WINNERS OF FIRST CARL BRANDON SOCIETY AWARDS ANNOUNCED

WINNERS OF FIRST CARL BRANDON SOCIETY AWARDS ANNOUNCED
Awards ceremony Sunday, May 28, 8:45 p.m. at WisCon 30, Madison, WI, USA



Madison, WI – Walter Mosley and Susan Vaught are winners of the debut awards from the Carl Brandon Society recognizing excellence and diversity in speculative fiction. Each winner will receive $1,000 and a trophy at a ceremony held at WisCon 30 in Madison, WI.


Mosley is awarded the Carl Brandon Parallax Award for his young adult novel, 47. The jury deemed this work "a powerful, moving work appropriate for young adult readers and yet a good read for adults" with writing that "shows beauty in the depiction of people of great courage, character and creativity in the midst of impossible circumstances."


Vaught is awarded the Carl Brandon Kindred Award for her young adult novel, Stormwitch , praised by a juror as "a fine work … written as a young adult novel, it works for adults as well."


The CBS Parallax Award recognizes works of speculative fiction created by people of color. The CBS Kindred Award recognizes works of speculative fiction dealing with issues of race and ethnicity; CBS Kindred award writers may be of any ethnic group.


CBS Parallax award jurors were Celu Amberstone, Steven Barnes, Karin Lowachee, MJ Hardman and Jennifer Stevenson. CBS Kindred award jurors were Jewelle Gomez, Ian K. Hagemann, Ursula K. Le Guin, Debbie Notkin and Cecilia Tan.


Each jury also released a shortlist of recommended works; juror commentary for each has been provided in a separate attachment (complete short and long lists will be available at http://www.carlbrandon.org.


Carl Brandon Society Parallax Award Shortlist
Ø Banker, Ashok, Prince of Ayodhya (Penguin India)
Ø Buckell, Tobias , Toy Planes (Nature, Oct. 13, 2005)
Ø Butler, Octavia E. , Fledgling (Seven Stories Press)
Ø Chaponda, Daliso , Trees of Bone (Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest, #3)
Ø Douglas, Marcia , Marie-Ma (Femspec, Vol. 6, #1)
Ø Goto, Hiromi, Nostalgia. (Nature, Sept. 1, 2005)
Ø Jemisin, N.K., Cloud Dragon Skies (Strange Horizons, Aug. 1, 2005)
Ø Jennings, A.H., Owasa (Farthing, July, 2005)
Ø Johnson, Alaya Dawn . Shard of Glass (Strange Horizons, Feb. 14, 2005)
Ø Khan, Ahmed, The Meaning of Life and Other Clichés (Another Realm, March, 2005)
Ø Nyoka, Gail, Mella and the N'anga: An African Tale (Sumach Press)
Ø Okorafor-Mbachu, Nnedimma , Zahrah the Windseeker. (Houghton Mifflin)
Ø Shawl, Nisi, Wallamelon (Aeon Magazine, #3)
Ø Singh, Vandana, The Tetrahedron. (Intranova, March 15, 2005)


Carl Brandon Society Kindred Award Shortlist
Ø Buckell, Tobias, Toy Planes (Nature, Oct. 13, 2005)
Ø Butler, Octavia E. , Fledgling ((Seven Stories Press)
Ø Chaponda, Daliso , Trees of Bone (Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest, #3)
Ø Gilks, Marg, Before the Altar on The Feast of All Souls (Tesseracts 9)
Ø Mosley, Walter, 47 (Little, Brown)
Ø Okorafor-Mbachu, Nnedimma, Zahrah the Windseeker (Houghton Mifflin )
Ø Williams, Liz, La Gran Muerte (Asimov's Science Fiction, April 2005)


The Carl Brandon Society began in 1997 at WisCon 23 as an informal gathering of people dedicated to addressing the representation of people of color in speculative fiction. It is named after the fictional black fan "Carl Brandon, Jr.," who was created in the mid-1950s by Terry Carr and Peter Graham, just as the Tiptree Award is named after writer Alice Sheldon's pseudonym "James Tiptree, Jr." Much as Alice Sheldon played with concepts of gender in her writing as Tiptree, so did Carr and Graham challenge concepts of race when writing as Brandon.


Among its activities, the society administers the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fund, which enables writers of color to attend one of the Clarion writing workshops where the acclaimed writer got her start.


As speculative fiction increases in diversity, the Carl Brandon Society will work to raise awareness of issues of race, ethnicity and culture within this genre we all love, fostering a needed dialog.


We have many ways for you to become directly involved, and our membership is open to all ethnicities. Visit our website, http://www.carlbrandon.org for more information.