Comments: Perhaps as a result of the anonymous voting process, the WSFA Small Press Award has an established track record of diversity among its nominees. It seems that once one strips away the identities of the authors and judges the works solely on their own merits, the very white and very male and very American state of the genre faces away, and the cast becomes far more colorful, far less masculine, and far less provincial.
In 2009, out of seven stories, three were written by women. One nominated story was by an Israeli-born author, another by a Nigerian-American, still another by an Australian writer. One story wasn't even originally printed in English. For those people who claim that they only look for good stories and don't care about the identities of the authors of those stories, and yet end up reading little other than works authored by white American men, the make-up of this blindly chosen list should be something of an eye-opener. Such individuals might want to consider that it could be something other than the quality of the story that is driving their selections.
WSFA Small Press Award
The Absence of Stars: Part 1 by Greg Siewert
Other Nominees:
Drinking Problem by K.D. Wentworth
Hard Rain at the Fortean Café by Lavie Tidhar
His Last Arrow by Christopher Sequeira
Silent as Dust by James Maxey
Spider the Artist by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
The Toy Car by Luisa Maria Garcia Velasco, (translated from Spanish by Ian Watson)
Go to previous year's nominees: 2008
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 2010
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