News ignyte awards Here Are the Finalists for the 2025 Ignyte Awards Congratulations to everyone! By Molly Templeton | Published on June 9, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share The Ignyte Awards, founded in 2020 by L. D. Lewis and Suzan Palumbo, “seek to celebrate the vibrancy and diversity of the current and future landscapes of science fiction, fantasy, and horror by recognizing incredible feats in storytelling and outstanding efforts toward inclusivity of the genre.” Each year, an awards committee made up of twenty or more BIPOC+ “avid readers, reviewers, and winners from previous years” selects the finalists for the awards; the categories for books for middle grade and young adult readers also include readers from those age groups. Voting for the winners is open to the public and continues through August 15th at the Ignyte Awards site. This year’s finalists have just been announced; congratulations to all! Outstanding Novel: Adult Blackheart Man – Nalo Hopkinson (Saga Press) Metal From Heaven – August Clarke (Erewhon Books) The Emperor and the Endless Palace – Justinian Huang (Mira) The Sentence – Gautam Bhatia (Westland If) Womb City – Tlotlo Tsamaase (Erewhon Books) Outstanding Novel: Young Adult Heir – Sabaa Tahir (G.P. Putnam’s Sons BYR) Moonstorm – Yoon Ha Lee (Delacorte Press) Sheine Lende – Darcie Little Badger (Levine Querido) Spells to Forget Us – Aislinn Brophy (G.P. Putnam’s Sons BYR) The Poisons We Drink – Bethany Baptiste (Sourcebooks Fire) Outstanding Middle Grade Amari and the Despicable Wonders – B. B. Alston (Storytide) Benny Ramírez and the Nearly Departed – Jose Pable Iriarte (Knopf BYR) Sona and the Golden Beasts – Rajani Larocca (Quill Tree Books) The Creepening of Dogwood House – Eden Royce (Walden Pond Press) The Last Rhee Witch – Jenna Lee-Yun (Disney Hyperion) Outstanding Novella Fractal Karma – Arula Ratnakar (Clarkesworld) Lost Ark Dreaming – Suyi Okungbowa Davies (Tordotcom) The Butcher of the Forest – Premee Mohamed (Tordotcom) The Dragonfly Gambit – A. D. Sui (Neon Hemlock) The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain – Sofia Samatar (Tordotcom) Outstanding Novelette “A Stranger Knocks” – Tananarive Due (Uncanny Magazine) “Joanna’s Bodies” – Eugenia Triantafyllou (Psychopomp) “Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being” – A.W. Prihandita (Clarkesworld) “¡Sangronas! Un Lista De Terror” – M.M. Olivas (Uncanny Magazine) “We Who Will Not Die” – Shingai Njeri Kagunda (Psychopomp) Outstanding Short Story “Agni” – Nibedita Sen (The Sunday Morning Transport) “Parthenogenesis” – Stephen Graham Jones (Reactor) “The Spindle of Necessity” – B. Pladek (Strange Horizons) “We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read” – Caroline M. Yoachim (Lightspeed Magazine) “Whale Fall” – J.L. Akagi (Strange Horizons) Outstanding Speculative Poetry “After They Blasted Your Home Planet to Shrapnel” – P.H. Low (Haven Speculative) “Hijacked Interiors” – Leena Aboutaleb (Strange Horizons) “I Said | मैंने कहा” – Sourav Roy, Translated By Carol D’souza (Samovar) “Reliving: Post Trauma of the Lekki Tollgate Massacre” – Fasasi Ridwan (Strange Horizons) “The Person Who Reminds the Other Person to Cast The Spell” – Bogi Takács (Strange Horizons) Critics Award Ancillary Review of Books Archita Mittra Blackgaycomicgeek Gabino Iglesias Maya Gittelman Outstanding Fiction Podcast Cast of Wonders Khōréō Magazine Podcastle Pseudopod The Nosleep Podcast Outstanding Artist Alyssa Winans Carly A-F Micaela Alcaino Tran Nguyen Outstanding Comics Team Lunar Boy – Jes and Cin Wibowo (Harper Alley) Lunar New Year Love Story – Gene Luen Yang and Leuyen Pham (First Second) The Worst Ronin – Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Faith Schaffer (Harper Alley) Outstanding Anthology/Collected Works A Sunny Place for Shady People – Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan Mcdowell (Hogarth) Deep Dream: Science Fiction Exploring the Future of Art – Indrapramit Das (The MIT Press) The Black Girl Survives in this One – Desiree S. Evans (Flatiron Books) Through the Night Like a Snake: Latin American Horror Stories – Sarah Coolidge (Two Lines Press) Thyme Travellers: An Anthology of Palestinian Speculative Fiction – Sonia Sulaiman (Roseway Publishing) Outstanding Creative Nonfiction Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction – Eugen Bacon (Bloomsbury) “All Insurrections Are Not Created Equal: On Writing Resistance After January 6th” – Micaiah Johnson (Reactor) Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I’d Known – George M. Johnson, Charley Palmer (Farrar, Straus & Giroux BYR) “In Other Wor(L)Ds” – Shrinidhi Harasimhan (Strange Horizons) “Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art” – Ted Chiang (The New Yorker) The Ember Award For Unsung Contributions to Genre Charlie Jane Anders Indrapramit Das Nisi Shawl Renay Sonia Sulaiman The Community Award For Outstanding Efforts in Service of Inclusion and Equitable Practice in Genre Authors Against Book Bans Samovar Magazine Writing The Other: Workshops Wole Talabi [end-mark] The post Here Are the Finalists for the 2025 Ignyte Awards appeared first on Reactor.