A World Fantasy Award nomination for BOYS, BEASTS & MEN.

The World Fantasy Award ballot just dropped, and I’m overjoyed to find BOYS, BEASTS & MEN on there!

The love for this weird horny gay depressive collection has just been so mind-blowing. Short stories are a weird business, because the audience for them can seem so small – they don’t rack up tons of Goodreads ratings or Amazon reviews or any of the other main metrics by which we measure our relevance audience size, so stuff like this means so much. Big big love to the jury, and to everyone who read and connected with this book.

I always say community is a superpower, and so much of my craft as a short story writer was shaped by my experience in two incredible groups of writers who I’ve got to shout out here: the Clarion Class of 2012 (Deborah Bailey, Eliza Blair, Lisa Bolekaja, Sadie Bruce, E. G. Cosh, Danica Cummins, Lara Elena Donnelly, Eric Esser, Jonathan Fortin, R. K. Kalaw, Chris Kammerud, Joseph Kim, Pierre Liebenberg, Sarah Mack, Carmen Maria Machado, Dan McMinn, Luke R. Pebler, and teachers Jeffrey Ford, Delia Sherman, Ted Chiang, Walter Jon Williams, Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, as well as guest critic Karen Joy Fowler), and the Altered Fluid writing group (Adanze Asante, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Alyssa Wong, D. T. Friedman, Devin Poore, E.C. Myers, Gay Partington Terry, Greer Woodward, K. Tempest Bradford, Kai Ashante Wilson, Kiini Ibura Salaam, Kris Dikeman, Lilah Wild, Martin Cahill, Matthew Kressel, Mercurio D. Rivera, N. K. Jemisin, Paul Berger, Rajan Khanna, Rick Bowes, Theresa DeLucci, and Tom Crosshill). I feel forever grateful and fortunate to be a part of both.

And I’m obsessed with the incredible introduction that my friend and hero Amal El-Mohtar wrote for the book, and my gratitude to Amal is endless and boundless.

Last time I was nominated for a World Fantasy Award it was in 2016, back before they changed the statue from a hideous bust of a hideous racist, so now I am EXTRA HOPEFUL that I’ll take one home! But honestly the whole ballot is so magnificent, and my category includes some of my absolute faves, so I’m super happy for WHOEVER wins.