The Washington Science Fiction Association (WSFA) has announced the finalists for the 2009 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction, which “honors the efforts of small press publishers in providing a critical venue for short fiction in the area of speculative fiction.”
This year’s nominees are:
“Drinking Problem” by K.D. Wentworth (published in Seeds of Change edited by John Joseph Adams, Prime Books)
“Hard Rain at the Fortean Café” by Lavie Tidhar (Aeon Speculative Fiction magazine #14)
“His Last Arrow” by Christopher Sequeira (Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes edited by Jeff Campbell and Charles Prepolec, Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing)
“Silent as Dust” by James Maxey (Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, January 2008)
“Spider the Artist” by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu (Seeds of Change)
“The Absence of Stars: Part 1” by Greg Siewert (Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, December 2008)
“The Toy Car” by Luisa Maria Garcia Velasco, (translated from Spanish by Ian Watson; Aberrant Dreams, April 2008)
The award “showcases the best original short fiction published by small presses in the previous year (2008). An unusual feature of the selection process is that all voting is done with the identity of the author (and publisher) hidden so that the final choice is based solely on the quality of the story.”
The winner will be chosen by the members of WSFA, and will be presented at their annual convention, Capclave (this year on 16-18 October in Rockville, Maryland).