The Nebula Award winners for 2015 were announced this past weekend, and it was a sweep by women writers.  I’m not sure that has ever been done before, but even if it has, it’s still a great thing to see.  Women have faced a long, hard road for legitimacy and recognition in speculative fiction—and I’m sure there have many been Nebula-worthy stories written by women that were never given a fair chance—so to see success at this scale is long overdue.  Oddly, for a genre that is supposed to be forward thinking and is supposed to imagine a better future society, it sometimes seems like the speculative fiction community is still lost in the stone ages.  I look forward to the day where it’s not a surprise (pleasant, albeit) or even worthy of noting to see the Nebula swept by women or people of color.  But on to the winners!

Uprooted by Naomi Campbell took home the big prize for best novel.  I haven’t read this one yet, but I’ve heard good things about it, and I hope to read it some point in the not-too-distant future.  Nnedi Okorafor’s “Binti” won best novella, and Sarah Pinsker, who wrote on of my favorite stories in 2014 (“A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide”), won the best novelette award for “Our Lady of the Open Road.”   The best short story award went to “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong.

Congrats to all the winners and nominees.  The competition was tough this year, and a lot of worthy stories and their authors had to go home empty-handed and, I’m sure, a little disappoint.