The Otherwise Award is pleased to announce the winner of the 2025 Award:

Luminous, by Silvia Park.

We’re also pleased to share an Honor List and a Long List.

The Otherwise Award (formerly known as the Tiptree Award) honors works of science fiction and fantasy that expand and explore our understanding of gender.

Each year, a jury selects Otherwise Award winners and an Honor List of additional notable works. The jury is encouraged to take an expansive view of “science fiction and fantasy” and to seek out works that have a broad, intersectional, trans-inclusive understanding of gender in the context of race, class, nationality, and disability.

(As described in our award process update in 2024, the jury can now choose more than one winner for each year’s Award, but this year the jury chose a single winner.)

The 2025 jury members were Eugen Bacon (chair), Andrew Hook, Cheryl S. Ntumy, K. Ibura, and Rebecca Fraimow. We thank each of them for their service!

The author of the winning work will receive a financial award and a medal. We will celebrate and discuss the winning and honored works at WisCon 2026, 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 2026 (also known as WisCONline) will be online from May 21 through 25. Join us there!

About the winner

The jury unanimously agreed that Silvia Park’s gripping science fiction novel Luminous is a diverse and immersive read that is exceptionally well-crafted. With deep and complex worldbuilding, this work intelligently and realistically explores a range of identities and themes across gender expression, AI, robotics, trans identity, embodiment, dysphoria, disability, and relationships among humans, as well as humanity’s relationship with ‘the other’. The novel casts a crucial gaze at layered societal expectations around masculinity and femininity, and beautifully examines the quest for community and connection.

About the Honor List

The jury chose these works for the Honor List:

What a Fish Looks Like, by Syr Hayati Beker (Stelliform Press)

A delightfully metafictional book of (recast) fairytales set in a deteriorating landscape punctuated by impending doom. Through humor and kaleidoscopic storytelling, Beker explores gender, identity, and human relationships with boldness, modernity, illustrations, and playful prose poetry vignettes that deftly portray a community in the midst of transformation.

A Song for You and I, by K. O’Neill (Random House Graphic)

A sweetly charming and perfect graphic novel for young adult readers that engages with difference by skilfully handling themes of self-discovery, gender exploration, and trans identity without being sentimental or patronising. The main character’s journey provides resonant feedback on agency, community, surrender, and self-acceptance as one evolves and becomes one’s true self.

The Path of Most Resistance: Poems on Women in Science, by Jessy Randall, illustrated by Kristin DiVona (Gold SF)

A fascinating body of work whose sum is a poetic statement on gender. It poignantly explores women in science across eras, restoring lost voices and creating new spaces, ultimately snatching a place for innovative thinkers erased across history by gender biases. A clever and compelling conversation that expresses a diverse array of women’s voices and identities, and asserts their right to be celebrated.

Notes from a Regicide, by Isaac Fellman (Tor Books)

A unique and ambitious text that imagines another society’s relationship with gender, and explores how trans identity expresses itself in contexts both very similar to and very far from our own—creating a natural, complex, and holistic look at trans selfhood and community. This first-person journey casts a textured look at family-hood and love in a subtle speculative context to create a work that’s more compelling and relevant than ever in today’s polarised world.

Algarabía, by Roque Raquel Salas Rivera (Graywolf Press)

A different kind of verse novel in an alluring first-person reflection of the inherent fraught experience of living in a society that inhibits free gender expression. The bold text offers an engaging resistance in its experimental array in form and structure, resonating against historical and mythological concepts of gender to build something new.

Long List

The jury chose these additional notable works for the Long List:

• The Everlasting, by Alix E. Harrow (Tor).
• “möbius loop”, by Samir Sirk Morató (khōréō).
• Some Body Like Me, by Lucy Lapinska (Gollancz).
• Amplitudes: Stories of Queer and Trans Futurity, edited by Lee Mandelo (Erewhon). Authors: Esther Alter, Bendi Barrett, Ta-wei Chi (translated by Ariel Chu), Colin Dean, Maya Deane, Dominique Dickey, Katharine Duckett, Meg Elison, Paul Evanby, Aysha U. Farah, Sarah Gailey, Ash Huang, Margaret Killjoy, Wen-yi Lee, Ewen Ma, Jamie McGhee, Sam J. Miller, Aiki Mira (translated by CD Covington), Sunny Moraine, Nat X Ray, Neon Yang, Ramez Yoakeim.
• Boy Island, by Leo Fox (Silver Sprocket, 2024)
• The Ghost and the Golem, by Benjamin Rosenbaum (Choice of Games, 2024)
• Part Time Girl, by Adriaan Brae (Presses Renaissance Press)

What the jury said about these works:

We were enamored by the excellence of these works for their inventive exploration of storytelling, identity, belonging, sentience, genre, and gender with singular or shifting perspectives, in daring and vivid ways that stand them apart.

Further notes from the jury

The jury adds:

This year, we received 161 entries for Otherwise recommendations, including novels, novellas, novelettes, anthologies, collections of short stories, individual short stories, poetry, graphic novels, flash fiction, interactive novels, and games. These ranged across science fiction, fantasy, horror and genre blends across psychological horror, werewolf stories, apocalypse, dystopian, cozy noir, Afrofuturistic, apocalypse, multiverse, graphic adventure, magical realism, cultural utopias, Black speculative, gender and identity stories, and more.

Huge thanks to [jury coordinator] Charlie Jones, who diligently and promptly delivered these works to the jury in the most cheerful way.

Recommendations and more

We invite you to recommend works for the 2026 Award. You can also donate to help fund the Award and read more about past honorees.

For more information on the Award or this press release, contact info@otherwiseaward.org.