World Fantasy Award Nominees for 2013

...were announced earlier this week.

I'm not reading as much genre stuff as I used to -- or as much of anything as I want; selling information products to accountants takes a lot of time and mental energy -- but the World Fantasy list serves as a good reading list every year. It's not necessarily all of the best of the year, and it certainly has a tendency to honor "writer's writers" over "reader's writers," but, if you only read WFA-nominated stuff, you'd have some great experiences.

Congratulations to all of the nominees.


Novel

• The Killing Moon, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• Some Kind of Fairy Tale, Graham Joyce (Gollancz; Doubleday)
• The Drowning Girl, Caitlín R. Kiernan (Roc)
• Crandolin, Anna Tambour (Chômu)
• Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson (Grove; Corvus) 

Novella

• “Hand of Glory,” Laird Barron (The Book of Cthulhu II)
• “Let Maps to Others,” K.J. Parker (Subterranean Summer ’12)
• The Emperor’s Soul, Brandon Sanderson (Tachyon)
• “The Skull,” Lucius Shepard (The Dragon Griaule)
• “Sky,” Kaaron Warren (Through Splintered Walls)

Short Story

• “The Telling,” Gregory Norman Bossert (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 11/29/12)
• “A Natural History of Autumn,” Jeffrey Ford (F&SF 7-8/12)
• “The Castle That Jack Built,” Emily Gilman (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 1/26/12)
• “Breaking the Frame,” Kat Howard (Lightspeed 8/12)
• “Swift, Brutal Retaliation,” Meghan McCarron (Tor.com 1/4/12)

Anthology

• Epic: Legends of Fantasy, John Joseph Adams, ed. (Tachyon)
• Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic, Eduardo Jiménez Mayo & Chris N. Brown, eds. (Small Beer)
• Magic: An Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane, Jonathan Oliver, ed. (Solaris)
• Postscripts #28/#29: Exotic Gothic 4, Danel Olson, ed. (PS Publishing)
• Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron, Jonathan Strahan, ed. (Random House) 

Collection

• At the Mouth of the River of Bees, Kij Johnson (Small Beer)
• Where Furnaces Burn, Joel Lane (PS Publishing)
• The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories Volume One: Where on Earth and Volume Two: Outer Space, Inner Lands, Ursula K. Le Guin (Small Beer)
• Remember Why You Fear Me, Robert Shearman (ChiZine)
• Jagannath, Karin Tidbeck (Cheeky Frawg) 

Artist

• Vincent Chong
• Didier Graffet and Dave Senior
• Kathleen Jennings
• J.K. Potter
• Chris Roberts

Special Award—Professional

• Peter Crowther & Nicky Crowther for PS Publishing
• Lucia Graves for the translation of The Prisoner of Heaven (Weidenfeld & Nicholson; Harper) by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
• Adam Mills, Ann VanderMeer, & Jeff VanderMeer for the Weird Fiction Review website
• Brett Alexander Savory & Sandra Kasturi for ChiZine Publications
• William K. Schafer for Subterranean Press

Special Award—Non-professional

• Scott H. Andrews for Beneath Ceaseless Skies
•  L. Timmel Duchamp for Aqueduct Press
• S.T. Joshi for Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction, Volumes 1 & 2 (PS Publishing)
• Charles A. Tan for Bibliophile Stalker blog
• Jerad Walters for Centipede Press
• Joseph Wrzos for Hannes Bok: A Life in Illustration (Centipede Press)

And this year's Lifetime Achievement honorees will be the under-appreciated Susan Cooper and Tanith Lee.