2018 Elgin Awards

Award Information

The 2018 Elgin Awards were given for books and chapbooks published in 2017 and 2016.

42 SFPA members voted on 21 total chapbooks and 30 total full-length books of poetry to determine the winners.

All Award Winners

Book Category

First Place: Liberating the Astronauts • Christina M. Rau (Aqueduct Press, 2017)

Second Place: Satan's Sweethearts • Marge Simon & Mary Turzillo (Weasel Press, 2017)

Third Place: Love Robot • Margaret Rhee (The Operating System, 2017)

Chapbook Category

First Place: A Catalogue of the Further Suns • F. J. Bergmann (Gold Line Press, 2017)

Second Place: Astropoetry • Christina Sng (Alban Lake, 2017)

Third Place: The Terraformers • Dan Hoy (Third Man Books, 2017)

Winner Biographies

Christina M. Rau is the author of the sci-fi fem poetry collection Liberating The Astronauts (Aqueduct Press, 2017) and the chapbooks WakeBreatheMove (Finishing Line Press, 2015) and For The Girls, I (Dancing Girl Press, 2014). Her poetry has also appeared on gallery walls in The Ekphrastic Poster Show, on car magnets for The Living Poetry Project, and in various literary journals both online and in print. A life-long resident of Long Island, she is the founder of the Long Island reading circuit, Poets In Nassau, and has read and run workshops for various community groups across the U.S. She teaches English and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College where she also serves as Poetry Editor for The Nassau Review. In her non-writing life, she teaches yoga occasionally and line dances on other occasions. Find her links on christinamrau.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

Mary Turzillo’s poetry collection Lovers & Killers won the 2013 Elgin Award. Her 1999 Nebula winner "Mars Is No Place for Children" is read on the International Space Station. She has been a finalist on the British Science Fiction Association, Pushcart, Stoker, Dwarf Stars and Rhysling ballots. Sweet Poison, her collaboration with Marge Simon, was a Stoker finalist and won the 2015 Elgin Award. Her novel Mars Girls came out in 2017 from Apex. Satan’s Sweethearts, a 2016 collaboration with Simon, excoriates evil women throughout history. Her current project is A Mars Cat and His Boy. She lives in Ohio with her scientist-writer husband, Geoffrey Landis; they both fence internationally. She and Marge believe that dark-hearted women can be as evil as men, but aren't caught as often because they are more covert.

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.

F. J. Bergmann won the first Elgin chapbook award in 2013 for Out of the Black Forest, a collection of fairy-tale poems. This one's for a science-fiction collection. She has also won 2 Rhysling Awards, for both long and short poems. The past editor of Star*Line, she edits and designs books for both literary and horror presses.

Christina Sng is the author of An Assortment of Sky Things (Allegra Press, 2016), Astropoetry (Alban Lake Publishing, 2017), and 2017 Bram Stoker Award winner, A Collection of Nightmares (Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2017). Her poetry, fiction, and art have appeared in numerous venues worldwide and garnered over 70 awards and nominations, including Honorable Mentions in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and the Best Horror of the Year. christinasng.com

Dan Hoy is the author of The Deathbed Editions (Octopus Books, 2016) and several poetry chapbooks, including The Terraformers (Third Man Books, 2017), The Tree (Solar Luxuriance, 2016), Omegachurch (Solar Luxuriance, 2010) and Glory Hole (Mal-O-Mar Editions, 2009). His work has appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Triple Canopy, Novembre, Elderly and other magazines and anthologies. He was a contributor to the collective blog Montevidayo (2010–2015), and was co-founder of the literary arts journal Soft Targets (2006–2007). He lives in Nashville.

All Nominated Works

Chapbooks Nominated

Full-Length Books Nominated

Nominations per Press

Number of NominationsName of Press
1Agape Books
3Alban Lake
2Aqueduct Press
1Barking Moose Press
2Crystal Lake Publishing
1CWP Collective Press
1Cyberwizard Productions
1Fairyfly Press
1Finishing Line Press
1Ginninderra Press
1Gold Line Press
3Hippocampus Press
1Inlandia Institute
1Kelp Queen Press
1Kipple Officina Libraria
1Kore Press
1Lion Tamer Press
1Moon Dream Press
1Noemi Press
1The Operating System
1Papaveria Press
1Phantom Williams
1The Poet’s Haven
4Porkbelly Press
1Raw Dog Screaming Press
1Sable Books
1Sarabande Books
1Sibling Rivalry Press
1Southern Illinois University Press
1Strangehouse Books
1Sundress Publications
1Taraxia Press
1Third Man Books
1Weasel Press
2White Knuckle Press
1Written Image
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