2011 Mythopoeic Award Nominees

Location: Mythcon 42 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Comments: The two fiction categories in the Mythopoeic Awards have always accepted nominations consisting of the aggregate of an entire series of books, as opposed to a single discrete work. But while this rule has only occasionally been invoked in the Adult Fantasy Literature category, it seems to result in at least one series nomination in the Children's Fantasy Literature category in almost every year. This seems to reflect the seemingly currently accepted wisdom in the book publishing industry that young adult books, especially young adult fantasy books, should be published in series format, with publishers more or less chasing after the same audience that made Harry Potter a worldwide phenomenon. These sorts of trends come and go, but I always wonder what gems publishers are skipping over while trying to chase the mirage of a cyclone that has come and gone.

Best Adult Fantasy Literature

Winner:

Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord

Other Nominees:

The Bards of Bone Plain by Patricia A. McKillip

A Cup of Normal by Devon Monk
Troubled Waters by Sharon Shinn
Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay

Best Children's Fantasy Literature

Winner:

Queen's Thief series (The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, The King of Attolia, and A Conspiracy of Kings) by Megan Whalen Turner

Other Nominees:

The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman

I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett
Incarceron and Sapphique by Catherine Fisher
Toads and Diamonds by Heather Tomlinson

Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies

Winner:

Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis by Michael Ward

Other Nominees:

Arda Reconstructed: The Creation of the Published Silmarillion by Douglas Charles Kane

Middle-Earth Minstrel: Essays on Music in Tolkien by Bradford Lee Eden
The Power of Tolkien's Prose: Middle-Earth's Magical Style by Steve Walker

Tolkien on Fairy-stories: Expanded Edition, with Commentary and Notes by Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson

Myth and Fantasy Studies

Winner:

The Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale by Caroline Sumpter

Other Nominees:

Cheek by Jowl: Essays by Ursula K. Le Guin

Metamorphoses of the Werewolf: A Literary Study from Antiquity Through the Renaissance by Leslie A. Sconduto

Out of My Bone: The Letters of Joy Davidman by Don W. King
Rhetorics of Fantasy by Farah Mendlesohn

Go to previous year's nominees: 2010
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 2012

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