Baen Announces Fantasy Award Finalists
Baen Books recently announced the finalists for the 2024 Baen Fantasy Adventure Award.
Launched in 2014, the award celebrates original fantasy short stories focused on heroics, high stakes, and adventure. Whether it’s sword and sorcery or urban fantasy or something that includes dragons, the award covers all subgenres in the fantasy category. “One of the great things about this contest is the breadth of subgenres we get to see, and this year has been no exception,” said Baen publisher Toni Weisskopf.
Judges include five members of the Baen Books editorial staff along with author and editor Howard Andrew Jones, managing editor of Tales From the Magician’s Skull. “What an excellent crop of stories I saw,” said Jones. “I never read more than one or two in a single setting so that they’d stay fresh, and every day I was surprised and entertained. It was a challenge to determine the final order!”
All stories were judged anonymously, and the winner will be announced at the Baen Books Traveling Roadshow during Dragon*Con 2024 in Atlanta, GA August 29 – September 2, 2024.
The finalists for the 2024 Baen Fantasy Adventure Award are:
- “The Long Night Ahead” by Jason P. Crawford
- “The Wish Doctor” by Arlen Feldman
- “Water-Witching” by Shannon Fox
- “The Spheres of Sang” by Alex S. Garcia
- “Drinking Plot Hole” by David Hankins
- “Bullfrog County Atomic Jackalope Rescue” by Robert F. Lowell
- “The Queen of Hearts and Minds” by R. H. McConnell
- “Find Me” by Lindsey Medrano
- “Hall of Heroes” by J. M. Roberts
- “A Stick, A Staff” by Willor Wyrd
