Kate Heartfield and Fonda Lee win Aurora Awards for Canadian sci-fi and fantasy writing
CBC Books | Posted: August 12, 2024 4:25 PM | Last Updated: August 16
The Aurora Awards recognize the best in Canadian science fiction and fantasy across 10 categories
Kate Heartfield and Fonda Lee are among the winners of the 2024 Aurora Awards.
The annual awards celebrate Canadian science fiction and fantasy writing across 10 categories, including fiction, YA, poetry, comics, illustration and fan writing.
Ottawa-based novelist and journalist Heartfield won the best novel award for The Valkyrie, a book inspired by the characters in Norse mythology. The Valkyrie introduces readers to Brynhild, a shieldmaiden to Odin the All-Father, Gudrun, a princess of Burgundy, and Sigurd, a legendary warrior. Legends tell of love, deception and their intertwined destinies — but not all legends are true.
Heartfield's other books include The Embroidered Book and Armed in Her Fashion, both of which won the Aurora award for best novel.
Canadian American writer Lee won the best novella award for Untethered Sky.
Untethered Sky is about the lengths we go to for the ones we love, even if it means making the ultimate sacrifice. When Ester's mother and brother are killed by a manticore, she becomes obsessed with finding a way to bring justice and some semblance of peace to what's left of her family.
Her quest leads her to the King's Royal Mews where she pairs up with a roc, a flying beast known to hunt manticores, in order to participate in the hunt. The journey could cost Ester her life, but there's no turning back now.
Lee has previously won three Aurora Awards, including best novel for Jade City and best YA novel for Exo. Jade City also won the World Fantasy Award in 2018.
LISTEN | Fonda Lee on writing full novels vs. novellas on The Next Chapter:
Cherie Dimaline and Premee Mohamed are also among the notable winners.
Dimaline's Funeral Songs for Dying Girls won the best YA novel award.
Funeral Songs for Dying Girls explores grief and haunting. Winifred has lived in an apartment above the Winterson Cemetery office with her father all her life. On the verge of its closure, rumours start spreading that the cemetery is haunted and Winifred begins to question everything she knows about life, love and death.
Cherie Dimaline is a bestselling Métis author best known for her YA novel The Marrow Thieves. The Marrow Thieves, was named one of Time magazine's top 100 YA novels of all time and was championed by Jully Black on Canada Reads 2018. Her other books include VenCo, Red Rooms, The Girl Who Grew a Galaxy, A Gentle Habit and Empire of Wild.
LISTEN | Cherie Dimaline discusses Funeral Songs for Dying Girls:
Mohamed's story At Every Door A Ghost won the best short story award.
Mohamed is an Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction writer based in Edmonton. Her series Beneath the Rising received nominations for the Crawford Award, British Fantasy Awards, Locus Awards and Aurora Awards.
Her book The Annual Migration of Clouds won the 2022 Aurora Award for best novella. Her other books include The Butcher of the Forest, No One Will Come Back for Us and The Siege of Burning Grass, which was shortlisted for the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for fiction.
Her latest, We Speak Through the Mountain is a sequel novella to the post-apocalyptic Albertan book The Annual Migration of Clouds. She was also recently named a writer to watch in 2024 by CBC Books.
LISTEN | Premee Mohamed on the inspiration behind her new novella:
The complete list of winners is below.
- Best novel: The Valkyrie by Kate Heartfield
- Best YA novel: Funeral Songs for Dying Girls by Cherie Dimaline
- Best short story: At Every Door A Ghost by Premee Mohamed
- Best novella: Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee
- Best related work: Year's Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction: Volume One edited by Stephen Kotowych
- Best graphic novel or comic: A Call to Cthulhu by Norm Konyu
- Best poem or song: Awakening by Tiffany Morris
- Best cover art or interior illustration: Augur Magazine, Issue 6.1, cover art, Lorna Antoniazzi
- Best fan writing and publication: Polar Borealis Magazine, Issues: 24, 25, 26, and 27, edited by R. Graeme Cameron
- Best fan-related work: ephemera Reading Series, KT Bryski and Jen R. Albert, co-chairs, online
The Aurora Awards have been given out annually since 1980. Some of the winning books are available in accessible formats on the Centre for Equitable Library Access website.
Corrections:- A previous version of this article stated that Kate Heartfield is based in Toronto when she is actually based in Ottawa. August 16, 2024 1:25 PM