Congrats to all of the nominees for the World Fantasy Award–the ballot is reproduced after the cut. Special congrats to my wife Ann, who has never before been a finalist and now has two nominations! (This also means she’s been up for the Hugo, Shirley Jackson, and World Fantasy Awards this year.)

I’m up as co-editor of the Steampunk anthology (sixth or seventh nomination?, with two wins). Seems as appropriate a time as any to mention we’ll be co-editing a Steampunk II (reprints from the last ten years) for Tachyon and that I have sold the definitive book on Steampunk–art, photos, and text–to a publisher in NYC. (Thanks Jake and Leslie, among others.) And, might as well throw in that the next three Best American Fantasy volumes will be edited by Minister Faust, Junot Diaz, and Catherynne M. Valente (more on that next week).

Finally, Last Drink Bird Head will be out for World Fantasy, where in addition to serving as two of the GoH we will be having a Finch/Booklife/LDBH release party at the convention (Thursday night) and it will of course be called LAST DRINK BIRD HEAD: The Book Release Party to End All Book Release Parties.

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WORLD FANTASY AWARD FINALISTS

Novel

The House of the Stag, Kage Baker (Tor)
The Shadow Year, Jeffrey Ford (Morrow)
The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury)
Pandemonium, Daryl Gregory (Del Rey)
Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin; Knopf)

Novella

“Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel,” Peter S. Beagle (Strange Roads)
“If Angels Fight,” Richard Bowes (F&SF 2/08)
“The Overseer,” Albert Cowdrey (F&SF 3/08)
“Odd and the Frost Giants,” Neil Gaiman (Bloomsbury; HarperCollins)
“Good Boy,” Nisi Shawl (Filter House)

Short Story

“Caverns of Mystery,” Kage Baker (Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy)
“26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss,”, Kij Johnson (Asimov’s 7/08)
“Pride and Prometheus,” John Kessel (F&SF 1/08)
“Our Man in the Sudan,” Sarah Pinborough (The Second Humdrumming Book of Horror Stories)
“A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica,” Catherynne M. Valente (Clarkesworld 5/08)

Anthology

The Living Dead, John Joseph Adams, ed. (Night Shade Books)
The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Ellen Datlow, ed. (Del Rey)
The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2008: Twenty-First Annual Collection, Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link, & Gavin J. Grant, eds. (St. Martin’s)
Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy, Ekaterina Sedia, ed. (Senses Five Press)
Steampunk, Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, eds. (Tachyon Publications)

Collection

Strange Roads, Peter S. Beagle (DreamHaven Books)
The Drowned Life, Jeffrey Ford (HarperPerennial)
Pretty Monsters, Kelly Link (Viking)
Filter House, Nisi Shawl (Aqueduct Press)
Tales from Outer Suburbia, Shaun Tan (Allen & Unwin; Scholastic ‘09)

Artist

Kinuko Y. Craft
Janet Chui
Stephan Martinière
John Picacio
Shaun Tan

Special Award—Professional

Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant (for Small Beer Press and Big Mouth House)
Farah Mendlesohn (for The Rhetorics of Fantasy)
Stephen H. Segal & Ann VanderMeer (for Weird Tales)
Jerad Walters (for A Lovecraft Retrospective: Artists Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft)
Jacob Weisman (for Tachyon Publications)

Special Award—Non-professional

Edith L. Crowe (for her work with The Mythopoeic Society)
John Klima (for Electric Velocipede)
Elise Matthesen (for setting out to inspire and for serving as inspiration for works of poetry, fantasy, and SF over the last decade through her jewelry-making and her “artist’s challenges.”)
Sean Wallace, Neil Clarke, & Nick Mamatas (for Clarkesworld)
Michael Walsh (for Howard Waldrop collections from Old Earth Books)

The judges this year are Jenny Blackford, Peter Heck, Ellen Klages, Chris Roberson, and Delia Sherman.