Wow, where did the time go?  The award season snuck up on me this year, and I likely would have missed the announcement of the 2015 Nebula Award nominees if I hadn’t seen a series of congratulatory emails (not for me, but for some writing friends–just to be clear).

The 2015 Nebula Award nominations were announce over the weekend by the Science Fictions and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).  While the Nebulas cover many categories, I’m most interested in the short fiction categories, so I’ll cover those today and get to the other award categories in a later post.  Where possible, I’ve supplied links to the stories so you can check out the ones available for free, online reading (I’ll update if some of the print publications make their nominees available for free reading, as they sometimes do).

The nominees for best novelette are:

“—–” • “Rattlesnakes and Men” by Michael Bishop (Asimov’s)
“—–” • “And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead” by Brooke Bolander (Lightspeed) 
“—–” • “Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds” by Rose Lemberg (Beneath Ceaseless
“——–“ Skies)
“—–” • “The Ladies’ Aquatic Gardening Society” by Henry Lien (Asimov’s)
“—–” • “The Deepwater Bride” by Tamsyn Muir (F&SF)
“—–” • “Our Lady of the Open Road” by Sarah Pinsker (Asimov’s)

and for short story:

“—–” • “Madeleine” by Amal El-Mohtar (Lightspeed) 
“—–” • “Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld)
“—–” • “Damage” by David D. Levine (Tor.com)
“—–” • “When Your Child Strays From God” by Sam J. Miller (Clarkesworld)
“—–” • “Today I Am Paul” by Martin L. Shoemaker (Clarkesworld)
“—–” • “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong (Nightmare)   

As always, it’s nice to see publications where I’ve had stories appear (Lightspeed and Asimov’s) get recognized, and equally nice to see some writers I know (if even tangentially) get recognized.  It’s also interesting to see that this list has quite a few “newer” names on it.  Since I started being able to vote for the Nebula Awards, I could count on a few names consistently being nominated (and that weren’t this year), and while this isn’t the first nomination for several of these 2015 nominees, I wonder if there may be a “changing of the guard” afoot.

As a member of SFWA, I’m eligible to nominate and vote for the Nebula Awards.  I haven’t read all of these stories yet, so I’ve got some reading to do before the voting closes at the end of March.  The winners will be announced in early June.