I don’t usually take much notice of the Aurealis awards because I don’t usually read SF, fantasy and especially not horror. But this year there are winners that I’ve read… and I don’t know whether this is because the awards have changed, or my reading habits have. Anyway, FWIW, here are the award winners from the adult categories, and you can check out the other categories at the awards website.
Best science-fiction novel
- From the Wreck (Jane Rawson, Transit Lounge), see my review
Best science-fiction novella
- Girl Reporter (Tansy Rayner Roberts, Book Smugglers)
Best science-fiction short story
- ‘Conversations with an Armoury’ (Garth Nix, Infinity Wars, Solaris)
Best horror novel
- Soon (Lois Murphy, Transit Lounge), see my review
Best horror short story
- ‘Old Growth’ (J Ashley Smith, SQ Mag 31, IFWG Publishing Australia)
Best horror novella
- ‘The Stairwell’ (Chris Mason, Below The Stairs: Tales from the Cellar, Things in the Well)
Best fantasy novel
- Godsgrave (Jay Kristoff, HarperCollins)
Best fantasy short story
- ‘The Curse is Come Upon Me, Cried’ (Tansy Rayner Roberts, Please Look After This Angel & Other Winged Stories, self-published)
Best fantasy novella
- In Shadows We Fall (Devin Madson, self-published)
Best collection
- The Silver Well (Kate Forsyth & Kim Wilkins, Ticonderoga Publications)
Best anthology
- Infinity Wars (ed by Jonathan Strahan, Rebellion/Solaris)
The Convenors’ Award for Excellence
- The Fictional Mother (Tansy Rayner Roberts, self-published)
Congratulations to all the authors, editors and publishers!
ANZ LitLovers LitBlog 
Good on Jane!
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By: wadholloway on April 4, 2018
at 10:53 am
Yes, I can hear the champagne corks popping from here!
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By: Lisa Hill on April 4, 2018
at 3:44 pm
As to whether the awards or your reading habits have changed, I’m going to suggest it’s Australian publishing that’s changed. It seems to me that US and UK publishers are pretty comfortable with literary presses that publish gently speculative fiction, but that until recently in Australia we had a pretty hard line between literature and speculative, and that readers like yourself tended towards not reading books from speculative presses (there are always exceptions of course). But lately I think Australian publishers are getting more comfy with speculative – when you look at the Aurealis sci-fi shortlist, all but one of the books is published by a traditionally literary press, and all the books have a literary bent. I’m glad Barry won two of the categories, because I think Transit Lounge has been a real trailblazer in this regard – Barry says he doesn’t ‘see genre’, just good books.So it might be the availability of literary speculative fiction that’s changed, Lisa.
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By: Jane Bryony Rawson on April 5, 2018
at 10:08 am
Well, Barry is a national treasure… I’ve lost count of the terrific books I’ve read from his press!
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By: Lisa Hill on April 5, 2018
at 4:49 pm
So delighted to see Soon win best horror. It’s a brilliantly terrifying read but doesn’t feel like the conventional horror genre. I’ve got The Wreck on my Kindle so will look forward to reading that soon.
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By: kimbofo on April 5, 2018
at 7:02 pm
Yes, Soon is the way that a Horror novel should be!
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By: Lisa Hill on April 5, 2018
at 9:03 pm