JAMES TIPTREE JR. MEMORIAL AWARD ANNOUNCED

Oakland, CA -- 15 March 2003: A gender-bending science fiction award supported by bake sales presented to M. John Harrison for Light and John Kessel for "Stories for Men".

The James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award will be presented at Seacon, to be held April 18th to 21st, 2003 in Hinckley, Leicestershire, UK. The 2002 award has two winners: M. John Harrison's novel, Light (Victor Gollancz, U.K., 2002) and John Kessel's novella, "Stories for Men" (Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, October/November 2002). Harrison and Kessel will each receive $1000 in prize money and an original artwork created specifically for the award.

The James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award was created in 1991 to honor Alice Sheldon, who wrote under the pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr. By her chance choice of a masculine pen name, Sheldon helped break down the imaginary barrier between "women's writing" and "men's writing." Her insightful short stories were notable for their thoughtful examination of the roles of men and women in our society.

The Tiptree Award is presented annually to a work that explores and expands gender roles in science fiction and fantasy. The aim of the award organizers is not to look for work that falls into some narrow definition of political correctness, but rather to seek out work that is thought-provoking, imaginative, and perhaps even infuriating. The Tiptree Award is intended to reward those women and men who are bold enough to contemplate shifts and changes in gender roles, a fundamental aspect of any society.

Each year, a panel of five judges selects the Tiptree Award winner. The 2002 judges were Matt Austern (chair), Farah Mendelsohn, Jae Leslie Adams, Mary Anne Mohanraj, and Molly Gloss.

The judges found Light, by M. John Harrison, to be a stunning work that's part space opera and part Something Else. Some of the judges thought that the protagonists (a physicist and serial killer; a mass-murdering pirate; a VR addict) were unlikable; others found the protagonists to be brutal, cruel, self-deluded, but completely real people about whom the judges cared deeply. All the characters are shaped in ways that very specifically have to do with the structuring and exploration of gender. The male characters are in love with ostentatious masculinity as a thing that's sometimes joyful and sometimes horrifying; the female characters are often consumed with fierce denial of their bodies and their own femaleness. Hanging over all of this is the enigmatic figure of the Shrander, whose gender identity, like so much else, is ambiguous and complicated. Light is rich, horrible, sad, and absurd, and says a lot about how the body and sex inform one's humanity. It will reward rereading.

"Stories for Men" is a story about masculinity, about how individuals define themselves in the context of kinship and community, and about how we construct gender roles by telling ourselves stories. The story begins with a female-centered society that mirrors some of our assumptions about social power relations between men and women, and then explicitly refers to our own society's assumptions (in the main character's encounter with a twentieth-century fiction anthology) in a way that makes those assumptions seem new and strange. It reexamines those tales of outcasts and lone heroes and manly individualism within the context of a story of community. It raises questions about the links between connectedness and exclusion, consensus and stifling conformity, patriarchal protectiveness and sociopathy. "Stories for Men" is a short work, one that's more subtle than it first appears.

In addition to selecting the winners, the judges have compiled a "short list." This is not the list of fiction from which the judges picked the winners. Rather, it is a list of works that the judges found interesting, relevant to the award, and worthy of note.

The 2002 short list is:

You can receive an annotated copy of this list, and lists of fiction honored in previous years, by sending $3.00 to James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award Council (address below). Flying Cups and Saucers, an anthology of short fiction that won or was short listed for the Tiptree Award, is available from the same address for $18 plus postage and handling ($2.50 within the U.S. and Canada, $5.00 overseas sea mail, and $20 overseas airmail).

Since its inception, the Tiptree Award has been an award with an attitude. As a political statement, as a means of involving people at the grassroots level, as an excuse to eat cookies, and as an attempt to strike the proper ironic note, the award has been financed through bake sales held at science fiction conventions across the United States, as well as in England and Australia. Fundraising efforts have included auctions conducted by standup comic and writer Ellen Klages, the sale of t-shirts created by collage artist and silk screener Freddie Baer, and the publication of two cookbooks featuring recipes and anecdotes by science fiction writers and fans. The Bakery Men Don't See, a collection of recipes for baked goods, and Her Smoke Rose Up From Supper, a collection of main dish recipes, are both available from the James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award Council. The cookbooks are $10 each (plus $1 postage in North America; $3 postage outside North America).

Reading for the 2003 Tiptree Award has begun. The 2003 judges are Maureen Kincaid Speller (chair), Michael Levy, Vicki Rosenzweig, Lori Selke, and Nisi Shawl. The judges welcome recommendations for the award. Please submit recommendations via the Tiptree Award Web site at http://www.tiptree.org.

In addition to presenting the Tiptree Award annually, the James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award Council occasionally presents the Fairy Godmother Award, a special award in honor of Angela Carter. Described as a "mini, mini, mini, mini MacArthur award," the Fairy Godmother Award strikes without warning, providing $1000 to a deserving writer in need of assistance to continue creating material that matches the goals of the Tiptree Award.

For more information on the Tiptree Award or this press release, contact Pat Murphy, 173 Anderson St., San Francisco, CA 94107. (e-mail address: jaxxx@well.com)

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