Ottawa-based writer Amal El-Mohtar and Vancouver-based Rachel Hartman have been shortlisted for this year’s Hugo Awards.

El-Mohtar is shortlisted for her first solo title, The River Has Roots (Tordotcom) in the novella category. In 2021 El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone won the Hugo Award for novella for This Is How You Lose the Time War and in 2017 she was named winner of the short story category.

Hartman is shortlisted for the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book for Among Ghosts (Penguin Teen Canada). She has previously won the YA Sunburst Award and Monica Hughes Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy for her novel Seraphina.

On Spec: The Canadian Magazine of the Fantastic, published by the Copper Pig Writers’ Society was shortlisted in the Semiprozine category.

The Hugo Awards are international fan-determined prizes for science-fiction and fantasy authors in 15 categories ranging from novels and short fiction to zines, fan fiction, games, and movies.

The winners will be announced at the end of August at LAcon V, the 2026 World Science Fiction Convention.