We’re thrilled to announce that PodCastle has won the 2020 British Fantasy Award in the Best Audio category! We were so proud to have been nominated alongside other wonderful podcasts: Breaking the Glass Slipper, Speculative Spaces, and our sister podcast at Escape Artists, PseudoPod. We’re grateful to the British Fantasy Society for this honor and for running the online ceremony during these trying times. 

We have a large, amazing team of editors, producers, hosts, and talent who work to make PodCastle a success. Thanks to our associate editors over the last few years—Krystal Claxton, Matt Dovey, Aidan Doyle, Eboni Dunbar, Emmalia Harrington, Kai Hudson, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Devin Martin, Kathryn McMahon, Ace Ratcliff, Julian Jarboe, Craig Jackson, Julia Patt, Hamilton Perez, Eleanor Wood, Tierney Bailey, Sofía Barker, Shomari Kirkwood, Srikripa Krishna Prasad, Ziv Wities, and Kaitlyn Zivanovich—you are all unparalleled in your drive, passion, and talent. And to our incredible bosses, Marguerite Kenner and Alasdair Stuart, thank you for giving us the support and freedom we need to create this beautiful thing. 

And to the authors whose work is at the center of everything we do, to the narrators whose voices touch and sustain us, and to the listeners who keep us going by tuning in week after week (for over twelve years now!): thank you so much. Our accolades are also yours.

Sincerely, 

Cherae Clark, Jen R. Albert, Setsu Uzumé, Peter Adrian Behravesh

The Escape Artists Flash Fiction Contest is back again, and it’s PodCastle’s turn! The contest will be taking submissions beginning March 1, 2021, and ending on March 31, 2021, at 11:59 p.m. EST. PodCastle Associate editor Craig Jackson, or Ocicat on the forums, will be our Guest Editor for the contest!

Each author may submit one original fantasy story of 500 words or less. Stories will then be sorted into categories, anonymized, and posted to our forums for all to read and vote on in a tournament-style contest (you can check out past contests over there as well)! The three winning stories will be purchased at our usual payment rate, USD $0.08 per word, and the stories will be run together as an episode of PodCastle. Note that stories will be published on a members-only section of the forums, so first publication rights will not be expended by participating in the contest. And it’s easy to become a member! In fact, you can head on over to the forums and do that right now. All the pertinent details and rules will be posted under “The Arcade” section of the forums; voting will commence in April!

Check back here on March 1 or follow us on social media for links to our Moksha portal where you can upload your contest entries. Best of luck to everyone participating!

[NOTE: A previous version of this post indicated that we would be purchasing stories for USD $30 each. That has been corrected to $0.08 per word to reflect our increased payment rates.]

The finalists for the 2020 British Fantasy Award have been announced, and PodCastle has been nominated in the Best Audio category!

The nominee list is bursting with incredible talent in every category, including our sister podcast PseudoPod, also in the Audio category, and Escape Artists owner and host extraordinaire Alasdair Stuart, who is nominated in the Non-Fiction category for his newsletter The Full Lid. We consider ourselves honored to appear alongside all of the incredible nominees and would like to extend their deep gratitude to PodCastle’s wonderful listeners, to the Escape Artists group of podcasts, and to the entire PodCastle team, past and present, who work tirelessly to bring you the best of fantasy fiction every week.

Sincerely,

Cherae Clark, Jen Albert, Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali, Setsu Uzume, and Peter Adrian Behravesh

The finalists for the inaugural Ignyte Awards have been announced, and PodCastle has been nominated for this prestigious accolade! Co-editors Cherae Clark and Jen R. Albert, former co-editor and special editions editor Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali, host & assistant editor Setsu Uzumé, and audio producer Peter Adrian Behravesh are finalists in the Best Fiction Podcast category for their work on the podcast. 

The Ignyte Awards both broaden and deepen the genre awards scene, including not only short story, novel, and art categories, but also awards for poetry, middle-grade, podcasts, and others — as well as two separate awards that celebrate contributions to genre in the pursuit of inclusiveness and equity. The Ignyte Awards reflect the business models, values, and imagination of the SFFH field, lighting a path of possibility for both new and veteran creators.

