Award Information
The 2017 Elgin Awards were given for books and chapbooks published in 2016 and 2015.
54 SFPA members voted on 21 total chapbooks and 31 total full-length books of poetry to determine the winners.
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All Award Winners
Book Category
First Place: Field Guide to the End of the World • Jeannine Hall Gailey (Moon City Press, 2016)

Second Place (TIE): A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora • Jenna Le (Anchor & Plume, 2016)

Second Place (TIE): Small Spirits: Dark Dolls • Marge Simon (Midnight Town Media, 2016)

Third Place: Dead Starships • Wendy Rathbone (Eye Scry Publications, 2016)

Chapbook Category
First Place: Leviathan • Neil Aitken (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2016)

Second Place: Radio Heart, or; How Robots Fall Out of Love • Margaret Rhee (Finishing Line Press, 2016)

Third Place: Apocalypse • John C. Mannone (Alban Lake, 2015)

Winner Biographies

Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. She is the author of five books of poetry: Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist's Daughter, and, winner of the Moon City Press Book Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her work has been featured on NPR's The Writer's Almanac, Verse Daily, and The Best Horror of the Year Vol. 6. Her website is webbish6.com.

A Minnesota-born daughter of Vietnam War refugees, Jenna Le earned her B.A. in mathematics before obtaining her M.D. She lives and works as a physician and educator in the Upper Valley region of New Hampshire. She is the author of two full-length collections of poems, Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011) and A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Anchor & Plume Press, 2016). Her poetry has appeared in AGNI Online, The Best of the Raintown Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, and Massachusetts Review. Her website is jennalewriting.com.

Marge Simon lives in Ocala, FL. She edits a column for the HWA Newsletter, "Blood & Spades: Poets of the Dark Side," and serves on Board of Trustees. She is the second woman to be acknowledged by the SF & F Association with a Grand Master Award. Marge’s poems and stories have appeared in Silver Blade, Bete Noire, Urban Fantasist, Daily Science Fiction, YOU, HUMAN, and CHIRAL MAD 2,3 to name a few. margesimon.com

Wendy Rathbone has had hundreds of poems published since the late 1980s. She’s won numerous contests and awards, but most recently took second place for the 2017 Rhysling Award for “best short poem” and third place in the SFPA poetry contest in 2016 for “best long poem”. Her poems from seven different out of print chapbooks have been collected in an omnibus edition: Unearthly, available on Amazon (as are all her other books). Dead Starships is her newest collection of poems on the theme of moving beyond the Earth, outward to the unknown. Her poetry is heavily influenced by seasons, nostalgia and longing, as well as futuristic and fantastical images. Wendy also writes fiction. Her latest novel, a scifi lgbt romance, The Android and the Thief, came out this year (2017) from Dreamspinner Press. She is also the author of the scifi novels Pale Zenith and Letters to an Android, as well as many others. She lives in Yucca Valley, CA with her partner, Della Van Hise.

Neil Aitken is the author of Babbage’s Dream (Sundress Publications, 2017) and The Lost Country of Sight (Anhinga Press, 2008), which received the Philip Levine Prize, as well as the poetry chapbook, Leviathan (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2016). A former computer programmer, he now teaches writing and edits Boxcar Poetry Review.

Margaret Rhee is a poet, artist, and scholar. She is the author of chapbooks Yellow (Tinfish Press, 2011), Radio Heart; or, How Robots Fall Out of Love (Finishing Line Press, 2015), and her forthcoming full-length collection, Love, Robot (The Operating System, 2017). Her project The Kimchi Poetry Machine was selected for the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 3. She edits Machine Dreams Zine, a free collection of creative and critical work on machines, arts, and difference. As a scholar, she is at work completing her first monograph, "How We Became Human: Race, Robots, and the Asian American Body. She received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in ethnic and new media studies. Currently, she is a Visiting Scholar at the NYU A/P/A Institute, and a Visiting Assistant Professor at SUNY Buffalo in the Department of Media Study.

