The Otherwise Motherboard is pleased to announce the Otherwise Awards 2026 Jury:

• Gautam Bhatia (Chair) is an Indian SFF writer, reviewer, and editor. He is the author of THE FIFTH INFLECTION (Saga Press/Solaris 2027). Originally published in India as THE SENTENCE, the novel won the 2025 Ignyte Award for best adult fiction. His other novels include the duology THE WALL and THE HORIZON (HarperCollins India). He is also the co-ordinating editor of Strange Horizons, a Hugo Award-winning weekly, online magazine of SFF that is in its 27th year of existence. His critical and editorial work focuses on SFF from the global south, extractivism in SFF, anarchist SFF, and more. In his other life, he is a constitutional lawyer.
• Abigail Nussbaum is a blogger and critic, former reviews editor of Strange Horizons, and a two-time winner of the Hugo award for Best Fan Writer. Her writing has appeared in the Guardian, the New Scientist, Locus, io9, and others, and she contributes to the politics blog Lawyers, Guns, & Money. Her review collection Track Changes was published by Briardene Books in 2024.
• Akankshya Abismruta (she/her) is an independent books & culture writer based in India. She writes for numerous Indian newspapers and several digital platforms, including Strange Horizons. She is interested in all things gender, illness and disability, and translation. She lives with multiple chronic conditions and invisible disability, and copes by reading stories that disrupt power structures. She is @geekyliterati on Instagram and @akankshya.bsky.social on Bluesky.
• Three other jury members have asked not to be named publicly until the end of the jury process. For more about our public naming of jurors, see below.

The jury is now considering works for the 2026 Awards, and will announce its decisions by late May 2027; we intend to celebrate Award winners at WisCon 2027.

The main way that the jury finds out about works to consider is your recommendations. Our recommendation form is open for works published in 2026. Let us know about the sf works you’re appreciating that explore or expand our understanding of gender! (Works can be books, stories, poems, music, video, fanfic, social media posts, or any other form of speculative fiction.)

A transparency note about naming jurors publicly:

In the past, we’ve announced the name of the jury chair at the beginning of each year’s Awards cycle, but haven’t publicly named the members of the jury until the end of the process.

Last year and this year, we learned that some jurors want to be publicly named at the start of the cycle, and others don’t, for a mix of reasons (all sensible). So this year, we’re refining our process, and naming only the jurors who want to be named.

When we announce this year’s Awards around May 2027, we’ll also provide the names of all of the jurors.

Thanks to all our jurors for serving!

We bring to your attention books, short stories, essays, poems, and other works published in 2025 by creators whose works have previously won the Otherwise (formerly Tiptree) Award, and our past Fellows. As nomination and voting deadlines get closer for awards for 2025 work (March 28th is the nomination deadline for the Hugos!), consider adding these to your reading list:

• Eleanor Arnason, whose A Woman of the Iron People won the 1991 Award, edited The Outspoken and the Incendiary: Interviews with Radical Speculative Fiction Writers
• Nicola Griffith, whose Ammonite won the 1993 Award, wrote the essay “Introduction: To Belong, or Not”
• Candas Jane Dorsey, whose Black Wine won the 1997 Award, wrote two poems: “Losing It” and “Morning in the Garden of Fear”
• Cameron Reed, whose “Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation” won the 1998 Award, wrote the novelette “The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For”
• John Kessel, whose “Stories for Men” won the 2002 award, wrote the novella “The Ghost”
• Geoff Ryman, 2005 winner for Air: Or, Have Not Have, wrote the novel Animals
• Catherynne M. Valente, 2006 winner for The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden, wrote the story “Came The Last Night of Sadness” and the novelette “When He Calls Your Name”
• Sarah Hall, 2007 winner for The Carhullan Army, wrote the novel Helm
• Nisi Shawl, whose Filter House won the 2008 Award, wrote the novel Making Amends
• Patrick Ness, whose The Knife of Never Letting Go won the 2008 Award, wrote the novel Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody
• K. Ibura, 2012 winner for Ancient, Ancient, wrote the novel Tempest
• Caitlin R. Kiernan, whose The Drowning Girl won the 2012 Award, released the short fiction collection Bright Dead Star
• Akwaeke Emezi, 2019 winner for Freshwater, wrote the novels Son of the Morning and Somadina
• H. Pueyo, 2017 Fellow, wrote the novella But Not Too Bold
• Vida Cruz-Borja, 2018 Fellow, wrote the novella Mirror Marked
• Ana Hurtado, 2018 Fellow, wrote the short stories “En el obscurito,” “Pezcara,” and “Anémona”
• Mars Lauderbaugh, 2024 Fellow, wrote the comic “Old Ones, New Ones”
• Eugen Bacon, 2024 Fellow, wrote the short stories “The Shadow Eater of Órino-Rin,” “AI Chronicles: Properties of a Human Curse,” “Ne’za’s Yearning,” and “Kinje’kitile and the Jintu,” co-wrote the poem “Momentum Vitae,” wrote the novellas The Nga’phandileh Whisperer and Novic, co-edited the anthology Fission #5, and wrote several essays and a review
• Ayida Shonibar, 2025 Fellow, wrote the poem “All Relative” and the short stories “Am I a Woman, Am I a Bird of Prey” and “An Unholy Terroir”

Happy reading and nominating!

And thanks to Brackett Robertson for researching this list.

For the past six years, the Otherwise Award has not done any fundraising aside from our auctions. For some of that time, we were on hiatus, so our funding needs were lower, but now we’re back in our stride and in order to continue, we need your help! This Giving Tuesday, please consider making a donation to help us support the exploration and expansion of gender in speculative fiction.

Running an award comes with a lot of costs. There’s the obvious cost of producing physical awards to give to the winners, but there are also many administrative costs, including things like buying copies of books & other media for the jurors to consider, paying for services like web hosting and bookkeeping and jury logistics, and giving a stipend to our jurors.

We’re currently paying for more administrative work than we used to because we want to make sure that we are fairly compensating the people who make the award possible. After our hiatus a few years ago, we came back with a new process for the award, and we are committed to keeping it sustainable and equitable. It’s been working, so far! Here’s what we’ve done:

Since our return, we’ve convened a jury that awarded works from 2024, and we’ve also invited friends of the award to appreciate works from 2022 and 2023 (parts 1, 2, and 3). Our current jury, chaired by Eugen Bacon, is now considering works from 2025.

We’ve also returned to offering fellowships after a two-year hiatus. Our 2024 recipients were Eugen Bacon and Mars Lauderbaugh, and our fellowship committee is now considering the 2025 applicants.

To keep doing this joyful and affirming work, we estimate that we need to raise roughly $9,000. That will allow us to sustainably keep all of our current projects going for the next year. Please help if you can by donating and by sharing this with others who care about exploring and expanding our notions of gender.

Thank you all for your help over the years — whether you have helped by donating items for auctions or bake sales, by purchasing yummy baked goods or auction items, by serving as a juror, by volunteering, or by sharing your enthusiasm for the award with others. The Otherwise Award has always been supported by a wonderful community, and we couldn’t do it without you!

This week is your last chance to recommend works for this year’s Otherwise Awards jury to consider!

You can recommend any works of speculative fiction published in 2025 that explore or expand our understanding of gender. (Works can be books, stories, poems, music, video, fanfic, social media posts, or any other form of speculative fiction.)

The recommendations form will be open until November 15 at 23:59 US Pacific time.

After that, we’ll switch over to a new 2026 recommendations form; anything recommended after November 15 will be considered with 2026 works.