The James Tiptree, Jr. Award

The Website of the James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award Council.

What is the Tiptree?

In February of 1991 at WisCon (the world's only feminist-oriented science fiction convention), SF author Pat Murphy announced the creation of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, an annual literary prize for science fiction or fantasy that explores and expands the roles of women and men for work by both women and men.

Why The Name Tiptree?

The award is named for Alice B. Sheldon, who wrote under the pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr. By her chance choice of a masculine pen name, Sheldon helped break down the imaginary barrier between "women's writing" and "men's writing." Her fine stories were eagerly published and won many awards in the field.. The name, "Tiptree" was selected to illustrate the difficulty women have in gaining recognition and credibility for their art.

How to Support the Tiptree Award

1. Make recommendations to the Tiptree judges from your reading. If you find an SF/F story or a novel that you think bends gender in an interesting way, suggest the title to the judges. Use our online nomination form.
2. Read the winning stories and short-listed fiction. Talk to your friends about gender-bending fiction.
3. Organize a Tiptree Bake Sale at a convention near you. Download a copy of the How to Run a Tiptree Bakesale brochure.
4. Volunteer your time and join the Tiptree juggernaut.
5. Get together a group and Bid for a future "Floating Tiptree Ceremony Convention."

The Process

Each year Founding Mothers, Pat Murphy and Karen Joy Fowler appoint a panel of five judges to read and discuss among themselves the merits of gender-bending fiction published in the previous year. Anyone and everyone is invited to forward recommendations for novels and short fiction works via our Web site. Publishers are encouraged to alert Karen about soon-to-be-published gender-bending fiction.

At the end of a year of reading and deliberation, the judges choose a winner who is invited to the Tiptree Award ceremony to accept their award and prize money. Each winner receives a check for $1000.

Although the judges choose not to release a list of nominees before the actual award, thus creating an artificial set of "losers," they do publish a "shortlist" of fiction to which they wish to call readers' attention. In 1994, 1995 and 1996 the judges published both a "shortlist" and a "longlist."

Contact

Contributions to the Tiptree Award Council are tax deductible.

The Winners

Note: We have corrected the numbering of the Year of the Award to Correspond to the Year of Publication. So the 1992 winner was published in 1992.

• 2000 Molly Gloss, Wild Life
• 1999 Suzy McKee Charnas, The Conqueror's Child
• 1998 Raphael Carter, "Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation"
• 1997 Candas Jane Dorsey, Black Wine,
  and Kelly Link, "Travels With The Snow Queen."
• 1996 Ursula K. Le Guin, "Mountain Ways,"
  and Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow
• 1995 Elizabeth Hand, Waking The Moon
  and Theodore Roszak, The Memoirs Of Elizabeth Frankenstein
• 1994 Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Matter of Seggri"
  and Nancy Springer, Larque on the Wing
• 1993 Nicola Griffith, Ammonite
• 1992 Maureen F. McHugh, China Mountain Zhang
• 1991 Eleanor Arnason, A Woman of the Iron People
  and Gwyneth Jones, White Queen
• Retrospective Award Suzy McKee Charnas, Motherlines and Walk to the End of the World;
  Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness;
  Joanna Russ, "When It Changed", in Again, Dangerous Visions and The Female Man