Announcing the 2024 Otherwise Award winners!
Announcing the 2024 Otherwise Award winners and Long List for groundbreaking speculative works!
The Otherwise Award is pleased to announce four winners for the 2024 Award:
- In Universes by Emet North
- “Kiss of Life” by P.C. Verrone
- Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera
- Walking Practice by Dolki Min, translated by Victoria Caudle
Per our award process update last year, we now honor a short list of works each year with the Otherwise Award, rather than just one or two.
The jury is also pleased to share a Long List of five works:
- “The Flame in You” by L. Nabang
- Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen
- The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy
- “Scarlett“ by Everdeen Mason
- Vanessa 5000 by Courtney Pauroso
The 2024 jury members were Eugene Fischer (chair), Avery Dame-Griff, E. Ornelas, Elsa Sjunneson, Liz Haas, and Sophia Babai. We thank each of them for their many dozens of hours of service!
The authors of the winning works will each receive $200 in prize money, and a medal commemorating their Award. We will also celebrate and discuss the works at WisCon 2025, during the Sunday night gala (including speeches by the authors as well as the singing of a celebratory filk), and in a panel during the convention. WisCon 2025 (also known as WisCONline) will be online from May 23 through 26; registration is pay-what-you-wish.
Below, we offer excerpts from jurors’ thoughts on why they chose this year’s Award winners. The full explanations, and comments on the Long List, are in the blog post on our site.
About the Winners
In Universes by Emet North
In Universes is an exquisitely crafted novel that looks at the possible lives of its main character across many different realities, starting out largely realistic and becoming more speculative with each passing chapter.... How do I responsibly remain in community with and care for those I have injured or wronged? ... a novel about t’shuva—the active, restorative process of repentance....
—Eugene Fischer
“Kiss of Life” by P.C. Verrone
In “Kiss of Life,” author P.C. Verrone cleverly adapts common fantasy tropes in the service of an exacting deconstruction of colonialism and gender.... oppression comes not only through the imposition of “traditional” patriarchal gender norms but also the colonizers’ supposedly progressive “empowerment.” ... the narrator’s story is a Kiss of Life for both her audience and the reader....
—Avery Dame-Griff
Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera
Rakesfall is a bizarre, brilliant, relentlessly challenging book.... Rakesfall explores gender from a thousand angles.... gleefully confusing and frequently uncomfortable, and it also shines a light on how we run from confusion and discomfort.... The way we leave behind the real world and create a new world that looks how we think the world SHOULD look, smells how we think the world SHOULD smell....
—Sophia Babai
Walking Practice by Dolki Min, translated by Victoria Caudle
Walking Practice uses its extraterrestrial perspective to highlight elements of gender performance that often pass notice as natural or normal.... While “alien who exists outside the gender binary” is a common trope, the main character’s commentary defamiliarizes social expectations of gender in a way that sets it apart.... The main character’s narration is profoundly funny... I really hoped to find works that get weird with it, and Walking Practice undeniably hit the mark for me.
—Liz Haas
Recommendations and more
We invite you to recommend works for the 2025 Award. You can also donate to help fund the Award and read more about past honorees.
For more information about the Award, contact info@otherwiseaward.org.
For more about the winners and the works on the Long List, see the blog post version of this announcement.