Convenors' Award for excellence (Aurealis Award)

The Convenors' Award for Excellence is one of the Aurealis Awards presented annually by the Australia-based Chimaera Publications and WASFF to published works in order to "recognise the achievements of Australian science fiction, fantasy, horror writers".[1] The Convenors' Award, awarded at the discretion of the convenors, recognises "a particular achievement in speculative fiction or related areas" that cannot otherwise be judged for the Aurealis Awards, usually because it does not fit into any of the Aurealis categories. Works nominated for the Convenor's Award for Excellence can be non-fiction, artwork, film, television, electronic or multimedia work. The work can be speculative fiction, or a speculative fiction related work "which brings credit or attention to the speculative fiction genres".[2]

Between 2004 and 2012 the award was known as the Peter McNamara Award for Excellence, in honour of the publisher, editor and original convenor of the awards, who died in 2004. It was renamed in 2012 to avoid confusion with the Peter McNamara Achievement Award, presented at the Ditmar Awards ceremony at the Australian National Science Fiction Convention.[2][3]

To qualify, a work must have been first published by an Australian citizen or permanent resident between 1 January and 31 December of the corresponding year;[4] the presentation ceremony is held the following year.

Winners

In the following table, the years correspond to the year of the work's eligibility; the ceremonies are always held the following year. Each year links to the corresponding "year in literature" article.

Year	Winner(s)	Work (when a single work was cited)	Ref
1998	Shaun Tan	artwork in The Rabbits (Lothian)
1999	Terry Dowling	Antique Futures (MP Books)
2000	Paul Collins and Meredith Costain	editing Spinouts: Bronze (Pearson Education)
2000	Shaun Tan	The Lost Thing (Lothian)
2001	Emily Rodda and Marc McBride	The Deltora Quest series (Scholastic)
2001	Emily Rodda and Marc McBride	The Deltora Book of Monsters (Scholastic)
2001	Peter McNamara
2002	Robbie Matthews
2003	Nick Stathopoulos
2004	Cat Sparks
2005	Grant Stone
2006	Bill Congreve
2007	Terry Dowling	Ryneomonn (Coeur de Lion)
2008	Jack Dann
2009	Justin Ackroyd	Slow Glass Books (bookshop)
2010	Helen Merrick
2011	Alisa Krasnostein, Alex Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and producer Andrew Finch	Galactic Suburbia (podcast)
2012	Kate Eltham
2013	Jonathan Strahan
2014	David Ashton, Petra Elliott, Ben McKenzie, John Richards and Lee Zachariah	Night Terrace (audio series)	[5]
2015	Alexandra Pierce and Alisa Krasnostein	Letters to Tiptree (Twelfth Planet Press)	[6]
2016	Kate Forsyth	The Rebirth of Rapunzel: A Mythic Biography of the Maiden in the Tower	[7]
2017	Tansy Rayner Roberts	The Fictional Mother	[8]
2018	Cat Sparks	The 21st Century Catastrophe: Hyper-capitalism and Severe Climate Change in Science Fiction	[9]
2018	Kim Wilkins, Lisa Fletcher, and Beth Driscoll	Genre Worlds: Australian Popular Fiction in the 21st Century	[9]
2019	Jason Nahrung	"Watermarks: Science Fiction, Mitigation and the Mosaic Novel Structure in Australian Climate Fiction"	[10]

References

1. "Aurealis Awards – About Us". Aurealis Awards. Archived from the original on 2009-11-07. Retrieved 2009-11-08.
2. "Aurealis Awards - Rules". Aurealis Awards. Retrieved 2019-09-22.
3. "Peter McNamara Achievement Award". Australian sf information. Retrieved 2019-09-22.
4. "Aurealis Awards – Rules and Conditions". Aurealis Awards. Archived from the original on 2012-05-19. Retrieved 2009-11-08.
5. And the winners are..., WASFF, 2015-04-12, retrieved 2019-09-22
6. ANNOUNCEMENT: 2015 Aurealis Awards Shortlists, WASFF, retrieved 2016-03-14
7. Announcing the Winners of the 2016 Aurealis Awards!, WASFF, 2017-04-14, retrieved 2018-04-01
8. aurealis awards WINNER, WASFF, 2018-03-31, retrieved 2018-04-01
9. 2018 Aurealis Awards Winners, Continuum Foundation, 2019-05-05, retrieved 2019-05-05
10. "Aurealis Awards 2019 winners announced". Books+Publishing. 2020-07-29. Retrieved 2020-08-03.