Aurora Award nominations

I'm delighted to announce that I'm nominated for not one, not two, but three Aurora Awards this year -- one nomination in each of the three English-language professional categories. This hasn't happened since -- well, since the last time I did the same thing, back in 1998. :)

My nominations this year are:

• Mindscan for Best Long-Form English;
  
• Identity Theft for Best Short-Form English;
  
• The radio drama "Birth," scripted by me and Michael Lennick and produced by Joe Mahoney for CBC Radio One, for Best English Other.
  

The full ballot in all categories is here.

In the Long-Form English category, four of the six finalists -- Julie E. Czerneda, Edo van Belkom, Robert J. Sawyer, and Robert Charles Wilson -- have previously won the award, and Karin Lowachee and Caitlin Sweet are major authors, so it's going to be quite the race.

In the Short-Form English category, I'm not just thrilled about my own nomination, but also Karl Schroeder's for "Alexander's Road," since that was the one original story in his collection The Engine of Recall published under my Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint -- making this the first award nomination for a work in that line.

This is the fourth award nomination for "Identity Theft." It's already won the 6,000-euro Premio UPC, and been nominated for both the Nebula and the Hugo.

And, as happens more and more these days, I'm competing with my own students: in the Short-Form English category, Derwin Mak, Douglas Smith, and Hayden Trenholm have all taken workshopping courses I've led.

I'm delighted to see my friend Randy McCharles get a long-overdue Aurora nomination for Fan Organizational. And I'm especially thrilled to see the anthology In Places Between: The Top Five Stories of the Robyn Herrington Short Story Contest 2005 be nominated for Fan Publication. Not only was Robyn one of my writing students, but she was also one of my dearest friends; my upcoming novel Rollback is dedicated to her.

Voting deadline is June 26, 2006; winners will be announced at the SF convention TT20, being held in Toronto July 7-9, 2006. Any Canadian may vote; the voting fee (which helps cover the cost of manufacturing the very nifty trophies) is Cdn$6.