Mythopoeic Awards Finalists for 2019 Announced

The finalists for the Mythopoeic Awards have been announced. The Society's webpage about the 2019 finalists is here or you may download a PDF of the announcement directly.  The winners will be announced at Mythcon 50, to be held August 2-5, 2019, in San Diego - we invite you to join us at our annual Mythopoeic conference and attend the banquet, at which the awards will be presented.

The press release follows:

The Mythopoeic Society 

2019 Mythopoeic Award Finalists 

June 3, 2019 

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature Finalists:

• Mishell Baker, The Arcadia Project series: Borderline; Phantom Pains; Impostor Syndrome (Saga Press)  
• Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands: A Novel (Big Mouth House)  
• Ruthanna Emrys, The Innsmouth Legacy series: "Litany of Earth” in New Cthulhu 2: More Recent Weird (Prime Books); Winter Tide (Tor.com); Deep Roots (Tor.com)  
• Madeline Miller, Circe: A Novel (Little, Brown)  
• Naomi Novik, Spinning Silver (Del Rey)  

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature Finalists:

• Jorge Aguirre and Rafael Rosado, The Chronicles of Claudette series: Giants Beware!; Dragons Beware!; Monsters Beware! (First Second) 
• Jonathan Auxier, Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster (Harry N. Abrams) 
• Sarah Beth Durst, The Stone Girl’s Story (Clarion Books) 
• Wendy Mass and Rebecca Stead, Bob (Feiwel and Friends) 
• Emily Tetri, Tiger vs. Nightmare (First Second) 

Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies  Finalists:

• Jane Chance, Tolkien, Self and Other: “This Queer Creature” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) 
• Lisa Coutras, Tolkien's Theology of Beauty: Majesty, Splendor, and Transcendence in Middle-earth (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)  
• Verlyn Flieger, There Would Always Be a Fairy Tale: More Essays on Tolkien (Kent State University Press, 2017) 
• Catherine McIlwaine, Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth (Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 2018) 
• Jonathan S. McIntosh, The Flame Imperishable: Tolkien, St. Thomas, and the Metaphysics of Faërie (Angelico Press, 2017)  

Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies Finalists:

• Dimitra Fimi, Celtic Myth in Contemporary Children's Fantasy: Idealization, Identity, Ideology (Springer Nature, 2017) 
• Elizabeth Sanders, Genres of Doubt: Science Fiction, Fantasy and the Victorian Crisis of Faith (McFarland, 2017) 
• Jonas Wellendorf, Gods and Humans in Medieval Scandinavia: Retying the Bonds (Cambridge University Press, 2018) 
• Mark J. P. Wolf, The Routledge Companion to Imaginary Worlds (Routledge, 2018) 
• Helen Young, Race and Popular Fantasy Literature: Habits of Whiteness (Routledge, 2016)   

The Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature is given to the fantasy novel, multi-volume, or single-author story collection for adults published during 2017 or 2018 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 (2016–2018) 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 50, to be held from August 2-5, 2019, in San Diego, California. 

A complete list of Mythopoeic Award winners is available on the Society web site at 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: Vicki Ronn, awards@mythsoc.org.