Springtime is almost here, and with it the awards process kicks into high gear! The nomination period for this year’s Aurora Awards have opened. This newsletter also features a call for a CSFFA secretary to join the Board. And if you are considering applying to professional development grant, don’t hesitate as there are only a few weeks left. More information below.

In this newsletter:

1. Aurora Awards News: 2023 Nominations Are Open
2. CSFFA Board of Directors Vacancy
3. CSFFA 2023 Professional Development Grant Deadline: March 31st

Aurora Awards 2023: Nominations Are Open

You can now nominate for the 2023 Aurora Awards for works done in 2022. There are ten (10) categories.  You may nominate up to five (5) different works in each category. You do not have nominate in all categories or select five works in a category. Nominate what you know and what you enjoyed. Do NOT nominate the same work more than once. Duplicate entries of the same work will be voided.

Nominations will be open until 11:59pm EDT on April 22nd. At that time your choices will be locked. You must have a paid CSFFA membership to participate (annual membership is $10). Log into your account and click the Nomination icon on the member’s home page.

Note: The top five works by five different nominees will be chosen to be on the final ballot in each category. If a nominee has two works with the same number of nominations in the top five, they will be asked to select one to be on the ballot.

About the nomination form plus a few tricks:

1. The nomination form consists of ten sections (one for each award category)
2. Each section has five lines of drop-down lists of the approved eligible works in the category you are on. You may only nominate works from the drop-down lists.
3. You can enter your selections in any order and if you wish to remove one, select the blank line at the top of each drop-down list.
4. You do not have to nominate in all the categories, and you don’t have to select five works in a category.
5. Do not nominate the same work more than once. Duplicate selections of the same work will be voided.
6. To move through the drop-down lists, you can either use your mouse to scroll down or you can key in the first letter of a work and the list will move to the first work starting with that letter.
7. You can go to the eligibility lists from the members-only page at any time to view what has been approved and use the URL link to look at online information about it.
8. After you have selected works in a category you must click the Save button or your choices will be lost if you leave the nomination form.
9. Each category has its own save button.If you close the form before you Save or Update your changes they will be lost, and you will have to start again.
10. If you refresh your screen or come back to it later your selections will be visible.You may change your choices at any time. Categories that you have already saved works will display Update rather than Save.
11. You may continue to change your choices until we have closed nominations.
12. Nominate what you know and enjoyed. This is your chance to have a say what is on the final ballot. Make it your own choices.

CSFFA Board of Directors Vacancy

Your CSFFA board needs a secretary!

The secretary is a full member of the board, equally participating in discussions and decisions. Meetings are monthly (except December), the last Tuesday of each month (8 p.m. E.S.T.: attendees are in Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia.)

Meetings happen via Zoom. Meetings typically last 60 minutes.

Duty of the secretary is to write the minutes of board meetings. In the event that the secretary can not attend a meeting, the meeting is recorded.

Interested? Email president@prixaurorawards.ca

CSFFA Professional Developmental Grant

Grant deadline one is fast approaching! Get your application in by March 31, 2023, 11:59pm MT. In case you missed any of the details you will find them below.

This grant is to enable CSFFA members to pursue education and professional development that helps them expand their skill set. Starting in 2023 we will be awarding a total of $2,500.00 over the year to new writers, writers new to the genre or writers changing focus, for example short story to novel.

This Grant will be awarded to successful a successful applicant or applicants to cover up to 75% of the cost of developmental avenues such as:

• Courses
• Retreats
• Writing software
• A book coach or editorial fees for their first book

There will be two submission windows in 2023. The first is January 1^st to March 31^st, with funds awarded by May 15^th and June 1^st to August 31^st with funds awarded by Oct 15^th.

Funds will be distributed at the discretion of the Board and based upon applications submitted per submission windows until the full amount of the grant is paid out. Any unawarded funds will be distributed at the discretion of the Board or rolled over into the next grant year.

Successful applicants will be contacted by CSFFA and an announcement will be made on our website, newsletter, and/or during the Aurora Awards.

All decisions by the CSFFA Board are final.

Application Submission Guidelines

1. Applicants must be members of CSFFA in good standing.
2. Current Board Members or family members of the selection committee are not eligible for this grant.
3. Former Board members must have vacated their position for a minimum of one year prior to application.
4. Must be a new writer or new to the genre of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Speculative fiction, or any subgenres of these main genres.
5. Must be unpublished or have publications that are less than 50 copies in speculative fiction, science fiction, fantasy, or any sub genres of these main genres.
6. Provide contact Information
7. A 1,000-word proposal is to be submitted detailing the following:
8. What the endeavour is, along with a description and weblink
9. A timeline for the endeavour (must be less than one year)
10. Expected results from the endeavour
11. A short bio
12. If awarded, the applicant is asked to submit upon completion a 500-word description on the results and experience of the endeavour. The applicant must also be in agreement that their name and or photo will be used on the website, newsletter or both.

Applications must be submitted by 11:59:59 MT on the last day of each submission period. Any late submissions will be automatically transferred to the next submission period for consideration.

Submission of applications are to be made to PublicityCSFFA@gmail.com

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February 2023 CSFFA Newsletter

We at CSFFA hope you have lots of great speculative fiction keeping you company during these winter months. Our February newsletter provides some updates on where we’re at in the annual Aurora Awards cycle, and a nice bit of news on one of the recent Best Novel winners.

In this newsletter:

• Aurora Awards Eligibility Lists Close Soon
• Mexican Gothic featured in CBC’s 2023 Canada Reads contest

Aurora Awards Eligibility Lists Close Soon

This year’s eligibility lists of works that are eligible in the ten Aurora Award categories will close on February 25^th at 11:59 EST (or 8:59 PST in BC). CSFFA members will only be able to nominate works that have been approved on these lists.

