The 1997 James Tiptree, Jr. Award

Judges

Terry Garey (chair), Elizabeth Hand, Nalo Hopkinson, Jerry Kaufman and James Patrick Kelly

Winners of the 1997 James Tiptree, Jr. Award

Candas Jane Dorsey, Black Wine, Tor 1997

Black Wine is a slippery book, neither science fiction nor fantasy; instead it stakes out territory all its own. It is an intricate, fierce and lyrical examination of gender and identity. Teeming with ideas made flesh, Black Wine gazes unflinching at the wonder and horror of humanity. [JPK]
In Black Wine, Candas Dorsey took on the whole question of gender, shook it out till it suited her, cut, stitched, and fitted till she came up with a wondrous garment I had never seen before. Then she showed me it was reversible and just as wondrous on the inside, which was now the outside. This is a book well worth reading and I hope lots and lots of people do. [TG]

Kelly Link, "Travels With The Snow Queen", Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Winter, v 1, issue 1.

This is a story that puts its arm around the reader and leads him back to places he's been but hasn't really seen. A clever, often funny, conflation of deconstructed fairy tales with a modern relationship going sour, it's about a young woman's journey through gender stereotypes to self-acceptance. Link makes us understand that, in this story, the traditional "happy ending" would be very silly indeed. [JPK]