Kitschies

Kitschies
Awarded for	Literary award
Country	United Kingdom
Official website	www.thekitschies.com

The Kitschies are British literary prizes presented annually for "the year’s most progressive, intelligent and entertaining works that contain elements of the speculative or fantastic." Works that were published in the United Kingdom in the year of the award are eligible.

Awards and criteria

The Kitschies are administered by a non-profit association with the stated mission of "encouraging and elevating the tone of the discussion of genre literature in its many forms". The founders, Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin said that they sought to bring attention to works with a fantastic or speculative element that are progressive in terms of content and composition.

The award is a juried prize that selects those books which "best elevate the tone of genre literature". Qualifying books must contain "an element of the fantastic or speculative" and have been published in the UK. Winners receive a sum of prize money and a textile tentacle trophy.

The Kitschies are governed by an advisory board of members and an award director, Glen Mehn. The Kitschies were initially established in 2009 by the website pornokitsch.com. The Kraken Rum was the sponsor between 2010 and 2013. The current sponsor (since 2014) is Fallen London (a creation of UK game developer Failbetter Games).

As of 2015, the Kitschies are awarded in four categories:

• Red Tentacle for the best novel (£1,000, since 2009)
• Golden Tentacle for the best debut novel (£500, since 2010)
• Inky Tentacle for the best cover art (£500, since 2011)
• Invisible Tentacle for the best natively digital fiction (since 2014)
• Black Tentacle; awarded at the judges' discretion (since 2010)

Jury

The judging panels change annually.

2011

• Literary judges: Perry, Shurin, Lauren Beukes and Rebecca Levene
• Art judges: Hayley Campbell, Craig Kennedy, Catherine Hemelryk and Darren Banks

2012

• Literary judges: Shurin, Levene and Patrick Ness
• Art judges: Lauren O'Farrell, Gary Northfield and Ed Warren

2013

• Literary judges: Nick Harkaway, Kate Griffin, Will Hill, Anab Jain and Annabelle Wright
• Art judges: Hazel Thompson, Sarah Anne Langton, Emma Vieceli and Craig Kennedy.

2014

• Literary judges: Kate Griffin, Adam Roberts, Kim Curran, Frances Hardinge and Glen Mehn
• Art judges: Ed Warren, Dapo Adeola, Jim Kay and Siân Prime
• Invisible Tentacle judges: Laura Grace, James Wallis, Phil van Kemenade and Clare Reddington

2015

• Literary judges: Sarah Lotz, James Smythe, Nazia Khatun, Nikesh Shukla and Glen Mehn
• Art judges: Sarah McIntyre, Regan Warner, Dapo Adeola and Lauren O’Farrell

Recipients

Red Tentacle (best novel)

2015

• Winner: The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood
• Finalists:

• Europe at Midnight by Dave Hutchinson
• The Reflection by Hugo Wilcken
• The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin
• The Thing Itself by Adam Roberts

2014

• Winner:Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith
• Finalists:

• Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor
• The Peripheral by William Gibson
• The Way Inn by Will Wiles
• The Race by Nina Allan

2013

• Winner: A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
• Finalists:

• Red Doc> by Anne Carson
• Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon
• More Than This by Patrick Ness
• The Machine by James Smythe

2012

• Winner: Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway
• Finalists:

• The Folly of the World by Jesse Bullington
• A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge
• Jack Glass by Adam Roberts
• The Method by Juli Zeh

2011

• Winner: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness and Siobhan Dowd
• Finalists:

• The Enterprise of Death by Jesse Bullington
• Embassytown by China Miéville
• The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers
• Osama: A Novel by Lavie Tidhar

2010

• Winner: Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
• Shortlisted:

• Children's Crusade by Scott Andrews
• Kraken by China Miéville
• The Folding Knife by K. J. Parker
• Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat

2009

• Winner: The City & the City by China Miéville
• Shortlisted:

• Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie
• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
• The Magicians by Lev Grossman
• The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen

Golden Tentacle (best debut novel)

2015

• Winner: Making Wolf by Tade Thompson
• Finalists:

• The Shore by Sara Taylor
• Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett
• The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan
• The Night Clock by Paul Meloy

2014

• Winner: Viper Wine by Hermione Eyre
• Finalists:

• The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne
• Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta
• The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
• The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara

2013

• Winner:Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
• Finalists:

• Stray by Monica Hesse
• A Calculated Life by Anne Charnock
• Nexus by Ramez Naam
• Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

2012

• Winner: Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord
• Finalists:

• vN by Madeline Ashby
• Panopticon by Jenni Fagan
• Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
• The City's Son by Tom Pollock

2011

• Winner:God's War by Kameron Hurley
• Finalists:

• Among Thieves by Douglas Hulick
• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
• Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
• The Samaritan by Fred Venturini

2010

King Maker by Maurice Broaddus

Inky Tentacle (best cover art)

2014

• Winner: Tigerman by Nick Harkaway, cover by Glenn O’Neill
• Finalists:

• The Ghost of the Mary Celeste by Valerie Martin, design by Steve Marking
• A Man Lies Dreaming by Lavie Tidhar, cover by Ben Summers
• Through the Woods by Emily Carroll, cover by Emily Carroll and Sonja Chaghatzbanian
• The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber, cover by Rafaela Romaya and Yehring Tong

2013

• Winner: The Age Atomic by Adam Christopher; art by Will Staehle
• Finalists:

• Dreams and Shadows by C. Robert Cargill; design and illustration by Sinem Erkas
• Homeland and Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow; design by Amazing15
• Stray by Monica Hesse; art by Gianmarco Magnani
• Apocalypse Now Now by Charlie Human; art by Joey Hi-Fi

2012

• Winner: A Boy and a Bear in a Boat by Dave Shelton; illustration by Dave Shelton
• Finalists:

• The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman; design by La Boca
• The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket by John Boyne; illustration by Oliver Jeffers
• Costume Not Included by Matthew Hughes; illustration by Tom Gauld
• Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus; design by Peter Mendelsund

2011

• Winner:The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan; design by Peter Mendelsund
• Finalists:

• Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch; illustration by Stephen Walter, design by Patrick Knowles
• The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco; design by Suzanne Dean, illustration by John Spencer
• Equations of Life by Simon Morden; design by Lauren Panepinto
• A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness and Siobhan Dowd; illustration by Jim Kay

Invisible Tentacle (best natively digital fiction)

2015

• Winner: Life Is Strange, video game by Dontnod Entertainment
• Finalists:

• Arcadia, interactive novel by Iain Pears
• Daniel Barker’s Birthday, Twitter fiction by @FrogCroakley
• The Last Hours of Laura K by the BBC Writers Room
• Bloodborne, video game by Hidetaka Miyazaki / FromSoftware

2014

• Winner: Kentucky Route Zero Act III, video game by Cardboard Computer
• Finalists:

• @echovirus12, Twitter fiction by Jeff Noon and others
• 80 Days, video game by Inkle Studios
• Sailor’s Dream, video game by Simogo

Black Tentacle (discretionary)

• 2015: The genre community, personified by Patrick Ness, for its response to the humanitarian refugee crisis. Ness began a fund that raised £690 million for Save the Children.
• 2014: Sarah McIntyre, author and illustrator
• 2013: Malorie Blackman, British writer, Children's Laureate for 2013, for "outstanding achievement in encouraging and elevating the conversation around genre literature"
• 2012: Lavie Tidhar for the World SF Blog, a website showcasing international speculative fiction
• 2011: SelfMadeHero, comics publisher
• 2010: Memory, novel by Donald Westlake

External links

• The Kitschies website