Each year the Tiptree Award motherboard appoints a panel of five
jurors 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 jurors 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 jurors refines and re-examines
their own definitions of that phrase.
The Tiptree Award hopes you will submit works that you think are
appropriate. You can submit works at this link.
The Tiptree Award is different from most other literary awards in that it does not
wait till the actual award ceremony to make the big announcement. Winners and short list
are made public a month or more before the ceremony. In addition, the founding mothers
and the motherboard instruct the jurors 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 jurors consider worthy of readers’
attention. In some years, the jurors also publish a “long list” of books they found \
interesting in the course of their reading.
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The winner or winners are invited to the Tiptree Award ceremony
to accept their award and prize money. Each year’s winners
receives $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. In addition, a different artist is hired each year
by the Tiptree Award motherboard to create a work of art that is
presented in honor of the winning novel or short story.
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