Heather O’Neill

The Sunburst Award Society has announced the finalists for its annual awards, honouring the best Canadian books of the fantastic. The shortlists omit some noted authors in the genre‚ including Margaret Atwood and Andrew Pyper‚ who were longlisted in June.

This year’s awards are judged by science-fiction authors Timothy Anderson, Sylvie Bérard, and Dale Sproule, genre author and poet Myna Wallin‚ and former Bunduran Press publisher and editor Virginia O’Dine. The winners‚ who will each receive a Sunburst medallion, as well as a $1‚000 prize in the adult and YA fiction categories and $500 in the new short story category, will be revealed Sept. 14.

The Sunburst shortlists are:

Adult Fiction

• Katherine Fawcett, The Little Washer of Sorrows (Thistledown Press)
• Gemma Files, Experimental Film (Chizine Publications)
• Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Signal to Noise (Solaris)
• Heather O’Neill, Daydreams of Angels (HarperCollins Canada)
• Robert Charles Wilson, The Affinities (Tor Books)

YA Fiction

• Leah Bobet, An Inheritance of Ashes (Scholastic Canada)
• David Carroll, Sight Unseen (Scholastic)
• Mikaela Everett, The Unquiet (HarperCollins Canada)
• Kenneth Oppel, The Nest (S&S)
• Neil Smith, Boo (Knopf Canada)

Short Story

• Charlotte Ashley, “La Héron” (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April 2015)
• Rebecca Campbell, “The Glad Hosts” (Lackington’s Magazine, Issue 7)
• Mike Donoghue, “Stuck in the Past” (Abyss & Apex, Issue 54)
• Catherine A. MacLeod, “Hide and Seek” (Playground of  Lost Toys, Exile)
• Kelly Robson, “Two-Year Man” (Asimov’s Science Fiction, August 2015)
• Peter Wendt, “Get the Message” (Second Contacts, Bundoran Press)