After 24 years, Strange Horizons won a Hugo!
We’ve been nominated so many times to the point that its felt like a joke, like something we can’t achieve, we’d never receive. We don’t do a lot of promotion for awards because it’s not really our style. But after 24 years, it finally happened. The team and all its work over the decades was recognized by one of the biggest awards in the speculative fiction field. I’m astounded I’m able to be on the team, working as a senior editor when this big event happened.
I ordered a trophy to add to my growing collection. I can’t wait to put it somewhere in my apartment. I’m thinking on a bookshelf or make my own award shelf for the Hugo trophy and Ignyte medallions.
It was funny. When I heard the news of Strange Horizons winning a Hugo, I was resting from getting my Ignyte nom tattoo for best critic. In honor of my love of books and for their seductive and destructive nature, I got a tattoo that is best described as an open book vagina dentata.
Last year was the first year I ever was nominated for an award and I hope that I’m able to keep my skills, heart, and thoughts in the right place to continue earning these nominations and wins. When I first found out about my Ignyte nom this year, I won’t lie, I felt weird. It felt like I didn’t deserve it. I shared my feelings with my grad school teacher, Moriel, and he gave me some great insight about award noms. He said that we as artists and authors should see them less as marker of our worth or skill as a writer and more as an opportunity to try something different.
And that’s what I want to do with, not just my critical writing, but all my writing.
Aigner Loren Wilson 