our least favorite bit, so we wanted to get out of it as quickly as possible. We took a train to Cork, where we discovered that the guest house I’d booked thinking it was walking distance from the train station was not around the corner from the train station but straight up a cliff. (There were stairs! I do not recommend hauling a bunch of suitcases up four flights of stairs, in the rain, while massively jet-lagged and operating on almost no sleep. Just, I mean, if you were considering it.)

The rest of the trip went quite a bit better.

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WorldCon 2019 Schedule

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Next month I will be at Dublin 2019: an Irish WorldCon. If we know each other (either in person or online) and you’ll be in Dublin and you’d like to try to meet up, please let me know!

Here’s my official schedule:

Reading: Naomi Kritzer
16 Aug 2019, Friday 20:00 – 20:20, Liffey Room-3 (Readings) (CCD)

Kaffeeklatsch: Naomi Kritzer
Format: Kaffeeklatsch
17 Aug 2019, Saturday 12:00 – 12:50, Level 3 Foyer (KK/LB) (CCD)

The author as a fellow traveler on the hero’s journey

Format: Panel
18 Aug 2019, Sunday 10:30 – 11:20, Odeon 4 (Point Square Dublin)

Many authors, unsurprisingly, form a strong emotional bond with their characters, experiencing the joys and frustrations of the story along with them. How does this affect the writing process itself? What about the impact on the writer’s critical engagement with their own work? How much does an author’s engagement depend on their personality, their approach, or the type of story being written?

Dr Kristina Perez (M), Michael Swanwick, Karen Simpson Nikakis, Naomi Kritzer, Daryl Gregory

 

Gods, religion and atheism in the genre
Format: Panel
18 Aug 2019, Sunday 13:00 – 13:50, Wicklow Hall 2B (CCD)

Gods and religion are often an integral element of SFF worlds; they offer ways to build conflict and to explore alternative philosophical concepts. How have authors tackled the creation and inclusion of religion in their worldbuilding? Is it possible for atheism to exist in worlds where gods literally walk among the people?

Derwin Mak, Dominic Riemenschneider MA, Ehud Maimon, Naomi Kritzer (M), Meg MacDonald

 

Hugo Nomination!

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I am excited to tell you that my story “The Thing About Ghost Stories” is a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Novelette!

If you read my blog for the Minneapolis politics, you may not be familiar with the Hugo Awards: Wired magazine called the Hugo “the premier award in the science fiction genre.” It’s a big deal and I am deeply honored and very excited to be nominated.

You can see the full list of everyone nominated here. It includes a lot of people I know and am super excited for.

The Hugos are awarded at Worldcon, which this year is in Dublin, Ireland. I’m totally going.

(My short story “Cat Pictures Please” won the 2016 Hugo for Best Short Story, and the YA novel I wrote about the AI in the story is coming November 19th and currently available for pre-order!)

Award Eligibility Post

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I had only one story that came out for the first time in 2016: my short story “Zombies in Winter,” which was published by the new online magazine Persistent Visions.

(I was writing and submitting this year! I sold stories that will appear in 2017, and I wrote new stories that I’ve started sending around, I sold a short story collection that will come out in 2017, and I sold translation rights to “Cat Pictures Please” and some of my other stories…but only one story actually appeared this year, and that very late in the year. So it goes.)

 

 

And then suddenly it was September

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::wipes dust off blog::

So hey! Early voting in Minnesota just started, which means I am overdue for getting started with this year’s election blogging. But before I get started with that, I really feel like I should mention that back in August, like over a month ago now, I won a Hugo Award for Best Short Story for Cat Pictures Please. I have no idea if there are people out there who read my blog here but do not follow me on either Twitter or Facebook, where I gleefully and excitedly jumped up and down right afterward.

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Me with my Hugo. Photo taken by John O’Halloran, Ohana TyeDye Photography

The star-and-moon batik jacket and skirt belonged to my mother. It was her favorite dress-up outfit for years and years. When my sister and I cleaned out her closet in July, Abi suggested that I wear it to the Hugo Awards as a way of having her with me. When I got dressed for the Awards Ceremony, I also carefully stashed a couple of Kleenex in the pocket. Every single time Abi or I checked the pockets of anything our mother had ever worn, there were a couple of tissues in the pockets. She wanted to be prepared! (My Grammie has the same habit. She always wants a tissue in her pocket, sleeve, or the little carrier bag of her walker. Or ideally all three.)

