This year’s Crawford Award, sponsored by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA), will be given to One for Sorrow by Christopher Barzak (published by Bantam Spectra) at the IAFA’s annual conference in March, in Orlando, Florida. The award, recognizes an outstanding first book of fantasy published during the preceding year.
The other titles on this year’s shortlist were:
The Imago Sequence by Laird Barron (Night Shade)
God is Dead by Ron Currie, Jr. (Viking)
Portable Childhoods by Ellen Klages (Tachyon)
Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog by Ysabeau Wilce (Harcourt).
The award winner is determined by a panel of nominators, who review and discuss each other’s nominations. This year’s panel included John Clute, Kelly Link, Farah Mendlesohn, Cheryl Morgan, and Graham Sleight. The award is administered by Gary K. Wolfe of the IAFA Board. The award was established in 1985 through a grant from Andre Norton in memory of early fantasy small-press publisher William L. Crawford, who died in 1984.