TORONTO, Ontario (October 6, 2014) — ChiZine Publications (CZP) and the Sunburst Award Society announced today that they would be working together to add a short fiction category to the Sunburst Awards’ roster. The Sunburst Awards are juried awards that currently recognize the best novels in Canadian speculative fiction in both adult and young adult categories published in the preceding year.
Launched in 2000, the Sunburst Awards bring together a different panel of jurors annually to select the best literature of the fantastic written by a Canadian. In 2008, the Sunburst Awards added a Young Adult (YA) novel category. Beginning in 2015, the jury will also select the best short story written by a Canadian. To do this, they will coordinate with CZP to accumulate a pool of stories eligible for deliberation by the Sunburst Award jury and for consideration in CZP’s Imaginarium anthology, a collection of the best Canadian short speculative fiction.
“It’s a natural fit,” says Rebecca Simkin, Chair of the Sunburst Award Society. “ChiZine Publications compiles a database each year of short speculative fiction written by Canadians from which they select what they will include in Imaginarium.This partnership will allow our jurors access to a comprehensive assembly of eligible works. We’re very excited to partner with CZP; not only have they garnered many accolades in a very short time but, importantly, they are as committed to promoting outstanding Canadian talent as we are."
“ChiZine began as an online dark genre magazine,” says Sandra Kasturi, co-publisher of ChiZine Publications and who has served as co-editor for each edition of Imaginarium. She was also ChiZine.com’s poetry editor for more than a decade. “To be involved with an organization as important as the Sunburst Awards as they launch their short fiction award is both an honour and a bit like coming home.”
Both Simkin and Kasturi state that, although Imaginarium and the Sunburst Award will draw from the same pool of stories, their respective editors and jurors are free to select what they wish to consider or include. Publication in Imaginarium does not automatically mean that a story will be on the shortlist for the Sunburst nor that the Sunburst winner will automatically be included in Imaginarium. This will ensure that, since excellent fiction always stands out, the contents of Imaginarium and the Sunburst Award shortlist will showcase a range of the best short fiction produced in Canada.
The first short story award winner will be announced in the fall of 2015 and will receive a prize of CAD $500 and a medallion which incorporates a specially designed "Sunburst" logo.
The winner for the 2014 Sunburst Award was announced last week. Imaginarium 2014 will be published in late fall 2014.
Sandra Kasturi, Co-Publisher
ChiZine Publications
http://www.chizinepub.com
sandra@chizinepub.com
Rebecca Simkin, Chair
Sunburst Award Society
2 Farm Greenway
Toronto, ON M3A 3M2
Canada
http://www.sunburstaward.org
rebecca@sunburstaward.org
ChiZine Publications (CZP) is a British Fantasy Award-winning and three-time World Fantasy Award-nominated independent publisher of surreal, subtle, and disturbing dark literary fiction hand-picked by Brett Alexander Savory and Sandra Kasturi, Bram Stoker Award-winning editors of ChiZine: Treatments of Light and Shade in Words.
The Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic is a juried award to recognize exceptional writing. The awards are presented annually to Canadian writers with a speculative fiction novel or book-length collection of speculative fiction published any time during the previous calendar year. Named after the first novel by Phyllis Gotlieb (1926–2009), one of the first published authors of contemporary Canadian science fiction, the awards consist of a cash prize of CAD $1,000 and a medallion which incorporates a specially designed "Sunburst" logo. The winners are announced in the fall of every year.
