The James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award Council has chosen two winners for the 2006 Tiptree Award, which is is presented annually to a work or works that explore and expand gender roles in science fiction and fantasy.
This year’s winners are: Half Life by Shelley Jackson (published by HarperCollins) and The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne M. Valente (published by Bantam Spectra). In addition, the judges recognized Julie Phillips for her biography James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon (published by St. Martin’s).
The awards will be presented on 27 May at WisCon in Madison, Wisconsin. Jackson and Valente will each receive $1000 in prize money, “an original artwork created specifically for the award, and the signature chocolate that always accompanies the Tiptree Award.”
This year’s judges were Joan Gordon, Diane Silver, Midori Snyder, Takayuki Tatsumi, and Laurel Winter. Commenting on the winners, Gordon said “Half Life is a spectacular book. Jackson uses the science fictional conceit—conjoined twins born in large numbers after the A-Bomb testing in the 1950s—to explore both sympathetically and satirically all the negotiations in the women’s movement, in gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender movements, in other rights movements—separatist, solidarity, identity, integration, etc.” Tatsumi said “Jackson’s speculation on Hiroshima and Nagasaki makes the novel more philosophical, inviting us to meditate on what will happen to sexuality and ethnicity in the post-nuclear future.”
Of The Orphan’s Tales, Gordon said: “The structure… is brilliant, stories within stories, looping around and following through one another. On the surface it’s a girl telling fairy tales a la 1001 Nights, but the tales are influenced by worldwide story-telling traditions, and the roles of men, women, heroes, villains, animals, mythic beings, gods, etc., are constantly being subverted, upended, tweaked, so that gender and sexuality are more liquid than solid.”
In addition to selecting the winners, the judges also compiled an “honor list” to call attention to “works that the jurors found interesting, relevant to the award, and worthy of note.” This year’s honors list includes:
* Mindscape by Andrea Hairston (Aqueduct Press)
* Listening at the Gate by Betsy James, (Atheneum)
* The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner (Bantam Spectra)
* The Last Witchfinder by James Morrow (Morrow)
* “Horse-Year Women” by Michaela Roessner (published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction‘s January 2006 issue)
* “Ava Wrestles the Alligator” by Karen Russell (published in Granta 93, April 2006; reprinted in St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves [Knopf])
* “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell (published in Zoetrope: All-Story‘s Summer 2006 issue; reprinted in St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves [Knopf])
* Matriarch by Karen Traviss (Eos)
* Venusia by Mark von Schlegell (Semiotext(e))
The James Tiptree Award Anthology 4 will be edited by Karen Joy Fowler, Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin, and Jeffrey Smith. It will published by Tachyon Publications in late 2007, and will contain material selected from the winning works and the honor list, along with related essays and commentary chosen by the editors.
“The James Tiptree, Jr. Award was created in 1991 to honor Alice Sheldon, who wrote under the pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr. By her chance choice of a masculine pen name, Sheldon helped break down the imaginary barrier between “women’s writing” and “men’s writing.” Her insightful short stories were notable for their thoughtful examination of the roles of men and women in our society.”