The Hugo rocket is currently sitting on the buffet in our dining room. I will eventually find another spot for it, but here’s the thing — as you may have guessed, we are cat owners. In fact, we got a new cat in June.

cassie

Our newest kitty, Cassie Fluffypants

One of our cats is sufficiently large that he managed to (accidentally) shove a literal stone sculpture off the mantelpiece a few months ago. The Hugo rocket is heavier than you might expect but it’s also a bit top-heavy and I really don’t want it to get broken. Where it is, it could get tipped over but it’s not going to make a six foot fall to the floor.

After winning, I got interviewed on MPR, which was awesome, and I got quoted in a Salon article, which was cool, and Chuck Tingle called me a “True Buckaroo” (and bitter conservative puppy John C. Wright called me a “graying spinster,” which was bonus levels of hilarious because Ed and I celebrated our 20th anniversary in July! Actually, we briefly acknowledged our anniversary, promised ourselves a lovely meal out, and … still have not taken it because our summer was ridiculously busy.)

I always have this weird idea that things will calm down a bit once school starts. This is a patently absurd belief. Not only does school mean my kids’ activities all ramp up again, September is also when BOTH of my daughters have birthdays. Molly turned 16 this year, and Kiera turned 13. Plus I got called for jury duty — I actually initially got called for the week of WorldCon, but I got a deferral until September. That was the week of the 12th through the 16th, and I actually got on a jury. Jury service was extremely interesting but surprisingly exhausting. (You have to sit and listen to people for long periods of time.) Molly does Mock Trial, so I’d actually been in Ramsey County courtrooms before to watch her team competing — it was very odd being in that same setting for real. Also, the prosecutor started out his opening statement in almost the exact same way that the Mock Trial kids do. (He was very young. I totally bet he did Mock Trial back in the day.) All the jurors took things very, very seriously — no one tried to evade jury service by trying to make themselves sound biased, and no one tried to rush through deliberations to get the heck out. I might write more about it later — I’m allowed to say whatever I want now that it’s over — if people are curious.

During voir dire (the part where the judge, then the lawyers, get to ask you questions to try to filter out the people they don’t want), the Defense lawyer asked us each to share some personal detail about ourselves. I’m not sure what her goal was in doing this but it gave us all stuff to chat about in the jury room, which was nice. (You’re not allowed to discuss the case among yourselves until it’s over and you’re deliberating.) Anyway, for my personal detail I told everyone I’d won a Hugo Award in August. One of the other jurors had actually read the story! Which was very cool. (And the judge’s clerk told me afterward that he and the judge were going to look up my story now that the trial was over. I hope they liked it.)

Anyway! I will be be back in a bit to start blogging about the 2016 election. In the meantime, I’ll note again that if you live in Minnesota, you can find your ballot at the Secretary of State’s website — both a list of candidates (that includes links to websites when available) and a literal sample ballot so you can see how it will look. You can send away for an absentee ballot right now, or go in early and vote right now. (They call this “no-excuses voting.”) The two things on my own ballot that I legitimately don’t know right now how I’ll vote on: a school board special election (someone quit their seat) and a proposed constitutional amendment on how we pay state legislators. Honestly, every other race I already know how I’ll vote — but writing about this stuff is fun, so you’ll get my full take, barring any unforseen disasters.

 

Vox Day’s involvement in the Sad Puppies slate

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So if you normally read my blog for the local politics or because you’re one of my family members, that is the sort of subject line that should tell you immediately that you’ve stumbled into some sort of unfolding drama that you’re not in on. Fortunately, Arthur Chu wrote a fantastic article that should bring you up to speed, if for some reason you want to dive in: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/12/right-wing-trolls-hijack-scifi-oscars.html

(8 million words of SF fandom politics below the merciful-to-the-rest-of-you cut.)

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