Easter is a time when all sorts of award results are announced. The Aurealis Awards were handed out in Australia yesterday. Full details are here. I’m delighted to see a bunch of my friends winning stuff.

This morning by email included the announcement of this year’s Philip K. Dick Award winner. The PKD is for science fiction first published in paperback, and often turns up interesting winners. This year both the winner, The Mercy Journals by Claudia Casper, and the runner up (what the PKD called the Special Citation), Unprounceable by Susan diRende, came from small presses. My congratulations to Arsenal Pulp Press and Aqueduct Press respectively.

Oh yeah, and both books by women, which is maybe why they had to be published by small presses. It is good to see that the PKD jury doesn’t have any qualms about women writing SF.