Canada Reads author Jessica Johns among finalists for Aurora Awards for Canadian sci-fi and fantasy writing
CBC Books | Posted: May 6, 2024 7:12 PM | Last Updated: May 6
The Aurora Awards recognize the best in Canadian science fiction and fantasy across 10 categories
Canada Reads author Jessica Johns is among the writers shortlisted for 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.
Johns is nominated in the best novel category for Bad Cree, which was championed by Dallas Soonias on Canada Reads 2024. Bad Cree centres around a young woman named Mackenzie, who is haunted by terrifying nightmares and wracked with guilt about her sister Sabrina's untimely death. The lines between her dreams and reality start to blur when she begins seeing a murder of crows following her around the city and starts getting threatening text messages from someone claiming to be her dead sister.
Looking to escape, Mackenzie heads back to her hometown in rural Alberta where she finds her family still entrenched in their grief. With her dreams intensifying and getting more dangerous, Mackenzie must confront a violent family legacy and reconcile with the land and her community.
Johns is a queer nehiyaw aunty with English-Irish ancestry and a member of Sucker Creek First Nation. Johns won the 2020 Writers' Trust Journey Prize for the short story Bad Cree, which evolved into the novel of the same name. Bad Cree also won the MacEwan Book of the Year prize. Johns is currently based in Edmonton.
LISTEN | Dallas Soonias and Jessica Johns discuss Bad Cree:
Cherie Dimaline, Silvia Garcia-Moreno, Waubgeshig Rice and Naben Ruthnum are other notable authors nominated for this year's Aurora Awards.
Dimaline's Funeral Songs for Dying Girls is a finalist for 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:
Garcia-Moreno's Silver Nitrate is nominated for the best novel award.
Silver Nitrate is set in the film scene of the 1990s in Mexico City, which follows Montserrat, a sound editor who has forever been in love with and ignored by her childhood best friend, Tristán. Abel Urueta is a legendary horror director who believes he is cursed after failing to finish his last film. Enlisting the help of Tristán and Montserrat, the three become entangled in a mysterious challenge to finish the film and find the occultist who cursed Urueta. Silver Nitrate explores a haunting and magical story behind the film industry.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a Canadian author who was born and raised in Mexico. She has written several speculative fiction novels, including Gods of Jade and Shadow, Velvet Was the Night and The Daughter of Doctor Moreau. Her novel Mexican Gothic was championed by Tiktok creator Tasnim Geedi on Canada Reads 2023.
Rice is nominated for best novel for Moon of the Turning Leaves.
Moon of the Turning Leaves takes place 10 years after the events of the post-apocalyptic novel Moon of the Crusted Snow and depicts an epic journey to a forgotten homeland. With food supplies dwindling, Evan Whitesky and his band of survivors need to find a new home. Evan volunteers to lead a group — including his daughter Nangohns and a great archer and hunter — to their ancestral home, the "land where the birch trees grow by the big water."
Along the way, they come across other survivors — not all of whom can be trusted.
Rice is an Anishinaabe author, journalist and radio host originally from Wasauksing First Nation. Rice's first short story collection Midnight Sweatlodge, which was about his life growing up in his Anishinaabe community, won an Independent Publishers Book Award in 2012. His novel Moon of the Crusted Snow was on the Canada Reads 2023 longlist.
LISTEN | Waubgeshig Rice on telling truth through fiction:
Ruthnum is on the best YA book shortlist for The Grimmer.
The Grimmer is about a high schooler, Vish, a lover of heavy metal and literature, who is uncertain about his future. With his father recently out of treatment for addiction, Vish can feel all eyes on his family — who are one of the only brown families in the neighbourhood. The Grimmer follows Vish as he is drawn into the world of the occult: full of magic, witches and undead creatures. Working with the peculiar local bookstore owner and his mysterious teenage employee Gisela, Vish tries to stop an interdimensional invasion that could destroy their whole town.
Ruthnum is a Toronto author, writer and journalist. He is the author of the memoir Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race and the novels Helpmeet and A Hero of Our Time. He has also written the thrillers Find You In The Dark and Your Life is Mine under the pen name Nathan Ripley.
