Announcements: Finalists (June 6, 2025) | Winners (August 3, 2025) | Acceptance Remarks (August 3, 2025)

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Alexei Kondratiev Award

The Alexei Kondratiev Award, named in honor of Alexei Kondratiev, long-time Society member and a scholar of wide-ranging interests in mythopoeic and related studies, is given to an outstanding paper presented at Mythcon by an undergraduate or graduate student. The 2025 Alexei was presented at the Online Midsummer Seminar (OMS) #4 to Lyra Keran Zhang for her paper, “‘Desirable Lady’ or ‘She Who Desires’: Examining Aredhel’s Agency in Tolkien’s Legendarium.”
Congratulations, Lyra!
 

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All Book Award Finalists

Fantasy Awards

Adult Literature

• Katherine Arden, The Warm Hands of Ghosts Del Rey, 2024)
• Yangsze Choo, The Fox Wife (Henry Holt & Co., 2024)
• Minsoo Kang, The Melancholy of Untold History (William Morrow, 2024)
• Deborah K. Vleck, The Society of Guenevere (FTL Publications, 2024)
• Nghi Vo, The City in Glass (Tordotcom, 2024)

Young Adult Literature

• Anna Bright, The Hedge Witch of Foxhall (HarperCollins, 2024)
• Amie Kaufman, The Isles of the Gods duology (Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2023-2024)
• Darcie Little Badger, Sheine Lende (Levine Querido, 2024)
• Kelly Murashige, The Lost Souls of Benzaiten (Soho Teen, 2024)
• A. B. Poranek, Where the Dark Stands Still (McElderry Books, 2024)

Children’s Literature

• Frances Hardinge (author) and Emily Gravett (illustrator), Island of Whispers (Harry N. Abrams, 2024)
• Rajani LaRocca, Sona and the Golden Beasts (Quill Tree Books, 2024)
• Kaela Rivera, The Cece Rios trilogy ((HarperCollins, 2021-2024)
• David A. Robertson, The Misewa Saga (Tundra Books, 2020-2024)
• Lisa Stringfellow, Kingdom of Dust (Quill Tree Books, 2024)

Scholarship Awards

Inklings Studies

• Anahit Behrooz, Mapping Middle-earth: Environmental and Political Narratives in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Cartographies (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024)
• Annie Brust, Tolkien’s Transformative Women: Art in Triptych (Vernon Press, 2024)
• Cristina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond, editors, The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, by J.R.R. Tolkien (William Morrow, 2024; 3 vols.)
• Robert Stuart, Tolkien, Race, and Racism in Middle-earth (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)
• Hamish Williams, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Utopianism and the Classics (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023)

Myth and Fantasy Studies

• Stefan Ekman, Urban Fantasy: Exploring Modernity through Magic (Lever Press, 2024)
• Sophus Helle, editor, Enheduanna: The Complete Poems of the World’s First Author (Yale University Press, 2023)
• Matthew Oliver, Magic Words, Magic Worlds: Form and Style in Epic Fantasy (McFarland, 2022)
• Dennis Wilson Wise, editor, Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival: A Critical Anthology (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2023)
• Jack Zipes, Buried Treasures: The Power of Political Fairy Tales (Princeton University Press, 2023)