It feels utterly gauche to share personal good news in the midst of this horror, but… the votes are in.

I am a finalist in BSFA’s “Best Non-Fiction (Short)” category with my essay, “When People Giggle at Your Name, or the 2025 Hugo Awards Incident.”

You can find the full list of nominees over here. (Note to readers from 2027 and beyond: the link will have been reused for future awards. You can use the Wayback Machine to see the page as it was.)

This is… wild. Mindblowing. Unbelievable. And not simply because I got more votes than Chuck Wendig or Cory Doctorow. (Their non-fiction pieces were among the 23 that didn’t make it into the top-5.)

Wild. To think, all this for an essay that was fueled by pure rage, written in one sitting over the course of perhaps an hour, with no drafts and only the quickest of revisions just before I posted it.

Rage ain’t exactly good for long-term health, but it gets shit done. When done right, it gets people to stop and look and frown and take notice. And, if the stars align, it gets them to take action.

I will not be able to attend this year’s Eastercon on account of having committed to hike from Mexico to Canada for the second time (as one does), but I am very very honoured, and I shall be there in spirit.

Thank you, fellow artists. Thank you, BSFA’s supporters of the arts. Thank you all.