STARBURST Magazine is happy to announce the shortlist for its Brave New Words Award. The nominees are:

Adrian Tchaikovsky for his book Dogs of War (Head of Zeus)

Margrét Helgadóttir for her work as editor of Pacific Monsters ( Fox Spirit Books)

Cassandra Khaw for the short story Degrees of Ellision from the 2084 anthology. (Unsung Stories)

Jeannette Ng for Under the Pendulum Sun (Angry Robot Books)

STARBURST invited nominations from publishers and creators late 2017. The award goes to an individual, not a specific work, so we were looking for examples published in 2017 that most define a creator's output. STARBURST editorial staff assembled the shortlist from over 100 entries, which included blog posts, short stories, screenplays, poetry, anthologies and novels.

The panel of judges are: Urban Fantasy author Russell Smith, award-winning games designer Mikey Smith, hardcore word nerd Rebecca Derrick and genre literary community MVP Alasdair Stuart.

STARBURST Magazine’s own Literary Editor, Ed Fortune, is the head judge. He said “This is an exciting new award, and a welcome addition to STARBURST’s current line-up of accolades. STARBURST is proud to support mainstream and indie creators. This list of nominees shows the wide breadth of talent out there. Choosing the winner will be very tough. ”

The winner will be announced at the STARBURST Media City Festival held at the Landing at MediaCityUK, 17th March 2018, Salford, Manchester, England. More details about the event can be found here.