The James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award Council has announced the winner of the 2010 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 winner is Baba Yaga Laid an Egg by Dubravka Ugresic (Canongate). The book was originally published by Geopoetika (in Serbia) and Vukoviæ & Runjiæ (in Croatia) in 2007.
The Tiptree is a juried award, and the jurors who selected this year’s winners were Penny Hill (chair), Euan Bear, Jessa Crispin, Alice Kim, and Lawrence Schimel.
According to the Tiptree Council, Baba Yaga Laid an Egg impressed with its power and its grace. Tiptree juror Jessa Crispin explains that the beginning of the book “does not scream science fiction or fantasy. It starts quietly, with a meditation on the author’s aging mother, and the invisibility of the older woman.… But things shift wholly in the second act, with a surreal little tale of three old ladies, newly moneyed, who check into an Eastern European health spa. There’s another revolution in the third act, where what looks like a scholarly examination of the Russian fairy tale hag erupts into a rallying cry for mistreated and invisible women everywhere.”
Crispin notes that the fairy tale figure Baba Yaga is the witch, the hag, the inappropriate wild woman, the marginalized and the despised. She represents inappropriateness, wilderness, and confusion. “She’s appropriate material for Ugresic, who was forced into exile from Croatia for her political beliefs. The jurors feel Baba Yaga Laid an Egg is a splendid representation of this type of woman, so cut out of today’s culture.”
The award will be presented at WisCon 35, which will be held 26-30 May in Madison, Wisconsin. The award includes $1000 in prize money, “an original artwork created by artist Johnna Y. Klukas, and (as always) chocolate.”
The honor list, which the jurors compile to call attention to “works that the jurors found interesting, relevant to the award, and worthy of note,” is as follows:
* The Bone Palace by Amanda Downum (published by Orbit)
* The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)
* “Diana Comet and the Disappearing Lover” by Sandra McDonald (published as “Diana Comet” in Strange Horizons)
* “Drag Queen Astronaut” by Sandra McDonald (Crossed Genres)
* The Secret Feminist Cabal by Helen Merrick (Aqueduct Press)
* Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor (DAW)
* Living with Ghosts by Kari Sperring (DAW)
* The Colony by Jillian Weise (Soft Skull Press)
In addition to the honor list, this year’s jury also compiled the following long list of other works they found worthy of attention:
* Passion Play by Beth Bernobich (Tor)
“The Monitors” by Stevie Carroll (Echoes of Possibilities)
“Things I Know About Fairy Tales” by Roxane Gay (Necessary Fiction)
Gullstruck Island by Frances Hardinge (MacMillan)
Meeks by Julia Holmes (Small Beer Press)
Ash by Malinda Lo (Little, Brown)
Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls by Alissa Nutting (Starcherone Books)
White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi (Doubleday)
“Eros, Philia, Agape” by Rachel Swirsky (Tor.com)
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.