We’re excited to be nominated alongside such an amazing group of diverse creators. FIYAH has created a truly wonderful thing in such a short time frame — and they’ve managed to capture perfectly the variety of perspectives that the genre community has to offer. We are so honored.

We would like to extend our deep gratitude to PodCastle’s wonderful listeners, to the Escape Artists group of podcasts, and to the entire PodCastle team, past and present, who work tirelessly to bring you the best of fantasy fiction every week.

The team joins several other wonderful podcasts on the shortlist: NIGHTLIGHT (Tonia Thompson), LeVar Burton Reads (LeVar Burton), Beneath Ceaseless Skies (Editor Scott H. Andrews), and OBSIDIAN (Co-Creators, Producers, and Writers Adetola Abdulkadir & Safiyah Cheatam).

Nominations were sourced from the Ignyte Awards Committee: 15 BIPOC voters on FIYAHCON staff of varying genders, sexualities, cultures, disabilities, and locations throughout the world. Voting is open to the wider SFF community until September 11, 2020. Visit the convention’s website to vote now!

The winners of the 2019 Ignyte Awards will be announced virtually at FIYAHCON, October 17-18, 2020.

— Cherae Clark, Jen R. Albert, Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali, Setsu Uzumé, and Peter Adrian Behravesh

The dragon is getting stuffed on celebratory cake this week! The British Fantasy Society shortlist has been announced and PodCastle and PseudoPod have both been nominated under the Best Audio category!

Also, Alasdair’s weekly pop culture newsletter, The Full Lid, has gotten a nonfiction nomination, so there’s even more cake.

Please join us in congratulating our hardworking editorial teams on this awesome recognition.

The British Fantasy Awards are presented each year at Fantasycon, which takes place in Glasgow, Scotland from October 18^th – 20^th, 2019.

The Escape Artists Flash Fiction Contest is back for a fifth time, and it’s PodCastle’s turn! The contest will be taking submissions beginning April 15, 2019, and ending on April 30, 2019, at 11:59 p.m. EST. Each author may submit one original fantasy story of 500 words or less. Stories will then be sorted into categories, anonymized, and posted by an administrator on our forums for all to read and vote on in a tournament-style contest!

The three winning stories will be purchased for USD $30 each and run together as an episode of PodCastle. Note that stories will be published on a members-only section of the forums, so first publication rights will not be expended by participating in the contest. And it’s easy to become a member! In fact, you can head on over to the forums and do that right now. All the pertinent details and rules will be posted under “The Arcade” section of the forums; voting will commence May 15, 2019!

Check back here on April 15 or follow us on social media for links to the Submittable portal where you can upload your contest entries. Best of luck to everyone participating!

It’s that time again: awards season has begun! If you’re looking for some awesome fantasy fiction to nominate, here’s a convenient list of PodCastle‘s original, award-eligible short stories from 2018:

“Words Never Lost” by DaVaun Sanders

“Scar Clan” by Carrow Narby

“We Head for the Horizon and Return with Bloodshot Eyes” by Eleanna Castroianni

“My Heart the Bullet in the Chamber” by Stephanie Charette

“Propagating Peonies” by Suzan Palumbo

“Burning Season” by C. L. Clark

“One Day, My Dear, I’ll Shower You with Rubies” by Langley Hyde

“When Shadow Confronts Sun” by Farah Naz Rishi

“The Mooncakes of My Childhood” by Y. M. Pang

“There Is a Season” by Lynne M. MacLean

“Antler, Ash & Onyx” by A. C. MacLachlan

“Hosting the Solstice” by Tim Pratt

“Grounded Women Never Fly” by Stefani Cox

We thank you so much for thinking of us and our authors. We’d be honored if you were to consider any of our originals this year on your ballots. Cheers to the new year!

Jen R. Albert and Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali, PodCastle Co-Editors

The finalists for the Parsec Award have been announced and PodCastle is twice-nominated! Both “A Non-Hero’s Guide to the Road of Monsters” by A. T. Greenblatt, narrated by Mike Flinchum, and “Six Jobs” by Tim Pratt, narrated by Stephanie Malia Morris, made it to the finals in the Best Speculative Fiction Story: Small Cast (Short Form) category. Congratulations and best of luck to all the nominees!