Convenors' Award for Excellence (Aurealis Award)

The Convenors' Award for Excellence is one of the Aurealis Awards presented annually by the Australia-based Chimaera Publications and WASFF to published works in order to "recognise the achievements of Australian science fiction, fantasy, horror writers".[1] The Convenors' Award, awarded at the discretion of the convenors, recognises "a particular achievement in speculative fiction or related areas" that cannot otherwise be judged for the Aurealis Awards, usually because it does not fit into any of the Aurealis categories. Works nominated for the Convenor's Award for Excellence can be non-fiction, artwork, film, television, electronic or multimedia work. The work can be speculative fiction, or a speculative fiction related work "which brings credit or attention to the speculative fiction genres".[2]

Between 2004 and 2012 the award was known as the Peter McNamara Award for Excellence, in honour of the publisher, editor and original convenor of the awards, who died in 2004. It was renamed in 2012 to avoid confusion with the Peter McNamara Achievement Award, presented at the Ditmar Awards ceremony at the Australian National Science Fiction Convention.[2][3]

To qualify, a work must have been first published by an Australian citizen or permanent resident between 1 January and 31 December of the corresponding year;[4] the presentation ceremony is held the following year.

Winners

In the following table, the years correspond to the year of the work's eligibility; the ceremonies are always held the following year. Each year links to the corresponding "year in literature" article.

Year Winner(s) Work (when a single work was cited) Ref
1998 Shaun Tan artwork in The Rabbits (Lothian)
1999 Terry Dowling Antique Futures (MP Books)
2000 Paul Collins and Meredith Costain editing Spinouts: Bronze (Pearson Education)
2000 Shaun Tan The Lost Thing (Lothian)
2001 Emily Rodda and Marc McBride The Deltora Quest series (Scholastic)
2001 Emily Rodda and Marc McBride The Deltora Book of Monsters (Scholastic)
2001 Peter McNamara
2002 Robbie Matthews
2003 Nick Stathopoulos
2004 Cat Sparks
2005 Grant Stone
2006 Bill Congreve
2007 Terry Dowling Ryneomonn (Coeur de Lion)
2008 Jack Dann
2009 Justin Ackroyd Slow Glass Books (bookshop)
2010 Helen Merrick
2011 Alisa Krasnostein, Alex Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and producer Andrew Finch Galactic Suburbia (podcast)
2012 Kate Eltham
2013 Jonathan Strahan
2014 David Ashton, Petra Elliott, Ben McKenzie, John Richards and Lee Zachariah Night Terrace (audio series) [5]
2015 Alexandra Pierce and Alisa Krasnostein Letters to Tiptree (Twelfth Planet Press) [6]
2016 Kate Forsyth The Rebirth of Rapunzel: A Mythic Biography of the Maiden in the Tower [7]
2017 Tansy Rayner Roberts The Fictional Mother [8]
2018 Cat Sparks The 21st Century Catastrophe: Hyper-capitalism and Severe Climate Change in Science Fiction [9]
2018 Kim Wilkins, Lisa Fletcher, and Beth Driscoll Genre Worlds: Australian Popular Fiction in the 21st Century [9]
2019 Jason Nahrung Watermarks: Science Fiction, Mitigation and the Mosaic Novel Structure in Australian Climate Fiction [10]
2020 Kirstyn McDermott Never Afters: Female Friendship and Collaboration in Contemporary Re-visioned Fairy Tales by Women [11]
2021 Iain McIntyre and Andrew Nette, eds. Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950 to 1985 [12]
2022 Maria Lewis The Phantom Never Dies (Nova Entertainment) [13]

References

  1. ^ "Aurealis Awards – About Us". Aurealis Awards. Archived from the original on 2009-12-27. Retrieved 2009-11-08.
  2. ^ a b "Aurealis Awards - Rules". Aurealis Awards. Retrieved 2019-09-22.
  3. ^ "Peter McNamara Achievement Award". Australian sf information. Retrieved 2019-09-22.
  4. ^ "Aurealis Awards – Rules and Conditions". Aurealis Awards. Archived from the original on 2012-05-05. Retrieved 2009-11-08.
  5. ^ And the winners are..., WASFF, 2015-04-12, retrieved 2019-09-22
  6. ^ ANNOUNCEMENT: 2015 Aurealis Awards Shortlists, WASFF, retrieved 2016-03-14
  7. ^ Announcing the Winners of the 2016 Aurealis Awards!, WASFF, 2017-04-14, retrieved 2018-04-01
  8. ^ aurealis awards WINNER, WASFF, 2018-03-31, retrieved 2018-04-01
  9. ^ a b 2018 Aurealis Awards Winners, Continuum Foundation, 2019-05-05, retrieved 2019-05-05
  10. ^ "Aurealis Awards 2019 winners announced". Books+Publishing. 2020-07-29. Retrieved 2020-08-03.
  11. ^ "Aurealis Awards 2020 winners announced". Books+Publishing. 2021-07-09. Retrieved 2021-07-09.
  12. ^ "sfadb: Aurealis Awards 2022". www.sfadb.com. Retrieved 2022-08-02.
  13. ^ "Aurealis Awards". Aurealis Awards. Retrieved 2023-08-08.