The Carl Brandon Society is a group originating within the science fiction community. Their mission "is to increase racial and ethnic diversity in the production of and audience for speculative fiction."[1] Their vision is "a world in which speculative fiction, about complex and diverse cultures from writers of all backgrounds, is used to understand the present and model possible futures; and where people of color are full citizens in the community of imagination and progress."
The Society was founded in 1997 following discussions at the feminist science fiction convention WisCon 23 in Madison, Wisconsin. It was named after "Carl Brandon", a fictional black fan writer created in the mid-1950s by Terry Carr and Pete Graham.[2] This also alludes to the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, named after the fictional male persona used by the writer long known as "James Tiptree, Jr.".[3]
The Society maintains annuals lists of fantastical works published by writers of color.
Source:[4]
Inaugurated in 2005, the Carl Brandon Parallax Award is a juried award given to works of speculative fiction created by a self-identified person of color.[5] The 2005 Parallax, the first to be awarded, went to Walter Mosley for his young adult novel 47.
Inaugurated in 2005, the Carl Brandon Kindred Award is a juried award given to any work of speculative fiction dealing with issues of race and ethnicity; nominees may be of any racial or ethnic group. The 2005 Kindred Award went to Susan Vaught for her young adult novel, Stormwitch.
The awards were not given for years from 2012 to 2018, but resumed with awards for 2019.
Carl Brandon Parallax Award Shortlist for 2006
"Prince of Ayodhya" (Penguin India)
"Toy Planes" (Nature, Oct. 13, 2005)
"Fledgling" (Seven Stories Press)
"Trees of Bone" (Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest, #3)
"Marie-Ma" (Femspec, Vol. 6, #1)
"Nostalgia" (Nature, Sept. 1, 2005)
"Cloud Dragon Skies" (Strange Horizons, Aug. 1, 2005)
"Owasa" (Farthing, July, 2005)
"Shard of Glass" (Strange Horizons, Feb. 14, 2005)
Mella and the N'anga: An African Tale (Sumach Press)
Zahrah the Windseeker (Houghton Mifflin)
"Wallamelon" (Aeon Magazine, #3)
"The Tetrahedron" (Intranova, March 15, 2005)
Carl Brandon Kindred Award Shortlist for 2006
"Before the Altar on The Feast of All Souls" (Tesseracts 9)
47 (Little, Brown)
Zahrah the Windseeker (Houghton Mifflin)
"La Gran Muerte" (Asimov's Science Fiction, April 2005)
The 2006 Carl Brandon Society Awards were presented during a ceremony at WisCon 30.
Carl Brandon Parallax Award Shortlist for 2007
Carl Brandon Kindred Award Shortlist for 2007
"From the Notebooks of Doctor Brain"
Carl Brandon Parallax Award Shortlist for 2008
"Distances"
Carl Brandon Kindred Award Shortlist for 2008
"Ghost Summer"
Carl Brandon Parallax Award Shortlist for 2009
"Half World"
Carl Brandon Kindred Award Shortlist for 2009
"Lair"
Carl Brandon Parallax Award Shortlist for 2010
"Redemption in Indigo"
Carl Brandon Kindred Award Shortlist for 2010
Honor Shortlist for 2010
"The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms"
"The Beast with Nine Billion Feet"
"Standard Loneliness Package"
Carl Brandon Parallax Award Shortlist for 2011
"Smoketown"
Carl Brandon Kindred Award Shortlist for 2011
"Redwood and Wildfire"
Honor Shortlist for 2011
“The House of Aunts”
“Rising Lion – The Lion Bows”
“Ghostweight”
“All That Touches the Air”
“Black Betty”
"Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories"
The 2011 Carl Brandon Awards were presented at Arisia, January 17–20, in Boston MA, USA.
Through 2012–2018, the Carl Brandon Award ceremonies went on hiatus.
Carl Brandon Parallax Award Shortlist for 2019
"Pet"
Carl Brandon Kindred Award Shortlist for 2019
"Doll Seed"
Parallax Honor Shortlist for 2019
“Mister Dog”
“Kali_Na”
“The Freedom of the Shifting Sea”
“Harvest”
"A Spectral Hue"
"David Mogo: God Hunter"
The Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship was established in Butler's memory in 2006 by the Society.[6] Its goal is to provide an annual scholarship to enable writers of color to attend one of the Clarion writing workshops where Butler got her start. The first scholarship was awarded in 2007.