The James White Award is pleased to announce the winner of this year’s competition:

“You First Meet the Devil at a Church Fete”
by Shannon Fay

Shannon, from Canada, wins £300 and her story will be published in a future issue of Interzone.

One of this year’s JWA judges, Aliette de Bodard, announced the winner at EightSquaredCon (the 2013 Eastercon) during the BSFA Awards ceremony. Discussing the winning story, she said it was:

A wonderful, strong voice and a delightful set-up. It’s hard to do original stories involving bargains with the Devil, but I thought this one managed to offer a fresh take and an poignant and effective ending.

This year the James White Award was also able to offer a runner-up prize, of £100, to the second placed story.

“Automatic Diamanté”
by Philip Suggars

Philip is from Brighton, and Andy Hedgecock and Andy Cox, the editors of Interzone, praised his story.

Our initial response to Automatic Diamanté was that it is smart, dark and engaging.  Our next reaction was that it’s the work of a talented writer who we would hope and expect to hear from in the future.  It tackles big ideas of self, identity and consciousness: these are ambitious themes for a short story, and they carry a risk that narrative can collapse under the weight of philosophical speculation and be reduced to the status of ‘thought experiment’.  But this is an adroit piece of writing that avoids this pitfall through its wit, its emotional resonance and the controlled energy of its language.

The James White Award received more than 200 entries this year from all over the world. The organisers would like to thank all those authors who entered and to wish them good luck with their future writing career. In particular we would like to commend the shortlisted authors,  Jonathan Bloxsom, Dan Campbell, Darren Goossens and JS Richardson.

The James White Award would like to thank all our judges this year: Aliette de Bodard, Ian McDonald and the Interzone editors: Andy Cox and Andy Hedgecock. We would also like to thank TTAPress, the publishers of Interzone, and the British Science Fiction Association for their continued support for the competition.