Posted on June 2, 2016 by David Oberhelman

The Mythopoeic Society has announced the finalists for the 2016 Mythopoeic Awards. For more information about the awards, visit the Awards section of this site; the finalists for the literature awards, text of recent acceptance speeches, and selected book reviews are also listed in this section. The winners of this year’s awards will be announced during Mythcon 47, to be held August 5 – 8, 2016, in San Antonio, Texas.

You may download the official press release, in PDF format, here.

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Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature

• Holly Black, The Darkest Part of the Forest (Little, Brown)
• Kazuo Ishiguro, The Buried Giant (Knopf)
• E.K. Johnston, A Thousand Nights (Disney-Hyperion)
• Naomi Novik, Uprooted (Del Rey)
• Daniel José Older, Shadowshaper (Arthur A. Levine Books)

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature

• Cassie Beasley, Circus Mirandus (Dial)
• Robert Beatty, Serafina and The Black Cloak (Disney-Hyperion)
• Sarah Beth Durst, The Girl Who Could Not Dream (Clarion Books)
• Terry Pratchett, Tiffany Aching Series: Wee Free Men; Hat Full of Sky; Wintersmith; I Shall Wear Midnight; The Shepherd’s Crown (HarperCollins)
• Ursula Vernon, Castle Hangnail (Dial Books)

Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies

• Verlyn Flieger, ed. The Story of Kullervo by J.R.R. Tolkien (HarperCollins, 2015)
• Grevel Lindop , Charles Williams: The Third Inkling (Oxford Univ. Press, 2015)
• Alistair E. McGrath, C. S. Lewis—A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet (Tyndale House, 2013)
• Abigail Santamaria, Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C.S. Lewis (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015)
• Christopher Tolkien, ed., Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary Together with Sellic Spell by J.R.R. Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin, 2014)

Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies

• Stefan Ekman, Here Be Dragons: Exploring Fantasy Maps and Settings (Wesleyan Univ. Press, 2013)
• Daniel Gabelman, George MacDonald: Divine Carelessness and Fairytale Levity (Baylor University Press, 2013)
• Melanie Keene, Science in Wonderland: The Scientific Fairy Tales of Victorian Britain (Oxford Univ., Press, 2015)
• Heather O’Donoghue, English Poetry and Old Norse Myth: A History (Oxford Univ. Press, 2014)
• Jamie Williamson, The Evolution of Modern Fantasy: From Antiquarianism to the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)

The Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature is given to the fantasy novel, multi-volume, or single-author story collection for adults published during 2015 that best exemplifies the spirit of the Inklings. Books are eligible for two years after publication if not selected as a finalist during the first year of eligibility. Books from a series are eligible if they stand on their own; otherwise, the series becomes eligible the year its final volume appears. The Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature honors books for beginning readers to age thirteen, in the tradition of The Hobbit or The Chronicles of Narnia. Rules for eligibility are otherwise the same as for the Adult literature award. The question of which award a borderline book is best suited for will be decided by consensus of the committees. Books for mature “Young Adults” may be moved to the Adult literature category.

The Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies is given to books on Tolkien, Lewis, and/or Williams that make significant contributions to Inklings scholarship. For this award, books first published during the last three years (2013–2015) are eligible, including finalists for previous years. The Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies is given to scholarly books on other specific authors in the Inklings tradition, or to more general works on the genres of myth and fantasy. The period of eligibility is three years, as for the Inklings Studies award.

The winners of this year’s awards will be announced during Mythcon 47, to be held from August 5-8, 2016, at San Antonio, TX. A complete list of Mythopoeic Award winners is available on the Society web site: Awards.

The finalists for the literature awards, text of recent acceptance speeches, and selected book reviews are also listed in this on-line section. For more information about the Mythopoeic Awards, please contact the Awards Administrator: David D. Oberhelman, awards@mythsoc.org

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