The Rhysling Awards have been awarded since 1978.
This page contains information on the first place winner in each category (or winners, if there was a tie for first place).
To see additional winners, as well as other information about each year's Rhysling award, including anthology covers and editors and poet biographies for some years, click the "View all [year] winners" link in the table's last column.
To purchase past Rhysling anthologies, see the [Rhysling anthologies purchases] page
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Winners by Year
| Year | Short Category Winner | Long Category Winner | All Winners and Nominees |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | TBD | TBD | View all 2026 nominees |
| 2025 | F. J. Bergmann, "Lost Ark" | Mary Soon Lee, "The Blackthorn" | View all 2025 nominees |
| 2024 | Geoffrey A. Landish, "No One Now Remembers" | Lauren Scharhag, "Little Brown Changeling" | View all 2024 nominees |
| 2023 | Jennifer Crow, "Harold and the Blood-Red Crayon" | Colleen Anderson, "Machine (r)Evolution" | View all 2023 nominees |
| 2022 | Mary Soon Lee, “Confessions of a Spaceport AI” | Beth Cato, “The Bookstore” | View all 2022 nominees |
| 2021 | Linda D. Addison, “Summer Timelessness” | Jenny Blackford, “Eleven Exhibits in a Better Natural History Museum, London” | View all 2021 nominees |
| 2020 | Jessica J. Horowitz, “Taking, Keeping” | Rebecca Buchanan, “Heliobacterium daphnephilum” | View all 2020 nominees |
| 2019 | Beth Cato, “After Her Brother Ripped the Heads from Her Paper Dolls” | Sarah Tolmie, “Ursula Le Guin in the Underworld” | View all 2019 nominees |
| 2018 | Mary Soon Lee, “Advice to a Six-Year-Old” | View all 2018 nominees | |
| 2017 | Marge Simon, “George Tecumseh Sherman’s Ghosts” | Theodora Goss, “Rose Child” | View all 2017 nominees |
| 2016 | Ruth Berman, “Time Travel Vocabulary Problems” | (tie) Krysada Panusith Phounsiri, “It Begins With A Haunting”; (tie) Ann K. Schwader, “Keziah” | View all 2016 nominees |
| 2015 | Marge Simon, “Shutdown” | F.J. Bergmann, “100 Reasons to Have Sex with an Alien” | View all 2015 nominees |
| 2014 | Amal El-Mohtar, “Turning the Leaves” | Mary Soon Lee, “Interregnum” | View all 2014 nominees |
| 2013 | Terry Garey, "The Cat Star" | Andrew Robert Sutton, “Into Flight” | View all 2013 nominees |
| 2012 | Shira Lipkin, "The Library, After" | Megan Arkenberg, "The Curator Speaks in the Department of Dead Languages" | View all 2012 nominees |
| 2011 | Amal El-Mohtar, "Peach-Creamed Honey" | C. S. E. Cooney, "The Sea King’s Second Bride" | View all 2011 nominees |
| 2010 | Ann K. Schwader, "To Theia" | Kendall Evans and Samantha Henderson, "In the Astronaut Asylum" | View all 2010 nominees |
| 2009 | Amal El-Mohtar, "Song for an Ancient City" | Geoffrey A. Landis, "Search" | View all 2009 nominees |
| 2008 | F.J. Bergmann, "Eating Light" | Catherynne M. Valente, "The Seven Devils of Central California" | View all 2008 nominees |
| 2007 | Rich Ristow, "The Graven Idol's Godheart" | Mike Allen, "The Journey to Kailash" | View all 2007 nominees |
| 2006 | Mike Allen, "The Strip Search" | Kendall Evans & David C. Kopaska-Merkel, "The Tin Men" | View all 2006 nominees |
| 2005 | Greg Beatty, "No Ruined Lunar City" | Tim Pratt, "Soul Searching" | View all 2005 nominees |
| 2004 | Roger Dutcher, "Just Distance" | Theodora Goss, "Octavia Is Lost in the Hall of Masks" | View all 2004 nominees |
| 2003 | Ruth Berman, "Potherb Gardening" | (tie) Charles Saplak and Mike Allen, "Epochs in Exile: A Fantasy Trilogy"; (tie) Sonya Taaffe, "Matlacihuatl's Gift" | View all 2003 nominees |
