Spinning Silver Strikes Gold
Silver turned to gold at Mythcon 50 as Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver took home the star prize of Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature.
The Mythopoeic Awards are given out to those works that are decided to have best exemplified “the Spirit of the Inklings”, the famous Oxford writing group that counted JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis among its members.
Alongside the Adult Literature award, presentations were also made for Children’s Literature, Inklings Studies, Myth and Fantasy Studies, and the Alexei Kondratiev Award for best Student Paper.
A full list of winners and nominees can be seen below:
Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature
Winner: Spinning Silver – Naomi Novik (Del Rey)
Nominees:
The Arcadia Project: Borderline, Phantom Pains, Impostor Syndrome – Mishell Baker (Saga)
In Other Lands – Sarah Rees Brennan (Big Mouth House)
The Innsmouth Legacy: “The Litany of Earth” (New Cthulhu 2: More Recent Weird), Winter Tide (Tor.com Publishing), Deep Roots Ruthanna Emrys (Tor.com Publishing)
Circe – Madeline Miller (Little, Brown)
Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature
Winner: Bob – Wendy Mass & Rebecca Stead (Feiwel and Friends)
Nominees:
The Chronicles of Claudette: Giants Beware!, Dragons Beware!, Monsters Beware! – Jorge Aguirre & Rafael Rosado (First Second)
Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster – Jonathan Auxier (Abrams)
The Stone Girl’s Story – Sarah Beth Durst (Clarion)
Tiger vs. Nightmare – Emily Tetri (First Second)
Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies
Winner: There Would Always Be a Fairy Tale: More Essays on Tolkien – Verlyn Flieger (Kent State University Press)
Nominees:
Tolkien, Self and Other: “This Queer Creature” – Jane Chance (Palgrave)
Tolkien’s Theology of Beauty: Majesty, Splendor, and Transcendence in Middle-earth – Lisa Coutras (Palgrave)
Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth – Catherine McIlwaine (Bodleian Library, University of Oxford)
The Flame Imperishable: Tolkien, St. Thomas, and the Metaphysics of Faërie – Jonathan S. McIntosh (Angelico)
Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies
Winner: Celtic Myth in Contemporary Children’s Fantasy: Idealization, Identity, Ideology – Dimitra Fimi (Springer Nature)
Nominees
Genres of Doubt: Science Fiction, Fantasy and the Victorian Crisis of Faith – Elizabeth M. Sanders (McFarland)
Gods and Humans in Medieval Scandinavia: Retying the Bonds – Jonas Wellendorf (Cambridge University Press)
The Routledge Companion to Imaginary Worlds – Mark J. P. Wolf, ed. (Routledge)
Race and Popular Fantasy Literature: Habits of Whiteness – Helen Young (Routledge)
Alexei Kondratiev Award
“An Unexpected Poet: The Creative Works of Dr. Robert E. Havard” – Sarah O’Dell