Meghan Sinoff, the winner of this year’s Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing did not have to travel far to get to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in order to receive accolades for her story, “Shift.” Meghan is an undergraduate at the University of Florida majoring in English and minoring in lingustics, anthropology, and Japanese. In addition to her award certificate, she received five hundred dollars from Dell Magazines. Her moving story will appear on our website next year.

Dell Magazines co-sponsors this award with the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. The Dell Magazines Award is also supported by the School of Mass Comunications, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida. The award is given out every March at the Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts.

Meeting and talking with Meghan was a delight. I was also pleased to discover that the other finalists wore familiar faces. As always, I had chosen my favorite stories from a blind read of the contestants. As first runner up, Eliza Blair repeated her performance from last year. This year, Eliza took home that certificate for her story “Silver Eyes.” In addition, she picked up an honorable mention for “Beast.” Both tales took inspiration from the same well-known fairytale, but when I read them, I had no idea they were by the same author. Eliza has a double major in physics and English at Swathmore College. As the most recent recipient of Swathmore’s Morrell-Potter stipend for creative writing, she plans to spend this summer working on writing projects. We hope to see some of the results in next year’s contest. Eliza also wins a two-year subscription to Asimov’s, but that subscription will have to follow upon the two-year subscription she won last year.

Our second runner-up, Catherine Krahe, received her award and a one-year subscription to Asimov’s for “Running After the Sirens.” Cassie, a physics student at Illinois Wesleyan, will embark on a Ph.D. in environmental engineering in the fall. Last year, Cassie’s memorable tale about “Undine” received an honorable mention. It has since sold to Realms of Fantasy.

In addition to all these exciting student awards, I was pleased to see my co-judge, Rick Wilber, receive the Stephen R. Donaldson Service Award for all the effort he’s put into making our award a reality these past thirteen years.

When I wasn’t busy meeting with the students; having drinks by the pool with authors like Anne Harris, Peter Straub, Ellen Klages, Stephen R. Donaldson, and Eileen Gunn, as well as Emerald City web and fanzine maven Cheryl Morgan and former Foundation editor Farah Mendelsohn; eating ice cream with James Patrick Kelly, Ted Chiang, and Tachyon publisher Jacob Wiesman; talking with Brian W. Aldiss, Judith Berman, John Clute, Andy Duncan, Elizabeth Hand, and Mary Turzillo; dining with Joe and Gay Haldeman and well-known SF fan and historical repository Rusty Hevelin or with David Lunde and Patricia McKillip, I attended some terrific author readings by Kathleen Ann Goonan, Steven Erikson, and Mary Anne Mohanraj. Unfortunately, scheduling conflicts kept me from many other worthy readings, but I didn’t feel too guilty about skipping John Kessel’s because the story he read, “Sunlight or Rock,” will be appearing in our September issue.

We are actively looking for next year’s winner. The deadline for submissions is Monday, January 2, 2007. All full-time undergraduate students at any accredited university or college are eligible. Stories must be in English, and should run from 1,000 to 10,000 words. No submission can be returned, and all stories must be previously unpublished and unsold. There is a $10 entry fee, with up to three stories accepted for each fee paid. A special flat fee of $25 is available for an entire classroom of writers. Instructors should send all the submissions in one or more clearly labeled envelopes with a check or money order. Checks should be made out to the Dell Magazines Award. There is no limit to the number of submissions from each writer. Each submission must include the writer’s name, address, phone number, and college or university on the cover sheet, but please do not put your name on the actual story.

Before entering the contest, contact Rick Wilber for more information, rules, and manuscript guidelines. He can be reached care of:

Dell Magazines Award

School of Mass Communications

University of South Florida

Tampa, Florida 33620

Rwilber@cas.usf.edu

Next year’s winner will be announced at the 2007 Conference on the Fantastic, in the pages of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine, and on our website.