2026 Awards

The Student Paper Award is presented to the outstanding scholarly essay read at the previous annual conference of the SFRA by a student.

Committee Chair: Yilun Fan

Recipient: Franklin Mitchell for “’I Must Put Things in My Mouth’: Loving Trans Children in Octavia Butler’s Adulthood Rites”

Mary Kay Bray Award is given for the best review to appear in the SFRA Review in the previous year.

Committee Chair: Nora Castle

Recipient: Paromita Sarkar for the review of The Blaft Book of Anti-Caste SF (SFRA Review 55.3)

The SFRA Book Award is given to the author of the best first scholarly monograph in SF in the previous calendar year

Committee Chair: Sean Guynes

Recipient: Tavia Nyong’o for Black Apocalypse: Afrofuturism at the End of the World (University of California Press, 2025).

Innovative Research Award is given to the writer or writers of the previous year’s best critical essay-length work.

Committee Chair: John Rieder

Recipient: Regina Kanyu Wang for “Growth, Resource, Population: The GRP Triangle in Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction by Female Writers.” Science Fiction Studies 52.2 July 2025 p. 323-349.

The Thomas D. Clareson Award for Distinguished Service is presented for outstanding service activities: including, the promotion of SF teaching and study, editing, reviewing, editorial writing, publishing, organizing meetings, mentoring, and leadership in SF/fantasy organizations.

Committee Chair: Graham J. Murphy

Recipient: Patrick Sharp

The SFRA Award for Lifetime Contributions to SF Scholarship honors lifetime contributions to SF and fantasy scholarship.

Committee Chair: Andy Hegeman

Recipient: Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr.