What iz teh Ditmarz?
The Ditmar Award (formally the Australian SF ("Ditmar") Award; formerly the "Australian Science Fiction Achievement Award") has been awarded annually since 1969 at the Natcon to recognise achievement in Australian science fiction (including fantasy and horror) and science fiction fandom. They are named for Ditmar "Dick" Jenssen, an Australian fan and artist, who financially supported the awards at their inception. (Source: http://wiki.sf.org.au/Ditmar_Award).
In essence our national Science Fiction award recognising Authors, Artists, Academics and Fans. Nominations close on the 20th March.
Who’s Eligible and how do I nominate?
You can check out the eligibility list here. It’s not an official list but its a pretty close crowd sourced one The Ditmar rules are located here. To nominate you need to be part of the Australian Speculative Fiction community -which is a broad church. If you are a blogger, reviewer, author, tweeter on or of Australian Speculative Fiction then you are pretty right. To vote you have to be a member of the convention though.
You can nominate online here.
Do you have anything eligible Sean?
Well normally I wouldn’t be so gauche as to put myself forward, but since you have badgered me I suppose I could mention that I am eligible in a couple of categories.
- Best Fan Writer for the work on this blog.
- Best Fan Publication in Any Medium for Galactic Chat along with Alex Pierce, Helen Stubbs, David McDonald, Mark Webb and Sarah Parker.
- William Atheling Jr. Award for Criticism or Review for individual reviews on this blog
Seriously though have a look through the eligibility list even if you can’t nominate, it’s a testament to the amount of work Australian writers and fans do in a year and my thanks go out to the worker bees who added all my entries.
I will attempt to go through the list in the coming month and pick out peeps I think deserving of a guernsey this year.
But if I can implore you to do one thing – if you are able to get involved do it, become part of the community.
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