As many of you will know, this year’s NASFiC¹, DetCon1, will be presenting a popular-voted award for YA and Middle Grade science fiction & fantasy. The nomination stage is open to all — you just have to request a PIN from DetCon1 — and they want as many people involved as possible. The deadline for nominations is February 28th so you don’t have much time.

My friends at BASFA have been discussing possible candidates and have a list up here. That includes some suggestions from me. I’d like to add to that Emilie and the Hollow World by Martha Wells (Strange Chemistry) which I read last week and really enjoyed.

And here is a video that DetCon1 put together to promote the award.

A quick note on eligibility. In the video they say “novel length”, but the website says “book length”. I queried DetCon1 about this and they said the latter is correct. YA and Middle Grade “novels” often come in below the 40,000 word limit traditionally used by SF&F awards to denote novel length. So Cat Valente’s Six Gun Snow White is indeed eligible, as the BASFA list suggests, and consequently it will be on my ballot.

1. For those not up on convention acronyms, NASFiC is the North American Science Fiction Convention, an event that takes place only in years when Worldcon is taking place outside of North America. This year’s Worldcon is in London, and the NASFiC will be in Detroit.