LISTEN | Naben Ruthnum on The Grimmer:
Books are nominated for the awards by the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association (CSFFA) members, and the top five nominated works comprise the shortlist in each category. The winners are decided upon by a vote by CSFFA members.
The winners will be announced on Aug. 11, 2024.
The finalists for the best novel are:
- Bad Cree by Jessica Johns
- The Marigold by Andrew F. Sullivan
- Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice
- Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
- The Valkyrie by Kate Heartfield
The finalists for best YA novel are:
- The Crystal Key: The Dream Rider Saga, Book 2 by Douglas Smith
- Flower and Thorn by Rati Mehrotra
- Funeral Songs for Dying Girls by Cherie Dimaline
- The Grimmer by Naben Ruthnum
- The Stars of Mount Quixx by S.M. Beiko
The finalists for best short story are:
- At Every Door A Ghost by Premee Mohamed
- The Dust Bowl Café by Justin Dill
- If I Should Fall Behind by Douglas Smith
- Once Upon a Time at The Oakmont by P.A. Cornell
- Sink Your Sorrows to the Sea by Chandra Fisher
The finalists for best novella are:
- Green Fuse Burning by Tiffany Morris
- I AM AI by Ai Jiang
- The Most Strongest Obeah Woman of the World by Nalo Hopkinson
- Pluralities by Avi Silver
- Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee
The finalists for best related work are:
- GAME ON! edited by Stephen Kotowych & Tony Pi
- No One Will Come Back for Us and Other Stories by Premee Mohamed
- On Spec Magazine edited by Diane L. Walton
- Skin Thief: Stories by Suzan Palumbo
- Year's Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction: Volume One edited by Stephen Kotowych
The finalists for best graphic novel or comic are:
- Atana and the Firebird by Vivian Zhou
- A Call to Cthulhu by Norm Konyu
- Carson of Venus by Martin Powell, illustrated by Ronn Sutton, coloured by Maggie Lopez
- Cosmic Detective by Jeff Lemire and Matt Kindt, illustrated by David Rubin
- It Never Rains by Kari Maaren
- The Secret of the Ravens by Joanna Cacao, with lettering by Kyla Aiko
- Wychwood by Ally Rom Colthoff
The finalists for best poem or song are:
- As a, I want to, so I can by Kelley Tai
- Awakening by Tiffany Morris
- Lying Flat by Lynne Sargent
- predictive text by Dominik Parisien
- Scarecrow by David Shultz, Polar Starlight, Issue 9
- A Siren's Call, A Banshee's Wail, A Grandmother's Dream by Ai Jiang
The finalists for best cover art or interior illustration are:
- Augur Magazine, Issue 6.1, cover art, Lorna Antoniazzi
- Endless Library – Fantasy, interior art, Marco Marin, Year's Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction: Volume One, Ansible Press
- Green Fuse Burning, cover art, Chief Lady Bird, Stelliform Press
- The Machines That Make Us, cover art, Brent Nichols, Tyche Books
- The Passion of Ivan Rodriguez, cover art, Kayla Kowalyk, Tyche Books
- Tales & Feathers Magazine, Issue 1, cover art, Jade Zhang
The finalists for best fan writing and publication are:
- Maria's Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Horror Short Fiction Roundup, Maria Haskins
- Polar Borealis Magazine, Issues: 24, 25, 26, and 27, edited by R. Graeme Cameron
- Polar Starlight Magazine, Issues: 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12, edited by Rhea E. Rose
- The Travelling TARDIS, Jennifer Desmarais, JenEric Designs
- Young People Read Old SFF, edited by James Davis Nicoll, online
The finalists for best fan-related work are:
- ephemera Reading Series, KT Bryski and Jen R. Albert, co-chairs, online
- Scintillation 4, Jo Walton and René Walling, co-chairs, Montreal
- Sip & Read / Sip & Social @ Librairie Saga Bookstore, Mathieu Lauzon-Dicso, bookstore owner
- When Words Collide, Randy McCharles, chair, Calgary
- The Worldshapers Podcast, Edward Willett, online
The Aurora Awards have been given out annually since 1980. Last year's winners included Kate Heartfield and Fonda Lee.