The 2011 Ditmar Awards which recognise achievement in Australian science fiction, fantasy & horror will be presented at SwanCon36 (which is doubling as the 50th National Science Fiction Convention) in Perth over the Easter holidays.
Nominations for the ballot are now open and a handy online form can be found here along with details on alternative nomination methods. There is also a dauntingly comprehensive wiki of eligible works for 2010 available if your memory needs some jogging.
Nominations close on 14 March 2011.
And here’s where I polish my shiny old trumpet again and let you all know which works of my very own are eligible for a Ditmar nomination. I’m actually quite surprised at the list — it seems 2010 was an unusually productive year for me. If you’ve read/listened to and enjoyed any of the following and think they might deserve a berth on the ballot form, please feel free to nominate:
Best Novel category:
- Madigan Mine by Kirstyn McDermott (Pan Macmillan Australia).
Best Novella or Novelette category:
- “Monsters Among Us” by Kirstyn McDermott in Macabre: A Journey Through Australia’s Darkest Fears, edited by Angela Challis and Marty Young (Brimstone Press).
Best Short Story category:
- “She Said” by Kirstyn McDermott in Scenes from the Second Storey, edited by Amanda Pillar and Pete Kempshall (Morrigan Books). [Note: this is my personal favourite of the short fiction I published last year and, I think, one of the best stories I’ve written.]
- “We All Fall Down” by Kirstyn McDermott, Aurealis 44.
Best Fan Publication category:
- The Writer and the Critic by Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond.
The William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review
- Ian Mond and Kirstyn McDermott, for reviewing and critiquing speculative fiction novels, in The Writer and the Critic podcast.
[If you want to catch up on The Writer and the Critic, the podcasts are available for downloading and/or streaming here.]
Kirstyn McDermott 