Editorial
The 2024 Dell Magazines Awards
by Sheila Williams
Florida provided sunny weather for the thirtieth presentation of the Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing. As usual, the awards were bestowed in Orlando at the annual International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA). The award, which is co-sponsored by Dell Magazines and the International Association for Fantastic in the Arts, and supported by Western Colorado University’s Graduate Program in Creative Writing, was presented on March 16, 2024. The winner received a plaque and five hundred dollars.
This year’s winner was Emma Kerkman, a junior at Hamilton Clollege in Clinton, New York. Emma is a double major in creative writing and history. She has attended a number of writers’ wokshops including two stints at the Alpha Young Writers Workshop. Emma is also a snow board instructor and a certified kayak guide and high ropes operator. She’s getting certified as a wilderness first reponder, too. Her love of the outdoors was clear in her award-winning story about dogsledding, search and recovery, ghosts, and “Lolo’s Last Run.”
Emma also received an honorable mention for her thrilling tale about a post appocalyptic world and “Kodak Gold.”
Liam Betts, our first runner-up, is a senior at Vanderbilt University in Nash-ville, Tennesee. He’s majoring in creative writing and computer science. Originally from Massachusetts, Liam’s family home is in the Bay Area in California. “The Waves of Light, ” his complex tale about Charles Darwin’s daughter Anne, was written in a class on Victorian SF.
We had a tie for second-runner up. Wren Chan is a fifth year senior at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, majoring in violin performance and creative writing. She is also the social media manager of the Oberlin Library. A graduate of the Alpha Writers Workshop, Wren hopes to land a job in publishing. She received her award for her eerie and evocative tale about “Red Roots.”
The Dell Award was co-founded by Rick Wilber and me. Each year the finalists are selected via a blind read. That meant that we were once again surprised to discover that our other second runner-up was Rona Wang of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Rona was last year’s second runner-up as well as our 2020 winner. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to accept her award in person.
We were happy to meet Dylan Halsted, another honorable mention. Dylan is a junior at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland, and a native of Los Angeles. He’s studying creative writing along with professional writing and rhetoric. Dylan is a student of Sarah Pinsker who was in attendance at the conference and pleased to see him receive a certificate for his intriguing story about a seriously deluded A.I. and “Armageddon.txt.”
Last year’s award-winning story, “blooming beating hearts,” has just gone up on our website. This tale of gardening and space travel is by Sam Wilson of Chapman University. You can read it at here.
On Thursday night, our finalists dined at LongHorn Steakhouse with award judge and author Rick Wilber, editors /publishers Jacob Weisman and Neil Clarke, and authors Joe Haldeman, Gay Haldeman, Alan Smale, Walter Jon Williams, Jordan Jantz, Nick DiChario, Seth Dickinson, and Isabel J. Kim.
The Dell finalists took up two tables at the banquet on Saturday. In addition to our finalists and Rick, we were joined by Emma’s parents Dan Kerkman and Kathy Pyeatt, Joe and Gay Haldeman, James Patrick Kelly, James Morrow, Nick DiChario, and Denny Lynch.
In addition to afore mentioned authors and editors, the students had the chance to meet Ted Chiang, John Kessel, and many other interesting people over the course of the weekend.
The Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing was established by Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine and the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts in 1993 to promote the writing of science fiction and fantasy by college undergraduates. The contest is open to all full-time undergraduates at accredited colleges and universities. Our first award was bestowed in 1994. We look forward to celebrating our thirty-first winner at next year’s banquet!
All submissions must be previously unpublished and unsold, and they should be from 1,000 to 10,000 words long. Writers may submit an unlimited number of stories, but each manuscript must include a cover sheet with the writer’s name, address, phone number, and the university the writer attends. Manuscripts should be double-spaced with numbered pages. Names should not appear on the manuscript itself after the cover sheet.
The judges reserve the right to double-check your university status. For this year’s contest, you must have been a full-time undergraduate during the fall 2023 or spring, summer, or fall 2024 semesters (or quarters) of your university or college.
Story submissions should have been written during your time as a student. However, if you attended college full-time during a qualifying semester and then graduated or went to part-time status, you are still eligible.
Find out more about the award at http://www.dellaward.com or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/people/Dell-Magazines-Award/100028262456713. We want to take this opportunity to thank Adam Kehoe for his tireless volunteer work on our website.
The deadline for next year’s submissions is Tuesday, January 7, 2025, at 11:59 p.m.
Copyright © 2024 Sheila Williams