I was talking to a friend of mine the other day about the World Fantasy Awards, when she asked me who was the first Australian to win the award? It gave me pause, if only because it’s something I’d expect myself to know. It motivated me to do a little detective work and go looking through the thirty-four year history of the award.
From my cursory inspection, ten Australians have been nominated for the World Fantasy Award in six categories for a total of seventeen nominations and seven wins. The first Australian work to be nominated for the World Fantasy Award was Peter Carey for his novel Illywhacker in 1986. The first Australians to win were Jack Dann and Janeen Webb, who won for Best Anthology in 1996 for Dreaming Down Under. The other recipients of the Award are Margo Lanagan (Best Collection for Black Juice, Best Short Story for “Singing My Sister Down”, and Best Novel for Tender Morsels) and Shaun Tan (Best Artist three times).
The full list of Australian World Fantasy Award nominees is below:
1986: Novel: Peter Carey, Illywhacker
1996: Anthology: She’s Fantastical, Lucy Sussex & Judith Raphael Buckrich, eds.
1996: Short Story: “Angel Thing”, Petrina Smith
1999: Anthology: Dreaming Down-Under, Jack Dann & Janeen Webb eds. **
2001: Collection: Blackwater Days, Terry Dowling
2001: Short Story: “The Saltimbanques”, Terry Dowling
2001: Artist: Shaun Tan **
2002: Collection: The Essential Ellison, Harlan Ellison, Terry Dowling with Richard Delap & Gil Lamont, eds.
2004: Anthology: Gathering the Bones, Jack Dann, Ramsey Campbell & Dennis Etchison, eds.
2004: Novel: The Etched City, K.J. Bishop
2005: Short Story: “Singing My Sister Down”, Margo Lanagan **
2005: Collection: Black Juice, Margo Lanagan **
2007: Collection: Red Spikes, Margo Lanagan
2007: Artist: Shaun Tan **
2009: Collection: Tales from Outer Suburbia, Shaun Tan
2009: Artist: Shaun Tan **
2009: Novel: Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan**
** denotes winner
The programming folk have released the schedule for Aussiecon4. I believe it’s tentative at this stage, and unfortunately I’m unable to make a number of the events they’ve proposed for me. I hope some or all of these may be able to be resolved, but at the moment this is my schedule:
- Fri 1200pm: In conversation: Ellen Datlow and Jonathan Strahan;
- Fri 3.00pm: Kaffeeklatsche;
- Sat 10am: How much science should be in YA science fiction?
- Sat 1.00pm: Did the future just arrive?: The e-book and the publishing industry
- Sun 10.00am: Predicting the Hugos: 2011
- Sun 1100am: Signing;
- Sun 12noon: Jack Vance and the Dying Earth
- Mon 10.00am: How we edit
- Mon 11.00 am: The future of short fiction
- Mon 1.00pm: A house made from stories: Building the anthology
I’m sad that it seems unlikely I’ll be able to make so many of these events, and have my fingers crossed that at least one or two of the Monday events can be resolved.
There was a bandwidth issue with the domain that result in the site being knocked out from about 2am – 9am Perth time. My apologies to anyone trying to get to the blog, or to the podcast. We’re back and all should be fine now.
Although we’re having a Federal election here in Australia, and I had to get out and fulfil my democratic obligations, I still found time to jump on to Skype and call Gary to talk about things science-fictional. We covered reviewing, the end of “books you don’t need to read’, The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction, our awesome technical skills as podcasters, the Coode Street Feminist Advisory Committee (we may need t-shirts), and all sorts of other things in another longish podcast. We have also accepted we could talk forever – I think we chatted for more than an hour that we didn’t record. We hope you enjoy it!
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| Download (Duration: 1:25:42 — 78.5MB)
We’re running late here at Coode St. No fault of the indefatigable Gary K. Wolfe, who fired up Skype late on Friday evening to record a new podcast, but more due to some issues to to with data storage. I’m still working on those, but her, after some peer review, is the latest, our fifteenth! We natter about a number of things, all of which I should probably list, but will instead leave for you to discover as I’m in something of a rush. Enjoy!
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| Download (Duration: 1:23:07 — 76.1MB)
