2019 Sunburst Award Shortlists

The Sunburst Award Committee has announced the shortlists for the 2019 Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. The winners will be announced in the Fall 2019.


Adult Fiction

• Eden Robinson, Trickster Drift [Penguin Random House Canada]
• Andromeda Romano-Lax, Plum Rains [Penguin Random House Canada]
• Kate Heartfield, Armed in Her Fashion [Chizine Publications]
• Amber Dawn, Sodom Road Exit [Arsenal Pulp Press]
• Rich Larson, Annex [Orbit/Hachette Book Group]

Young Adult Fiction

• Rebecca Schaeffer, Not Even Bones [Houghton Mifflin Harcourt]
• Patrick Weekes, Feeder [Simon & Schuster Canada]
• Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road [Penguin Random House Canada]
• Regan McDonell, Black Chuck [Orca Book Publishers]
• Sebastien de Castell, Spellslinger [Orbit, Hachette Book Group]

Short Story Fiction

• Senaa Ahmad, “The Glow-In-The-Dark Girls” [Strange Horizons, 15 Jan 2018]
• Madeline Ashby, “Domestic Violence” [Slate, 26 March 2018]
• Malon Edwards, “Candied Sweets, Cornbread, and Black-Eyed Peas” [Sword and Sonnet, Ate Bit Bear]
• Rich Larson, “Meat And Salt And Sparks” [Tor.com 6 June 2018]
• A.C. Wise, “The Time Traveler's Husband” [Shimmerzine #46, Nov 2018]

The Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic has celebrated the best in Canadian fantastic literature in both Adult and Young Adult publications since 2001. Winners receive a medallion that incorporates the Sunburst logo. Winners of both the Adult and Young Adult Sunburst Award also receive a cash prize of $1,000, while winners of the Short Story Sunburst Award receive a cash prize of $500.

The Sunburst Award takes its name from the debut novel of the late Phyllis Gotlieb, one of the first published authors of contemporary Canadian speculative fiction. Last year's winners were David Demchuk and Cherie Dimaline; previous winners include Johnathan Auxier, Andrew Davidson, Martine Desjardins, Gemma Files, Hiromi Goto, Nalo Hopkinson, Guy Gavriel Kay, Thomas King, Ruth Ozeki, Geoff Ryman, and Margaret Sweatman.