In case you didn’t know Canada has it’s own Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards called the Auroras. The Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association (CSFFA) administers the awards which are awarded in a number of categories including Best Novel, Best YA Novel, Best Short Fiction, Best Graphic Novel, Best Poem/Song, Best Related Work, and Best Artist, as well as a number of Fan related categories.
Canadians who have produced work in those categories are eligible to be nominated each year for work produced in the previous year. Nominations are made by members of the CSFFA and once nominations have been closed online voting takes place for several months by the members again to decide on winners.
The reason I am telling you all this is because I only just recently learned that my short story Second Harvest that was published in May 2014 by Fictionvale is eligible to be nominated for the Short Fiction award.
The problem is I just found out that nominations close on April 25th, 2015 for this years awards. That’s this Saturday at midnight!
Now I realize that Fictionvale may not have the readership of other more traditional publications and the fact that even fewer of the readers of the magazine are probably Canadian and eligible to vote in the Aurora Awards, so that’s why I am putting this post together and letting you know.
If you’ve read my story and enjoyed it and would like to support it by nominating it for the Short Fiction award, I would be very grateful. There is a lot of great short fiction being produced by Canadians right now and it would be an honour just to be nominated amongst them.
If you’re interested in nominating my story or someone else’s work head on over to Aurora Awards site (Link: – http://www.prixaurorawards.ca/) and click on Join/Nominate/Vote button on the top menu. There’s one catch and that you have to become a member of the CSFFA to be able to nominate and vote, but its a simple process and only costs $10 for the year. Yes, I realize $10 is a princely sum when you’ve got better things to be spending it on, but by becoming a member you are eligible to receive FREE copies of nominated stories/novels to vote on as part of the voters package. So don’t think of it as a membership fee, think of it as a donation for all the free reading material you are about to receive once nominations close.
Voting begins June 1st and closes Oct 17th, 2015. Plenty of time to read through the nominations and vote on your favourites.
The Aurora awards will be present during SFContario 6 / Canvention 35 on the weekend of November 20-22, 2015 in Toronto.
Thanks for your time and consideration and please take a moment to support Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy. I know I will be nominating/voting for some of the favourites I’ve read this year.