Yellowcake Springs is on the 2012 Norma K Hemming Award shortlist!

Some very exciting news: the shortlist for the Norma K Hemming Award is out and Yellowcake Springs is one of the nine novels chosen. The Award is for a work of speculative fiction published in Australia that addresses themes of race, class, gender, sexuality and/or disability. It’s an awesome shortlist and I’m stoked on a number of levels to be on it. For a start, I’m on the same page with the late, great Sara Douglass – probably Australia’s most popular and successful fantasy author of the last 15 years. There’s there’s the fact that I’m the only male on the shortlist. Does this mean anything? I guess I don’t know, but I’m pleased that my work is considered as transcending gender boundaries (and there’s a bit of gender bending inYellowcake Springs). And lastly, look at the publishers: HarperCollins dominates this list with 5/9 titles, and the other three aside from my own are from established small presses Ticonderoga, Twelfth Planet and Scribe. That leaves little old IP punching well above its weight, and little old me chuffed to rate a mention.

Here’s the full shortlist:

Black Glass novel by Meg Mundell published by Scribe Publications (Brunswick VIC)

Bluegrass Symphony collection by Lisa L Hannett published by Ticonderoga Publications (Perth, WA)

The Devil’s Diadem novel by Sara Douglass (1957 – 2011) published by HarperCollins

Eona novel by Alison Goodman published by HarperCollins

Hindsight novel by A A Bell published by HarperCollins

Nightsiders novel by Sue Isle published by Twelfth Planet Press (Perth, WA)

Road to the Soul novel by Kim Falconer published by HarperCollins

The Shattered City novel by Tansy Rayner Roberts published by HarperCollins

Yellowcake Springs novel by Guy Salvidge published by Interactive Publications


The winner of the 2012 Norma K Hemming Award will be announced at Continuum 8,  this year’s National SF Convention, to be held in Melbourne on the weekend of June 8-11.