Tag: Tiptree Award

Tiptree Award Announcement: Virginia Bergin Wins!

It can finally be revealed: after a year of intense reading and copious discussion, the jury has selected Who Runs the World?  by Virginia Bergin as the winner of the 2017 James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award. In addition to the winner, we selected 7 items for placement on the Honor List, and 26 items for the Long List. Please give them all a look: official announcement of the 2017 Tiptree Award, Honor List, and Long List.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say about many of these works in the future (and how nice it will be to be able to talk publicly about my reading once again!), but for now I have to run off and catch my plane to Orlando for ICFA. But click through to the announcement to read what we found remarkable about so many of these works. And huge congratulations to Virginia Bergin!

Judging the Tiptree Award

This was made public a little while ago, at the same time the new winner and honorees for work published last year were announced (congratulations to them all, especially Anna-Marie McLemore!), but I’ve been remiss in mentioning here that I’m on the panel of judges for the 2017 James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award. The panel often includes a past winner of the award, and I’m thrilled to fill that role this year. Serving with me are Cheryl Morgan, Julia Starkey, Kazue Harada, and our chair Alexis Lothian.

As a consequence, I won’t be tracking my fiction reading online at all this year, since it will mostly be for award consideration. Also, if you follow me on social media, you will see me posting about the award with some regularity. That’s because the judges need people’s help making sure we see all the excellent work that gets published this year. The Tiptree Award has an open recommendations system, so any new (i.e. published in 2017) science fiction or fantasy that you think explores or expands notions of gender is eligible, and can be nominated just by typing the details into a simple web form. You submit it, we’ll see it.

Nominate works for the 2017 Tiptree Award here.

WisCon 40 and the Tiptree Award

Me with my parents on the night of the the Tiptree Award ceremony. Photo by John Scalzi.

This post is long overdue, having been constantly delayed by other life stuff. But WisCon 40 was special, and I want to record some of it here. WisCon is always special to me; it was my first con and the one I still attend every year. Attending as a Tiptree winner though is a unique experience, and one I’m very grateful to have had.

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A warm reception at dinner

I made it to Madison on Thursday just in time to race to the hotel and change into a suit for the Tiptree Motherboard dinner at Cento. I was very nearly on time but still the last to arrive, which produced the weekend’s first moment of atypical celebration when the already assembled group applauded my arrival. I took a stunned and bashful moment, then asked them to do it again so I could snap a picture. I was sure to take time during dinner to move down that long table and introduce myself to everyone, and met many people I was to keep interacting with for the rest of the weekend.

Me and Pat Murphy, founder of the Tiptree Awards

With Pat Murphy, who founded the award in her GoH speech in 1991

The next day was the official start of the convention, with my first programming of the weekend: a reading with Meghan McCarron, Jen Volant, and Anthony Ha. My co-readers shared some great stories, and everyone laughed at the funny parts of mine and seemed interested in the philosophy bits, so I think it went fairly well. After that was dinner, and then the Opening Ceremonies. As it was the occasion of WisCon’s 40th anniversary, many people spoke of what the con and its community meant to them. Then the three guests of honor, Justine Larbalestier, Sofia Samatar, and returning GoH Nalo Hopkinson were introduced.  To close things out I was presented with the Tiptree tiara by founding mother Pat Murphy, and crowned by Eleanor Arnason, the winner of the very first Tiptree Award.

Doing my best Space Babe impression

Doing my best Space Babe impression. This was, obviously, before I got the tiara. Photo by Jeanne Gomoll.

Saturday was my day without any programming, allowing me to simply float about and marvel over how absurdly kind everyone was to me. Cath Schaff-Stump invited me to do an interview for the Unreliable Narrators podcast, which you can listen to here for a sense of how overwhelmed by it all I was. There was a cake for me to cut featuring a mashup of the cover of my Asimov’s issue and the cover of Lizard Radio, the other Tiptree winner. There were many long and pleasant talks with friends. And, for the first time, there were my parents, who showed up that evening and took me out to a steak dinner at Rare, a fancy restaurant around the corner from the hotel. After that was the Tiptree auction, where my mother won me a first edition copy of Patternmaster. The night finished, of course, with the Floomp, perennially a WisCon high point.

Sunday was the big day. I spent the morning in my room working on my acceptance speech, then went downstairs for my first ever WisCon panels: Exposition in SF/F, and Writing Near Future SF. While I was empaneled, my aunt and uncle drove up from Chicago to join my parents and myself at the dessert banquet and subsequent ceremonies. First came the three excellent Guest of Honor speeches, including Nalo Hopkinson’s establishment of the Lemonade Award for kindness in science fiction communities. Then, when those were over, the Tiptree Award presentation. This included receiving the award, a check, a box of chocolates, a commissioned artwork based on “The New Mother,” and a serenade from audience. Some pictures:

Then it was time for me to give the speech I’d spent the morning writing. Just as with the the picture of my loss of composure in the gallery above, John Scalzi managed to snap an action shot:

This is an overwhelming honor. I owe so much gratitude to so many people for the success of “The New Mother”—readers, jurors, friends old and new— that, even if I restricted myself to just people who are in this room, I would outlast any reasonable person’s patience before I could individually thank them all with the thoroughness their generosity merits. Doing so may well be less the work of an acceptance speech and more a permanent life project. Special recognition is due, though, to my parents, Jean Stein and Michael Fischer, who traveled from Texas to be here tonight, who raised me in a house full of science fiction novels and have been the most constant supporters of my own writing. Beyond that, I’d like to briefly explain how instrumental the entire WisCon community was in enabling me to write “The New Mother.” When I attended Clarion in 2008, I had already been sitting on the idea for this story for two years, certain that the concept was strong, and equally certain I didn’t have the knowledge or skill to do it justice. During the last week of the workshop I mentioned to Nalo Hopkinson that my recent, brief visit to San Diego Comicon had given me a panic attack, and that I was unsure the whole con thing was really for me. She told me that not all cons are like that, and specifically made me promise to give WisCon a try before I made up my mind. I attended for the first time in 2009, and when I got home I sent Nalo flowers in Canada to thank her for pushing me in this direction. I’ve been coming every year since, listening to all of you and your important, challenging ideas. I could not have written “The New Mother” without access to the vibrant polyphony I encounter annually in this building. So I thank you, WisCon, both for celebrating me this weekend and for educating me over the last seven years. I hope to continue learning from you for a long time to come.

After that came hugs and laughs and, as I recall, a very great deal of tequila. My hangover the next morning was pristine, the sort of hangover where anyplace you put your body feels like littering. Fortunately it began to abate by the time I had to make my way to the airport shuttle, because I ended up sharing that ride with Pat Murphy. We were on the same outbound flight, and so I got to cap my Tiptree experience by debriefing with the woman who was there from the very start. A more perfect close I couldn’t imagine.

“The New Mother” Won the Tiptree Award

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I’m overwhelmed to announce that “The New Mother” has won the 2015 James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award, alongside the novel Lizard Radio by Pat Schmatz. In addition, I’m sharing an honor list and long list with so many writers and artists and critics I admire that I don’t even know where to start. Just click through the link, and look at all the wonderful work that the Tiptree jury have highlighted this year. I’m sure I’ll have more to say soon, but for now I’m just gobsmacked and grateful.