The Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature is given to the fantasy novel, multi-volume, or single-author story collection for adults published during 2008 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 younger readers (from Young Adults to picture books for beginning readers), 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.
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 (2006–2008) 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 XL, to be held from July 17-20, in Los Angeles, California. A complete list of Mythopoeic Award winners is available on the Society web site:
http://www.mythsoc.org/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 Oberhelman, awards@mythsoc.org.
2009 Mythopoeic Award Finalists
Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature
Carol Berg, Flesh and Spirit and Breath and Bone (Roc)
Daryl Gregory, Pandemonium (Del Rey)
Ursula K. Le Guin, Lavinia (Harcourt)
Patricia A. McKillip, The Bell at Sealey Head (Ace)
Gene Wolfe, An Evil Guest (Tor)
Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature
Kristin Cashore, Graceling (Harcourt Children’s Books)
Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book (HarperCollins)
Diana Wynne Jones, House of Many Ways (HarperCollins)
Ingrid Law, Savvy (Dial)
Terry Pratchett, Nation (HarperCollins)
Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies
Gavin Ashenden, Charles Williams: Alchemy and Imagination (Kent State, 2008)
Veryln Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson, eds. Tolkien on Fairy-stories: Expanded Edition, with Commentary and Notes (HarperCollins, 2008)
John Rateliff, The History of the Hobbit, Part One: Mr. Baggins; Part Two: Return to Bag-end (Houghton Mifflin, 2007)
Michael Ward, Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis (Oxford, 2008)
Elizabeth A. Whittingham, The Evolution of Tolkien’s Mythology: A Study of the History of Middle-earth (McFarland, 2008)
Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies
Charles Butler, Four British Fantasists: Place and Culture in the Children’s Fantasies of Penelope Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper (Children’s Literature Association & Scarecrow Press, 2006)
Jason Marc Harris, Folklore and the Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction (Ashgate, 2008)
Farah Mendlesohn, Rhetorics of Fantasy (Wesleyan Univ. Press, 2008)
Marek Oziewicz, One Earth, One People: The Mythopoeic Fantasy Series of Ursula K. Le Guin, Madeleine L’Engle and Orson Scott Card (McFarland, 2008)
Richard Carl Tuerk, Oz in Perspective: Magic and Myth in the Frank L. Baum Books (McFarland, 2007)
