Sunday, May 27, 2018

2018 Mythopoeic Award Nominees

Location: Mythcon 49 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Comments: Once again in 2018, the incredibly narrow focus of some of the categories in the Mythopoeic Award is readily apparent. Although the Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies category is nominally about scholarship concerning all of the Inklings, in practice it is mostly about honoring books about Tolkien. Sure, there is occasionally a book about C.S. Lewis or Charles Williams, but by and large the books nominated have been about Tolkien. This year is no different, with four of the five nominees in the category being exclusively about Tolkien or his work, and the fifth being about Tolkien in conjunction with a couple of the other Inklings (including Owen Barfield). There is nothing wrong with having an award with this narrow of a focus: My only objection is that name of the award makes it seem to have a broader range than it actually does in practice.

Best Adult Fantasy Literature

Winner:
Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr by John Crowley

Other Nominees:
The Changeling by Victor LaValle
Passing Strange by Ellen Klages
The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman
Snow City by G.A. Kathryns

Best Children's Fantasy Literature

Winner:
Frogkisser by Garth Nix

Other Nominees:
The Dragon with the Chocolate Heart by Stephanie Burgis
Pashmina by Nidhi Chanani
The Song from Somewhere Else by A.F. Harrold
Tumble and Blue by Cassie Beasley

Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies

Winner:
The Inklings and King Arthur: J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis, and Owen Barfield on the Matter of Britain by Sørina Higgins

Other Nominees:
Beren and Luthien edited by Christopher Tolkien
There Would Always Be a Fairy Tale: More Essays on Tolkien by Verlyn Flieger
Tolkien, Self, and Other: This Queer Creature by Jane Chance
Tolkien’s Theology of Beauty: Majesty, Splendor, and Transcendence in Middle-Earth by Lisa Coutras

Myth and Fantasy Studies

Winner:
Children’s Fantasy Literature: An Introduction by Michael Levy and Farah Mendelsohn

Other Nominees:
Celtic Myth in Contemporary Children’s Fantasy: Idealization, Identity, Ideology by Dimitra Fimi
Genres of Doubt: Science Fiction, Fantasy and the Victorian Crisis of Faith by Elizabeth M. Sanders
Otherworlds: Fantasy and History in Medieval Literature by Aisling Byrne
The Routledge Companion to Imaginary Worlds edited by Mark J.P. Wolf

Go to previous year's nominees: 2017
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 2019

Book Award Reviews     Home

2 comments:

  1. I can see I have a lot of reading to catch up with! I haven’t even read the Inklings nominees and I have a lot of their books and books about them on my shelves - my favourite bookshop has an entire Inklings bay.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @Sue: Every year I fall further behind on my reading. Every year I vow to catch up. Every year I don't succeed.

      Delete