Wednesday, January 22, 2025

2025 Nerds of a Feather Awards Recommended Reading, Part 3: Individual Categories

Welcome to our continuing presentation of the Nerds of a Feather 2025 Award Recommendation List. Today will look at the Individual Categories of Editor, Fan Writer, Artists and the Astounding Award for Best New Writer.

As before, we here at nerds are presenting a collective longlist of potential Hugo nominees that we think are worthy of your consideration. These selections represent the spectrum of tastes, tendencies, and predilections found among our group of writers. Today's section is one of the areas where there are some categories missing, not because nothing good existed in them, but because the flock don't have a big enough focus on them to provide recommendations. That said, it's also the one with the category closest to our hearts, as all of our contributors are eligible for best fan writer for their work on the blog in 2024. Look out for a future post talking about the work they're proud of and eligible for.

As ever, this list should not at all be considered comprehensive, even in the remaining categories. Some outstanding people will not make our longlist for the simple reason that we have not managed to keep abreast of all the amazing folks doing work within the SFF space. We encourage you to think of this as a list of candidates to consider alongside people with which you are already familiar, nothing more and nothing less.

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Nerds of a Feather 2025 Recommendation List Series:

Part 1: Fiction Categories (Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Series, Lodestar Award)

Part 2: Visual Work Categories (Graphic Story, Dramatic Presentation)

Part 3: Individual Categories (Editor, Fan Writer, Professional Artist, Fan Artist, Astounding Award for Best New Writer)

Part 4: Institutional Categories (Related Work, Semiprozine, Fanzine, Fancast)

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Editor, Long Form

As a general rule, we do not have a range of specific names for this section, but we recommend that when you put together your final nominating ballot that you also look at who the editors were for your Best Novel selections and consider them for Editor, Long Form. If you would like some suggestions of novels, do feel free to look at Part 1 of our Recommended Reading, which includes many of our favourites from 2024.

Professional Artist

Micaela Alcaino
Tommy Arnold
Rovina Cai
Lulu Chen
Galen Dara
Roberto De La Torre
Julie Dillon
Dan Dos Santos
Simon Eckert
Christine Foltzer
Maurizio Manzieri
Radiante Mozzarelle
John Picacio
Sparth
Alyssa Winans


Fan Writer

Anna (forestofglory at Lady Business)
Gautam Bhatia (Words for Worlds)
Jake Casella Brookins (Ancillary Review of Books)
Elias Eells (Bar Cart Bookshelf)
Zach Gillan (the Ancillary Review of Books, various others)
Jenny Hamilton (Reactor, Reading the End)
Trish Matson (Skiffy and Fanty, What's the Word Now)
Archita Mittra (Strange Horizons)
Renay (Lady Business)
Alasdair Stuart (The Full Lid)

Best New Writer (first pro publication in 2023-2024)  

Moniquill Blackgoose (To Shape a Dragon's Breath)
Sylvie Cathrall (A Letter to the Luminous Deep, 2024)
Justinian Huang (The Emperor and the Endless Palace 2024)
Bethany Jacobs (These Burning Stars 2023, On Vicious Worlds 2024)
Hana Lee (Road to Ruin 2024)
Moses Ose Utomi (The Lies of the Ajungo 2023, The Truth of the Aleke 2024)
Jared Pechaček (The West Passage, 2024)