We are looking for CSFFA members to help us add works that were first published/done by Canadians in 2022. Works in our eligibility lists will be validated by a team of CSFFA volunteers. If there are issues with any of the approved items, please let us know right away.

Note:  We are no longer giving out an award for movies or TV shows. Works that were in the Best Fan Organizational category are now in the Best Fan Related Work category. Due to a lack of eligible works in past years it was decided to make these changes. Also, we have redefined the Best Artist category so that it is the Best Cover Art/Interior Illustration category. Rather than nominate an artist, members now nominate each work that an artist has had published in the past year.

Nominations for this year’s awards will begin on Saturday, March 4^th.

Membership registration note: Please do not wait until the last few days before a deadline to either signup or renew your CSFFA membership. Once you’ve paid your account should automatically be updated.  If not, do NOT pay a second time. Email us via our contact page to check that your payment did go through.  If you send us your receipt

Mexican Gothic featured in
CBC’s 2023 Canada Reads contest

Congratulations to Silvia Moreno-Garcia and her 2021 Aurora winning novel Mexican Gothic on being named a finalist in this years CBC’s Canada Reads! What an amazing spotlight on Mexican Gothic, we couldn’t be more proud on seeing this wonderful and moving novel brought back into the hearts and hands of Canadians. It is nice to see the work of Silvia Moreno-Garcia showcased and bringing a spotlight to the amazing speculative fiction written right here.

“It’s great to see horror on the CBC Canada Reads list. It’s often considered a minor genre. I’m glad Mexican Gothic is getting renewed attention and I’m eternally grateful to my champion, TikTok creator Tasnim Geedi, who will be representing the book during the competition.”
Silvia Moreno-Garcia

This year’s CBC Canada Reads, which runs March 27 – 30, 2023 with the theme of novels that will shift your perspective, will have five books represented by five Canadian personalities over four days of passionate debate and discussion with one book being named the one book all Canadians should read. But readers are the true winners with the five books on the short list or the books on the long list, which includes Speculative writer Guy Gavriel Kay, as great recommendations when choosing your next read.

We wish Mexican Gothic and Silvia the best during Canada Reads and in the future. You can join the fun by tuning into Canada Reads this March.

Join the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association, to nominate and vote for the Aurora Awards. Also, you get a great deal in reading material when the nominations are announced! https://prixaurorawards.ca/   CPL

Aurora Awards
Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association

NOMINATIONS ARE OPEN FOR 2022 AURORAS

Nominations are now open to CSFFA members and will close on March 26th at 11:59 pm EDT. You may select/change/remove items at any time until nominations close.

All twelve categories are open this year and members may select up to five different works in each category. Select works from the dropdown lists, which are sorted by title. If you want to remove an item that you have chosen, select the blank line at the top of the dropdown list. You must click the Update button at the bottom of each nomination form to save your selections. Your choices will be displayed on your nomination central page.

You don’t have to nominate in all categories. Nominate those works that you enjoyed, because this is your chance to have your favorite works from 2021 on this year’s Aurora Awards final ballot. The top five most-nominated works in each category will be selected to be on the final ballot.

Items on our eligibility lists have been submitted by publishers, authors, and fans, and verified by a team of CSFFA volunteers. To review what is eligible for this year’s awards you can go to our public eligibility page. Unlike our dropdown lists, these lists are sorted by author’s or creator’s first name.

Letter from the  CSFFA Board of Directors

Hi again! This newsletter reminds you to get your nominations in before bed this coming Saturday, and details recent changes to the Aurora Awards.

Nominations close April 24 (Saturday 11:59pm EDT)

The nomination forms are open for all paid CSFFA account holders. You have until April 24th, 2021 (11:59pm EDT/8:59pm PDT) to submit your choices.

For those new to the awards, you may choose up to five different works in each category. The forms have dropdown boxes so you can easily select what you want. These lists were created by CSFFA members and publishers. Selections may only be chosen from these approved lists. Note: The first item on all the lists is a blank listing that can be used if you make a mistake and wish to remove it.

Each nomination form allows you to Submit (save) your choices. You don’t have to submit everything at once. You can make selections and come back to add or modify them. You can continue to modify your choices until we close nominations on the 24th of April. At that point your choices will automatically be locked.

Ballot and Voters’ Package

We hope to announce the ballot in early May. This is dependent on how quickly we can contact the finalists and how fast they confirm the wording/spelling of their work. The voters’ package, e-works of this year’s finalists, will be out a few weeks after we announce the ballot. Voting for this year’s awards will not begin until July, to give you time to go through the voters’ package.
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Changes to the 2021 Aurora Awards

You may have noticed that this year’s awards are a bit different. Two reasons: we’ve added new categories and one of our categories has been combined into another category.

The first difference is that we have split the Short Fiction category into two awards, Short Story and Novelette/Novella. Short Story is for stories less than 7,500 words in length but are not poems or song lyrics. Novelette/Novella is for stories less than 40,000 words. We found in the past that we had so many short works of fiction that CSFFA members found it hard to choose when they nominated. This change was voted by CSFFA members last year at our AGM and is a permanent change to the awards.

The second difference is that works that would normally have been in the Fan Organizational category have been included in this year’s Fan Related Work category. This change is due to the Covid 19 pandemic and how it has changed how events happened in 2020. Few conventions were able to happen. Some, a small number, were able to run virtually. We decided to combine the two categories for this year’s awards. This is not a permanent change. The CSFFA board will review this later in the year.

Thanks for reading!

Your CSFFA Board of Directors