The Mythopoeic Society has announced the finalists for the 2008 Mythopoeic Awards. The winners will be announced during Mythcon XXXIX, which will be held 15-18 August at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, Connecticut.
The nominees are:
Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature:
In the Forest of Forgetting by Theodora Goss (Prime Books)
The New Moon’s Arms by Nalo Hopkinson (Grand Central Publishing)
Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay (Roc)
Orphan’s Tales (consisting of In the Night Garden and In the Cities of Coin and Spice) by Catherynne M. Valente (Spectra)
Chronicles of Chaos (consisting of Orphans of Chaos, Fugitives of Chaos, and Titans of Chaos) by John C. Wright (Tor)
Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature:
Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale, Valiant: A Modern Tale of Faerie, and Ironside: A Modern Faery’s Tale by Holly Black (Simon & Schuster and Margaret K. McElderry)
Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy (HarperCollins)
The entire seven-volume Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling (Bloomsbury)
Dusssie by Nancy Springer (Walker Books for Young Readers)
The New Policeman by Kate Thompson (HarperTeen)
Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies:
Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien’s Middle-earth by Marjorie Burns (University of Toronto Press)
Interrupted Music: The Making of Tolkien’s Mythology by Verlyn Flieger (Kent State University Press)
The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary by Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner (Oxford University Press)
The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community by Diana Pavlac Glyer, appendix by David Bratman (Kent State University Press)
The History of the Hobbit, Part One, Mr Baggins; Part Two, Return to Bag-End by John D. Rateliff (HarperCollins)
Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies:
Four British Fantasists: Place and Culture in the Children’s Fantasies of Penelope Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper by Charles Butler (Children’s Literature Association & Scarecrow Press)
From Asgard to Valhalla: The Remarkable History of the Norse Myths by Heather O’Donoghue (I.B. Tauris)
The Shadow-Walkers: Jacob Grimm’s Mythology of the Monstrous edited by T.A. Shippey (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies)
Oz in Perspective: The Magic and Myth of the L. Frank Baum Books by Richard Carl Tuerk (McFarland & Co.)
The Lure of the Vampire: Gender, Fiction and Fandom from Bram Stoker to Buffy by Milly Williamson (Wallflower)
The Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature is given to the fantasy novel, multi-volume, or single-author story collection for adults published during 2007 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 (2005–2007) 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 Mythopoeic Society is a non-profit international literary and educational organization for the study, discussion, and enjoyment of fantastic and mythic literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. Membership in the Mythopoeic Society is open to all scholars, writers, and readers of these literatures.