John C. Mannone has over 550 works published in venues such as New England Journal of Medicine, Inscape Literary Journal, Windhover, 2016 Texas Poetry Calendar, Baltimore Review, Pedestal, Event Horizon Magazine and Syzygy Journal. He was awarded a 2016 Weymouth writing residency and has two literary poetry collections: Apocalypse (Alban Lake Publishing, 2015) and one on disability, Disabled Monsters (The Linnet’s Wings Press, 2015) to be featured in Nashville’s 2016 Southern Festival of Books. He edits poetry for Silver Blade and Abyss & Apex and is a college professor of physics in east Tennessee. Visit jcmannone.wordpress.com
All Nominated Works
Chapbooks Nominated
- Apocalypse • John C. Mannone (Alban Lake, 2015)
- An Assortment of Sky Things • Christina Sng (Allegra Press, 2016)
- Energy (or the Art of Keeping it Together) • Susan Gray (Burning Eye Books, 2016)
- Ghost Skin by Wren Hanks (Porkbelly Press Press, 2016)
- Ghost Tongue by Nicole Rollender (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
- hiku [pull] by James A. H. White (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
- In Favor of Pain • Angel Yuriko Smith (CreateSpace, 2016)
- Jackalope-Girl Learns to Speak • Stacey Balkun (dancing girl press, 2016)
- Leviathan • Neil Aitken (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2016)
- Lost City Museum • Stacey Balkun (ELJ Publications, 2016)
- The Mole People by Heather Cox (Bat Cat Press, 2016)
- Moon Facts • Bob Schofield (Nostrovia! Press, 2015)
- Prophet Fever • Wren Hanks (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2016)
- Quick Bright Things: poems of fantasy & myth • P.S. Cottier (Ginninderra Press, 2016)
- Shipwreck Smiles • Lauren Andrei (Cozy Muse, 2016)
- Shopping After the Apocalypse • Jessie Carty (dancing girl press, 2016)
- Southern Cryptozoology • Allie Marini (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2015)
- Radio Heart, or; How Robots Fall Out of Love • Margaret Rhee (Finishing Line Press, 2016)
- Violet Hours • Jeanie Tomasko (Taraxia Press, 2016)
- What Stranger Miracles • James Brush (White Knuckle Press, 2016)
Full-Length Books Nominated
- The Acolyte • Nancy Hightower (Port Yonder Press, 2015)
- Apocalypse • Frederick Turner (Ilium Press, 2016)
- Bone Confetti • Muriel Leung (Noemi Press, 2016)
- The Book of Robot • Ken Poyner (Barking Moose Press, 2016)
- Brief Encounters with My Third Eye: Selected Short Poems 1975–2016 • Bruce Boston (Crystal Lake Publishing, 2016)
- Chemical Letters • Octavia Cade (Popcorn Press, 2015)
- Corona Obscura • Michael R. Collings (CreateSpace, 2016)
- The Crimson Tome • K. A. Opperman (Hippocampus Press, 2015)
- Dark Parchments • Michael H. Hanson (MoonDream Press, 2015)
- Dead Starships • Wendy Rathbone (Eye Scry Publications, 2016)
- Field Guide to the End of the World • Jeannine Hall Gailey (Moon City Press, 2016)
- The Galaxy Is a Dance Floor by Bianca Lynne Spriggs (Argos Books, 2016)
- Ghosts Still Walking • Do Nguyen Mai (Platypus Press, 2016)
- A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora • Jenna Le (Anchor & Plume, 2016)
- House of Mystery by Courtney Bates-Hardy (ChiZine Publications, 2016)
- I Am Not A War • Sophia Terazawa (Essay Press, 2016)
- In the Crocodile Gardens • Saba Razvi (Agape Editions, 2016)
- Lost Gardens of the Hakudo Maru • Ryu Ando (a…p press, 2016)
- Marginalia to Stone Bird • Rose Lemberg (Aqueduct Press, 2016)
- Notes on the End of the World • Meghan Privitello (Black Lawrence Press, 2016)
- On that one-way trip to Mars • Marlena Chertock (Bottlecap Press, 2016)
- Poems of My Night • Cynthia Pelayo (Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2016)
- Poor Anima • Khaty Xiong, (Apogee Press, 2015)
- The Primitive Observatory • Gregory Kimbrell (Southern Illinois University Press, 2016)
- PseudoPsalms: Saints v. Sinners • Peter Adam Salomon (Journalstone, 2016)
- The Role of Lightning in Evolution • David Clink (Kelp Queen Press, 2016)
- Sacrificial Nights • Bruce Boston & Alessandro Manzetti (Kipple Officina Libraria, 2016)
- The Seven Yards of Sorrow • David E. Cowen (Weasel Press, 2016)
- Small Spirits: Dark Dolls • Marge Simon (Midnight Town Media, 2016)
- Staying Alive • Laura Sims (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2016)
- Turn Left at November: Poems • Wendy Rathbone (Eye Scry Publications, 2015)
- Underwater Fistfight • Matt Betts (Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2016)
Nominations per Press
| Number of Nominations | Name of Press |
|---|---|
| 1 | a…p press |
| 1 | Alban Lake |
| 1 | Agape Editions |
| 1 | Allegra Press |
| 1 | Anchor & Plume |
| 1 | Apogee Press |
| 1 | Aqueduct Press |
| 1 | Argos Books |
| 1 | Barking Moose Press |
| 1 | Bat Cat Press |
| 1 | Black Lawrence Press |
| 1 | Bottlecap Press |
| 1 | Burning Eye Books |
| 1 | ChiZine Publications |
| 1 | Cozy Muse |
| 1 | Crystal Lake Publishing |
| 3 | dancing girl press |
| 1 | ELJ Publications |
| 1 | Essay Press |
| 2 | Eye Scry Publications |
| 1 | Finishing Line Press |
| 1 | Ginninderra Press |
| 1 | Hippocampus Press |
| 2 | Hyacinth Girl Press |
| 1 | Ilium Press |
| 1 | Journalstone |
| 1 | Kelp Queen Press |
| 1 | Kipple Officina Libraria |
| 1 | Midnight Town Media |
| 1 | Moon City Press |
| 1 | MoonDream Press |
| 1 | Noemi Press |
| 1 | Nostrovia! Press |
| 1 | Platypus Press |
| 1 | Popcorn Press |
| 3 | Porkbelly Press |
| 1 | Port Yonder Press |
| 2 | Raw Dog Screaming Press |
| 1 | Red Bird Chapbooks |
| 1 | Southern Illinois University Press |
| 1 | Taraxia Press |
| 1 | Ugly Duckling Presse |
| 1 | Weasel Press |
| 1 | White Knuckle Press |