2017 Elgin Awards

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.

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.

a black-and-white photo of a woman with curly hair smiling at the camera

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

Full-Length Books Nominated

Nominations per Press

Number of NominationsName of Press
1a…p press
1Alban Lake
1Agape Editions
1Allegra Press
1Anchor & Plume
1Apogee Press
1Aqueduct Press
1Argos Books
1Barking Moose Press
1Bat Cat Press
1Black Lawrence Press
1Bottlecap Press
1Burning Eye Books
1ChiZine Publications
1Cozy Muse
1Crystal Lake Publishing
3dancing girl press
1ELJ Publications
1Essay Press
2Eye Scry Publications
1Finishing Line Press
1Ginninderra Press
1Hippocampus Press
2Hyacinth Girl Press
1Ilium Press
1Journalstone
1Kelp Queen Press
1Kipple Officina Libraria
1Midnight Town Media
1Moon City Press
1MoonDream Press
1Noemi Press
1Nostrovia! Press
1Platypus Press
1Popcorn Press
3Porkbelly Press
1Port Yonder Press
2Raw Dog Screaming Press
1Red Bird Chapbooks
1Southern Illinois University Press
1Taraxia Press
1Ugly Duckling Presse
1Weasel Press
1White Knuckle Press
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