The WSFA Small Press Award Committee Announces Finalists for the 2022 Award for stories published in 2021

The Washington (DC)  Science Fiction Association (WSFA) is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2022 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction:

“The Birdsong Fossil” by DK Mok, Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures, (April 2021) World Weaver Press ed. by Christoph Rupprecht, Deborah Cleland, Norie Tamura, Rajat Chaudhuri, and Sarena Ulibarri;

“Dress of Ash” by Y. M. Pang, Seasons Between Us: Tales of Identities and Memories, ed. by Susan Forest and Lucas K. Law, Laksa Media Groups Inc. (2021);

“Eight Mile and the City” by Steven Harper, When Worlds Collide, ed. by  S. C. Butler & Joshua Palmatier,  Zombies Need Brains, LLC (July 2021);

“Fisherman’s Soup” by Kristina Ten, Mermaids Monthly, (May 26, 2022) ed. by Julia Rios, Meg Frank, and Ashley Deng;

“From the Ashes Flew the Ladybug” by Alexandra Seidel, The Deadlands, Issue 7 (November 2021) ed. by E. Catherine Tobler;

“Laughter Among the Trees” by Suzan Palumbo, The Dark Magazine, Issue 69 (February 2021) ed by Sean Wallace;

“Space Pirate Queen of the Ten Billion Utopias” by Elly Bangs, Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 138 (November 2021) ed. by John Joseph Adams;

“Standing Orders” by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, Derelicts, ed. by David B. Coe and Joshua Palmatier, Zombies Need Brains, LLC (July 2021); 

“A Stranger Goes Ashore” by Adam R. Shannon, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 328 (April 22, 2021) ed. by Scott H. Andrews; and

“A Universe All to Himself” by Ryan Priest, Metaphorosis, (April 2021) ed. by B. Morris Allen;

The award honors the efforts of small press publishers in providing a critical venue for short fiction in the area of speculative fiction. It showcases the best original short fiction published by small presses in the previous year (2021). 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 is chosen by the members of the Washington Science Fiction

Association (www.wsfa.org) and will be presented at their annual convention, Capclave (www.capclave.org), held this year on September 30 – October 2, 2022, at the Rockville Hilton & Executive Meeting Center, 1750 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852