The James Tiptree, Jr. Award
Welcome to the Website of the James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award Council!
2005 Awards CeremonyCome to Gaylaxicon, July 1-4, 2005 in Cambridge, MA, to attend the 2005 Tiptree Awards Ceremony! Sex, the Future, and Chocolate Chip CookiesThe first James Tiptree Award anthology is out, from Tachyon Publications. Stories for women, stories for men, and stories for the rest of us. What is the Tiptree Award?In February of 1991 at WisCon (the world's only feminist-oriented science fiction convention), award-winning SF author Pat Murphy announced the creation of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, an annual literary prize for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender. Pat created the award in collaboration with author Karen Joy Fowler The Tiptree Award is pleased and proud to have Karen and Pat as its 'founding mothers.' Why The Name Tiptree?The award is named for Alice B. Sheldon, who wrote under the pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr. By her impulsive choice of a masculine pen name, Sheldon helped break down the imaginary barrier between "women's writing" and "men's writing." Her fine stories were eagerly accepted by publishers and won many awards in the field. Many years later, after she had written some other work under the female pen name of Raccoona Sheldon, it was generally discovered that she was female. The discovery led to a great deal of discussion of what aspects of writing, if any, are essentially gendered. The name, "Tiptree" was selected to illustrate the complex role of gender in writing and reading. |
The WinnersNote: We have corrected the numbering of the year of the award to correspond to the year of publication. So the 2001 winner was published in 2001 and announced in 2002.
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How to Support the Tiptree Award
- Make recommendations to the Tiptree judges from your reading. If you find an SF/F story or a novel that you think bends gender in an interesting way, suggest the title to the judges. Use our online nomination form.
- Buy Tiptree stuff, including our anthology, Flying Cups and Saucers
- Read the winning stories and short-listed fiction. Talk to your friends about gender-bending fiction.
- Organize a Tiptree Bake Sale at a convention near you. Download a copy of the How to Run a Tiptree Bakesale brochure.
- Volunteer your time and/or money. Volunteers receive a nifty lapel pin, guaranteed giggles, and the satisfaction of joining the not-so-secret "Secret Feminist Cabal." All gifts are tax-deductible.
- Get together a group and bid for a future "Floating Tiptree Ceremony" at a convention near you.
The Process
Each year the Tiptree Award motherboard appoints a panel of five judges to read and discuss among themselves the merits of gender-bending fiction published in the previous year. Anyone and everyone is invited to forward recommendations for novels and short fiction works via our Web site. Publishers are encouraged to alert Karen about soon-to-be-published gender-bending fiction.
At the end of a year of reading and deliberation, the judges choose a winner. This process ensures that the criteria for the award are reinvented every year by a new group of people whose only charge is to look for science fiction and fantasy that 'explores and expands gender.' Each set of judges refines and re-examines their own definitions of that phrase.
The winner or winners are invited to the Tiptree Award ceremony to accept their award and prize money. Each year's winners receive their share of $1000, a piece of original art, some chocolate, and their trip to the ceremony. What's more, they get the dubious privilege of having the more-than-amateur Tips chorus sing an original song in their honor.
The founding mothers and the motherboard instruct the judges not to release a list of nominees before the actual award, because we feel that creates an artificial set of "losers" instead of a list of books worthy of attention. Instead, we publish an annotated 'short list' of fiction which the judges consider worthy of readers' attention. In some years, the judges also publish a "long list" of books they found interesting in the course of their reading.
Contact
tiptree@tiptree.org680 66th St.
Oakland, CA 94609