| 2002 | William John Watkins, "We Die as Angels" | Lawrence Schimel, "How to Make a Human" | View all 2002 nominees |
| 2001 | Bruce Boston, "My Wife Returns as She Would Have It" | Joe Haldeman, "January Fires" | View all 2001 nominees |
| 2000 | Rebecca Marjesdatter, "Grimoire" | Geoffrey A. Landis, "Christmas (after we all get time machines)" | View all 2000 nominees |
| 1999 | Laurel Winter, "egg horror poem" | Bruce Boston, "Confessions of a Body Thief" | View all 1999 nominees |
| 1998 | John Grey, "Explaining Frankenstein to His Mother" | Laurel Winter, "why goldfish shouldn't use power tools" | View all 1998 nominees |
| 1997 | W. Gregory Stewart, "Day Omega" | Terry A. Garey, "Spotting UFOs While Canning Tomatoes" | View all 1997 nominees |
| 1996 | Bruce Boston, "Future Present: A Lesson in Expectation" | Margaret B. Simon, "Variants of the Obsolete" | View all 1996 nominees |
| 1995 | Dan Raphael, "Skin of Glass" | David Lunde, "Pilot, Pilot" | View all 1995 nominees |
| 1994 | (tie) Bruce Boston, "Spacer's Compass"; (tie) Jeff VanderMeer, "Flight Is for Those Who Have Not Yet Crossed Over" | W. Gregory Stewart and Robert Frazier, "Basement Flats: Redefining the Burgess Shale" | View all 1994 nominees |
| 1993 | Jane Yolen, "Will" | William J. Daciuk, "To Be from Earth" | View all 1993 nominees |
| 1992 | David Lunde, "Song of the Martian Cricket" | W. Gregory Stewart, "the button and what you know" | View all 1992 nominees |
| 1991 | Joe Haldeman, "Eighteen Years Old, October Eleventh" | David Memmott, "The Aging Cryonicist in the Arms of His Mistress Contemplates the Survival of the Species While the Phoenix Is Consumed by Fire" | View all 1991 nominees |
| 1990 | G. Sutton Breiding, "Epitaph for Dreams" | Patrick McKinnon, "dear spacemen" | View all 1990 nominees |
| 1989 | Robert Frazier, "Salinity" | (tie) Bruce Boston, "In the Darkened Hours"; (tie) John M. Ford, "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station" | View all 1989 nominees |
| 1988 | (tie) Bruce Boston, "The Nightmare Collector"; (tie) Suzette Haden Elgin, "Rocky Road to Hoe" | Lucius Shepard, "White Trains" | View all 1988 nominees |
| 1987 | (tie) Jonathan V. Post, "Before the Big Bang: News from the Hubble Large Space Telescope"; (tie) John Calvin Rezmerski, "A Dream of Heredity" | W. Gregory Stewart, "Daedalus" | View all 1987 nominees |
| 1986 | Susan Palwick, "The Neighbor's Wife" | Andrew Joron, "Shipwrecked on Destiny Five" | View all 1986 nominees |
| 1985 | Bruce Boston, "For Spacers Snarled in the Hair of Comets" | Siv Cedering, "A Letter from Caroline Herschel (1750-1848)" | View all 1985 nominees |
| 1984 | Helen Ehrlich, "Two Sonnets" | Joe Haldeman, "Saul's Death: Two Sestinas" | View all 1984 nominees |
| 1983 | Alan P. Lightman, "In Computers" | Adam Cornford, "Your Time and You: A Neoprole's Dating Guide" | View all 1983 nominees |
| 1982 | Raymond DiZazzo, "On the Speed of Sight" | Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Well of Baln" | View all 1982 nominees |
| 1981 | Ken Duffin, "Meeting Place" | Thomas M. Disch, "On Science Fiction" | View all 1981 nominees |
| 1980 | (tie) Robert Frazier, "Encased in the Amber of Eternity"; (tie) Peter Payack, "The Migration of Darkness" | Andrew Joron, "The Sonic Flowerfall of Primes" | View all 1980 nominees |
| 1979 | (tie) Duane Ackerson, "Fatalities"; (tie) Steve Eng, "Storybooks and Treasure Maps" | Michael Bishop, "For the Lady of a Physicist" | View all 1979 nominees |
| 1978 | (tie) Duane Ackerson, "The Starman"; (tie) Andrew Joron, "Asleep in the Arms of Mother Night"; (tie) Sonya Dorman, "Corruption of Metals" | Gene Wolfe, "The Computer Iterates the Greater Trumps" | View all 1978 nominees |