2023 Ignyte finalists

[psocoptera]

Hey, while we're waiting for "early June" for the Hugo finalists, how about some Ignyte finalists? Here or behind the cut.

BEST NOVEL: ADULT

BABEL – R. F. Kuang (Harper Voyager)
KAIKEYI – Vaishnavi Patel (Redhook)
SIREN QUEEN – Nghi Vo (Tordotcom)
THE BLOOD TRIALS – N. E. Davenport (Harper Voyager)
THE SPEAR CUTS THROUGH WATER – Simon Jimenez (Del Rey) 

Well, Babel and Siren Queen are great, and I hadn't even heard of two of the others.

BEST NOVEL: YOUNG ADULT

BALLAD & DAGGER – Daniel José Older (Rick Riordan Presents)
BLOODMARKED – Tracy Deonn (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)
BLOOD SCION – Deborah Falaye (HarperTeen)
LAKELORE – Anna-Marie McLemore (Feiwel & Friends)
THE KINDRED – Alechia Dow (Inkyard Press)

Gosh I am out of the YA world.

BEST IN MIDDLE GRADE

for works intended for the middle grade audience

RUBY FINLEY VS. THE INTERSTELLAR INVASION – K. Tempest Bradford (Farrar, Straus and Giroux BYR)
THE LAST MAPMAKER – Christina Soontornvat (Candlewick Press)
THE MARVELLERS – Dhonielle Clayton (Henry Holt & Company)
WITCHLINGS – Claribel Ortega (Scholastic Press)
YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE, DAVID BRAVO! – Mark Oshiro (HarperCollins)

Ditto the MG world.

BEST NOVELLA

BISHOP’S OPENING – R.S.A. Garcia (Clarkesworld)
EMPIRE OF THE FEAST – Bendi Barrett (Neon Hemlock)
EVEN THOUGHT I KNEW THE END – C. L. Polk (Tordotcom)
HELPMEET – Naben Ruthnum (Undertow)
INTO THE RIVERLANDS – Nghi Vo (Tordotcom)

Yay Polk and Vo!

BEST NOVELETTE

IF YOU FIND YOURSELF SPEAKING TO GOD, ADDRESS GOD WITH THE INFORMAL YOU – John Chu ( Uncanny Magazine)
MEN, WOMEN, & CHAINSAWS – Stephen Graham Jones (Tor.com Originals)
MURDER BY PIXEL: CRIME AND RESPONSIBILITY IN THE DIGITAL DARKNESS – S. L. Huang (Clarkesworld)
THE EPIC OF QU-SHITTU – Tobi Ogundiran (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction)
TO CARVE HOME IN YOUR BONES – Aigner Loren Wilson (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction)

Interesting to see F&SF here, when was the last time we saw them on the Hugos shortlists. 2012 for both short stories and novelettes, looks like? But then, I guess it's hard for print/subscriber magazines to compete with the free onlines for fan voting, and there have been F&SF Nebula nominees much more recently - one this very year, in short stories, and then a couple in 2015; novelettes in four of the past six years.
 
BEST SHORT STORY

for speculative works ranging from 2,000-7,499 words

GIRL OIL – Grace Fong (Tor.com)
THE LADY OF THE YELLOW PAINTED LIBRARY – Tobi Ogundiran (Tordotcom)
THE LOCKED POD – Malka Older (The Sunday Morning Transport)
THE VOICE OF A THOUSAND YEARS – Fawaz Al-Matrouk (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction)
WANDERLUST – LP Kindred (Anathema: Spec From the Margins)

I want to read that Malka Older story and I keep forgetting to see if I can do a free trial of SMT and get it. Also interesting that they have a minimum wordcount.

BEST IN SPECULATIVE POETRY

IN STOCK IMAGES OF THE FUTURE, EVERYTHING IS WHITE – Terese Mason Pierre (Uncanny Magazine)
I SHALL NOT SURRENDER – Beatrice Winifred Iker (Anathema: Spec From the Margins)
THE RECIPE FOR TIME TRAVEL – Monique Collins (FIYAH)
WE SMOKE POLLUTION – Ai Jiang (STAR*LINE)
YEAR OF THE UNICORN KIDZ – Jason B. Crawford (Sundress Publications)

CRITICS AWARD

Aigner Loren Wilson
Bogi Takács
Charles Payseur
Christina Orlando
Nerds of a Feather

BEST FICTION PODCAST

Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Black Women Are Scary
Good Morning Antioch
PodCastle
Pseudopod

BEST ARTIST

Aimee Campbell
Terri Chieyni
N’kai DeLauter
Taj Francis
Raymond Sebastien

BEST COMICS TEAM

for comics, graphic novels, and sequential storytelling

Changa And The Jade Obelisk #2 – Matteo Illuminat, Loris Ravina, Massimiliano Veltri & Robert Jeffrey II (MVMedia)
Squire – Nadia Shammas & Sara Alfageeh (HarperCollins)
Where Black Stars Rise – Marie Enger & Nadia Shammas (Tor Nightfire)

Interesting.

BEST ANTHOLOGY/COLLECTED WORKS

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century – Kim Fu (Tin House Books)
Night of the Living Rez – Morgan Talty (Tin House Books)
Reclaim the Stars – Zoraida Córdova, ed. (Wednesday Books)
The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer – David Pomerico and Kyle Dargan, eds. (Harper Voyager)
Voodoonauts Presents (Re)Living Mythology – Shingai Njeri Kagunda, Yvette Lisa Ndlovu, H.D. Hunter & LP Kindred (Android Press)

Hey I've read one of these!

BEST CREATIVE NONFICTION

Indigeneity in SFF Gaming: The Ongoing Need for Respectful, Native-Centered Storytelling – Chesley Oxendine (SFWA)
Preliminary Observations From An Incomplete History of African SFF – Wole Talabi (SFWA)
The H Word: Horror in a Country that Is Not Afraid of Death – Dante Luiz (Nightmare Magazine)
The Line Between Science Fiction and Fantasy is Blurring and I’m Into It – Joy Sanchez Taylor (Apex Magazine)
When Black Boys Find Magic – LaDarrion Williams (FIYAH)

THE EMBER AWARD

for unsung contributions to genre

Afronauts Podcast
Alex Brown
Kate Elliott
Maurice Broaddus
Ruoxi Chen

THE COMMUNITY AWARD

for Outstanding Efforts in Service of Inclusion and Equitable Practice in Genre

Carl Brandon Society
Clarion West
dave ring
Flights of Foundry
Loyalty Bookstore’s Crowdcast

Voting is open to the public and closes at the end of June.

Comments

[glynhogen]

I'd really like to see flash fiction broken out as a category.

ETA: Like, in general, not just in the Ignyte context. There are more commonalities between a story of 2K vs 7K than 500 vs 5000K.

[psocoptera]

I especially don't get not having an award for flash if you're going to explicitly disallow it for short stories. But I think you're right that it would best be considered separately. I wonder what is the shortest story to ever win the Hugo? I was not able to figure out how to phrase this in a search to find an answer, but it seems like something that someone must know.

[glynhogen]

Yeah, there's a certain length below which you can take it as a given that it's not going to get award nominations or publication in markets that are "word count under X." As...amusingly irksome...as the "what length is flash?" argument will grow in a formal categorization context, I think most definitions will fall within 500 words or so of each other. (The Ignyte's a bit of an outlier there, I think.)

[elysdir]

Great point about the difficulty of competing with free for fan awards.

(I had been surprised at the number of not-readable-for-free short-fiction items on the Ignyte list, but hadn’t occurred to me to make that connection.)