About the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel
The World Fantasy Award for Best Novel is one of the most prestigious awards in speculative fiction and has been given annually since 1975, making it one of the longest-running awards in the field. It is presented at the World Fantasy Convention, an annual gathering of fantasy and horror authors, editors, agents, and readers that rotates internationally each year. Unlike reader-voted awards, the World Fantasy Award is selected by a panel of five judges—typically prominent authors, editors, and critics—who change each year, lending the award a more literary and curatorial character. Works from any country published in English are eligible. The award has historically been awarded in a broad range of forms, including traditional fantasy, dark fantasy, horror-adjacent fantasy, and literary magical realism. Past winners include Nnedi Okorafor, China Miéville, Sofia Samatar, Lavie Tidhar, G. Willow Wilson, Victor LaValle, Kacen Callender, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Tasha Suri, C.S.E. Cooney, Tananarive Due, and Robert Jackson Bennett. The award's physical form was the Howard—a bust of H.P. Lovecraft—but this was retired after 2015 and replaced with a new design following controversy about Lovecraft's racist views.
