The Kitschies Prize to end after 15 years, announces final shortlist

The Kitschies Prize has revealed its final shortlist after 15 years, with the science fiction and fantasy-focused prize organisers saying they are closing the prize due to an “untenable amount of work”.

The prize, which is sponsored by Blackwell’s, with additional funding from NESTA, is run and judged by volunteers.

The Kitschies are eligible to all books first published or self-published in the UK during 2023. This year’s shortlist were chosen from 278 submissions, coming from over 65 different imprints.

This year’s directors of The Kitschies, Leila Abu el Hawa and Jared Shurin, told The Bookseller: “We have always been a prize run and judged by volunteers, with all our funding going directly to the prize winners. Despite this, over the years, we’ve managed to programme events, organise workshops, promote partners and opportunities, and, of course, run the annual awards.” 

They added: “The number of annual submissions and submitting organisations has grown substantially since the award began. This year we had almost 300, from over 60 different imprints. Although we’re overjoyed by what this says about the industry’s respect for the award, it has led to an untenable amount of work for the judges and the administrators. We’ve looked at different scenarios for managing the workload, but were unable to find a solution that continues The Kitschies at a quality that we would be proud of, while also maintaining our ethos as an inclusive award.”

The directors said “the landscape of British SF/F has changed remarkably over the past 15 years”, adding that “the conversation around diversity and inclusion – although still far from over – has moved on substantially since 2008.”

This year’s finalists range from multi-dimensional space opera and cyberpunk noir to mystically-inflected dark academia and Orwellian retellings; from literary heavyweights to upstart debuts to graphic novels.

The final awards ceremony will be held in London at the end of November. The winners will receive a total of £2,000 in prize money, as well as one of the iconic tentacle trophies.

One of this year’s judges, Anne Charnock, said of the shortlist: “I found myself swept away by the writing talent in this year’s entries, and I believe the shortlists reflect the truly ambitious and provocative nature of speculative fiction. These novels take readers to richly imagined worlds, by turn dystopian, fantastical, weird and ecologically surreal.”

The shortlist in full: 

The Red Tentacle (Novel) 

Infinity Gate by Mike Carey (Orbit)
In Ascension by Martin McInnes (Atlantic)
Julia by Sandra Newman (Granta)
Jungle House by Julianne Pachico (Serpent’s Tail)
The Premonition by Banana Yoshimoto, translated by Asa Yoneda (Faber)

The Golden Tentacle (Debut) 

Shark Heart by Emily Habeck (Arcadia)
The Cloisters by Katy Hays (Transworld)
Your Wish is My Command by Deena Mohamed (Granta)
The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi (Picador)
Bang Bang Bodhisattva by Aubrey Wood (Solaris)

The Inky Tentacle (Cover Art)

Remember, Mr Sharma by A P Firdaus, designed by Nathan Burton (Sceptre)
The Vegan by Andrew Lipstein, design by Cecilia R Zhang (FSG)
Julia by Sandra Newman, design by Luke Bird (Granta)
Out There Screaming, edited by Jordan Peele, design by Janay Nachel Frazier and Stuart Wilson, and art by Arnold J Kemp (Picador)
Lioness by Emily Perkins, design by Greg Heinimann Design (Bloomsbury)

The Red and Golden Tentacles were judged by Anne Charnock, Leila Abu el Hawa, Nick Mamatas and Molly Tanzer.