The Washington Science Fiction Association (WSFA) is pleased to announce that on October 7, 2017,  at the Capclave science fiction convention, Ursula Vernon won the 2017 WSFA Small Press Award for best short fiction published by a small press in 2016.  The award consists of certificates and trophies for both the author and publisher and $500 for the author.

The winner is  “The Tomato Thief” by Ursula Vernon, published in Apex Magazine (January 2016) edited by Jason Sizemore.

The other finalists for the 2016 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction were:

• “Foxfire, Foxfire” by Yoon Ha Lee, published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies (March 2016) and edited by Scott H. Andrews;
• “Jupiter or Bust” by Brad R. Torgersen, published in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show (March/ April 2016), edited by Edmund Schubert;
• “The Mytilenian Delay” by Neil James Hudson in Hyperpowers (May 2016), edited by Bascomb James, published by Third Flatiron Publishing;
• “Only Their Shining Beauty Was Left” by Fran Wilde, published in Shimmer Magazine (September 2016), edited by E. Catherine Tobler;
• “Radio Silence” by Walter H. Hunt in Alien Artifacts (2016), edited by Joshua Palmatier and Patricia Bray, published by Zombies Need Brains;
• “A Salvaging of Ghosts” by Aliette de Bodard, published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies (March 2016), edited by Scott H. Andrews;
• “Vengence Sewn With A Fey Cord” by Christine Lucas, published in The Future Fire (April 2016), edited by Djibril al-Ayad; and
• “The Witch’s Knives” by Margaret Ronald, published in Strange Horizons (October 2016), edited by Niall Harrison, Jane Crowley, Kate Dollarhyde, Lila Garrott, Catherine Krahe, An Owomoyela, and Vajra Chandrasekera.

The award honors the efforts of small press publishers in providing a critical venue for short fiction in the area of speculative fiction. The award showcases the best original short fiction published by small presses in the previous year (2016). 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 was chosen by the members of the Washington Science Fiction Association (www.wsfa.org) and was presented at their annual convention, Capclave (www.capclave.org), held this year on October 6-8, 2017 in Gaithersburg, Maryland.