WSFA Small Press Award

The WSFA Small Press Award was inaugurated by the Washington Science Fiction Association in 2007. The award is open to works of imaginative literature (e.g. science fiction, fantasy, horror) published in English for the first time in the previous calendar year. Furthermore, the Small Press Award is limited to short fiction—works under 20,000 words in length—that was published by a small press.[1] The nominees are narrowed down by a panel elected by the WSFA membership, and these finalists are then judged by the entire WSFA membership to select a winner. Throughout the process, the author and publisher of each story are kept anonymous.

The winning story is announced at Capclave, the WSFA convention held in the Washington, D.C. area each October.

Year Author Work Publication Ref
2007 Peter S. Beagle "El Regalo" The Line Between, Tachyon Publications
2008 Tom Doyle "The Wizard of Macatawa" Paradox, Issue 11
2009 Greg Siewert "The Absence of Stars: Part One" Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show, December 2008
2010 Tansy Rayner Roberts "Siren Beat" Twelfth Planet Press, October 2009
2011 Carrie Vaughn "Amaryllis" Lightspeed, June 2010
2012 Tansy Rayner Roberts "The Patrician" Love and Romanpunk, Twelfth Planet Press, May 2011
2013 Ken Liu "Good Hunting" Strange Horizons, October 2012
2014 Alex Shvartsman "Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma" Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show, April 2013
2015 Ursula Vernon "Jackalope Wives" Apex Magazine, January 2014 [2]
2016 Martin L. Shoemaker "Today I Am Paul" Clarkesworld Magazine, August 2015 [3]
2017 Ursula Vernon "The Tomato Thief" Apex Magazine, January 2016 [4]
2018 Suzanne Palmer "The Secret Life of Bots" Clarkesworld Magazine, September 2017 [5]
2019 Virginia M. Mohlere "The Thing in the Walls Wants Your Small Change" Luna Station Quarterly, May 2018 [6]
2020 Charlotte Honigman "The Partisan and the Witch" Skull & Pestle: New Tales of Baba Yaga (World Weaver Press, 2019)
2021 T. Kingfisher "Metal Like Blood in the Dark" Uncanny Magazine, September/October 2020
2022 Steven Harper "Eight Mile and the City" When Worlds Collide (Zombies Need Brains, July 2021)
2023 Naomi Kritzer "The Dragon Project" Clarkesworld Magazine, March 2022
  1. ^ A small press is defined by the WSFA as (1) a book published in hard copy print or by a web publication house releasing from 3 to 25 titles in the year the story is published or (2) a periodical or web publication with a circulation/subscriber base of fewer than 10,000 in the year the story is published and which pays all authors in cash. WSFA Small Press Award Rules. Retrieved on August 3, 2008.
  2. ^ "Locus Online News » WSFA Small Press Award Winner". www.locusmag.com. 12 October 2015. Retrieved 2015-10-12.
  3. ^ Publications, Locus (10 October 2016). "Locus Online News » Shoemaker Wins WSFA Small Press Award". www.locusmag.com. Archived from the original on 2016-10-10. Retrieved 2016-10-10.
  4. ^ "sfadb: WSFA Small Press Award 2017". www.sfadb.com. Retrieved 2019-10-29.
  5. ^ "sfadb: WSFA Small Press Award 2018". www.sfadb.com. Retrieved 2019-10-29.
  6. ^ "sfadb: WSFA Small Press Award 2019". www.sfadb.com. Retrieved 2019-10-29.