Kitschies

The Kitschies were British literary prizes presented annually from 2009 to 2024^[1] for "the year's most progressive, intelligent and entertaining works that contain elements of the speculative or fantastic" published in the United Kingdom.^[2] The awards discontinued after November 2024 when the final winners were announced.

Kitschies
Awarded for	Literary award
Country	United Kingdom
First award	2009
Final award	2024
Website	www.thekitschies.com

Awards and criteria

The Kitschies were administered by a non-profit association with the stated mission of "encouraging and elevating the tone of the discussion of genre literature in its many forms".^[3] The founders, Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin, said that they sought to bring attention to works with a fantastic or speculative element that were progressive in terms of content and composition.^[2]

The award was a juried prize that selected the books which "best elevate the tone of genre literature." Qualifying books needed to contain "an element of the fantastic or speculative" and have been published in the UK.^[4] Winners received prize money and a textile tentacle trophy.^[2]

The Kitschies were initially established in 2009 by the website pornokitsch.com. The Kraken Rum was the sponsor between 2010 and 2013. For 2014 and 2015, Fallen London (a creation of UK game developer Failbetter Games) was the sponsor. The award did not run in 2016.^[5] From 2017 the sponsor was Blackwell's Bookshop.^[6]

For the last ten or eleven years of operation, the Kitschies were awarded in five categories:

• Red Tentacle for the best novel (£1,000, since 2009)
• Golden Tentacle for the best debut novel (£500, since 2010)
• Inky Tentacle for the best cover art (£500, since 2011)
• Invisible Tentacle for the best natively digital fiction (since 2014)
• Glentacle, awarded at the judges' discretion (since 2010, called "Black Tentacle" until 2020)

Organisation

The judging panel changes annually^[7] and the unpaid directors have changed due to workload or illness.^[8] The number of submissions increased from 70 in 2009 to 234 in 2013.^[9]

For each year, the judges, directors, and the number of submissions for each year were as follows:

Year	Literary	Art	Natively digital fiction	Award Directors	Submissions
2009	Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin	N/A	N/A	Jared Shurin and Anne C. Perry	70[10]
2010	Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin	N/A	N/A	Jared Shurin and Anne C. Perry	50[11]
2011	Anne C. Perry, Jared Shurin, Lauren Beukes, and Rebecca Levene	Hayley Campbell, Craig Kennedy, Catherine Hemelryk, and Darren Banks	N/A	Jared Shurin	150[12]
2012	Jared Shurin, Rebecca Levene, and Patrick Ness	Lauren O'Farrell, Gary Northfield, and Ed Warren	N/A	Jared Shurin	211[13]
2013	Nick Harkaway, Catherine Webb, Will Hill, Anab Jain, and Annabelle Wright	Hazel Thompson, Sarah Anne Langton, Emma Vieceli, and Craig Kennedy	N/A	Glen Mehn	234[14]
2014	Catherine Webb, Adam Roberts, Kim Curran, Frances Hardinge, and Glen Mehn	Ed Warren, Dapo Adeola, Jim Kay, and Siân Prime	Laura Grace, James Wallis, Phil van Kemenade, and Clwere Reddington	Glen Mehn	198[15]
2015[16]	Sarah Lotz, James Smythe, Nazia Khatun, Nikesh Shukla and Glen Mehn	Sarah McIntyre, Regan Warner, Dapo Adeola, and Lauren O'Farrell	John Wallis, Emily Short, and Rebecca Levene	Glen Mehn	176[17]
2016	No award
2017[18]	Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Leila Abu El Hawa, Joshua Idehen, Alasdair Stuart, and Ewa Scibor-Rylska	Dapo Adeola, Sharan Dhaliwal, Jet Purdie, and Stuart Taylor	N/A	Glen Mehn and Leila Abu El Hawa	142[19]
2018[20]	Adam Roberts, Sharan Dhaliwal, Daniel Carpenter, Lucy Smee, and Matt Webb	Dapo Adeola, Lily Ash Sakula, and Maeve Rutten	N/A	Glen Mehn and Leila Abu El Hawa	178[21]
2019[22]	Catherine Webb, Kirsty Logan, Tasha Suri, Michaela Grey, and Alasdair Stuart	Kim Curran, James Spackman, Kaiya Shang, and Sharan Matharu	N/A	Leila Abu El Hawa and Anne Perry	196[23]
2020[24]	M. R. Carey, Clwere Rees, Mahvesh Murad, Kaiya Shang, and Daphne Lao Tong	Paul Wiseall, Fleur Clarke, Claire Richardson, and Jeffrey Alan Love	N/A	Leila Abu El Hawa and Anne Perry	177[25]

Recipients

All award information, unless otherwise referenced, is from the Kitschies Award's blog and tumblr, or from the sponsor Blackwell's website.

Red Tentacle (best novel)

Red Tentacle winners and finalists

Year	Author	Nominated Work	Result	Ref
2009	China Miéville	The City & the City	Won	[26]
	Joe Abercrombie	Best Served Cold	Nominated	[26]
	Jane Austen (posth.) and Seth Grahame-Smith	Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
	Lev Grossman	The Magicians
	Reif Larsen	The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet
2010	Lauren Beukes	Zoo City	Won	[27]
	Scott K. Andrews	Children's Crusade	Nominated	[27]
	China Miéville	Kraken
	K. J. Parker	The Folding Knife
	Jean-Christophe Valtat	Aurorarama
2011	Siobhan Dowd and Patrick Ness	A Monster Calls	Won	[28]
	Jesse Bullington	The Enterprise of Death	Nominated	[28]
	China Miéville	Embassytown
	Jane Rogers	The Testament of Jessie Lamb
	Lavie Tidhar	Osama
2012	Nick Harkaway	Angelmaker	Won	[29]
	Jesse Bullington	The Folly of the World	Nominated	[29]
	Frances Hardinge	A Face Like Glass
	Adam Roberts	Jack Glass
	Juli Zeh	The Method
2013	Ruth Ozeki	A Tale for the Time Being	Won	[30]
	Anne Carson	Red Doc	Nominated	[30]
	Patrick Ness	More Than This
	Thomas Pynchon	Bleeding Edge
	James Smythe	The Machine
2014	Andrew Smith	Grasshopper Jungle	Won	[31]
	Nina Allan	The Race	Nominated	[31]
	William Gibson	The Peripheral
	Nnedi Okorafor	Lagoon
	Will Wiles	The Way Inn
2015	Margaret Atwood	The Heart Goes Last	Won	[32]
	Dave Hutchinson	Europe at Midnight	Nominated	[32]
	N. K. Jemisin	The Fifth Season
	Adam Roberts	The Thing Itself
	Hugo Wilcken	The Reflection
2016	No awards held			[33]
2017	Nina Allan	The Rift	Won	[34]
	Deon Meyer, translated by L. Seegers	Fever	Nominated	[34]
	Jess Richards	City of Circles
	William Sutcliffe	We See Everything
	Michelle Tea	Black Wave
2018	Madeline Miller	Circe	Won	[35]
	Becky Chambers	Record of a Spaceborn Few	Nominated	[35]
	Simon Ings	The Smoke
	Tade Thompson	Rosewater
	Lavie Tidhar	Unholy Land
2019	Jan Carson	The Fire Starters	Won	[36]
	Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone	This Is How You Lose the Time War	Nominated	[36]
	Vicki Jarrett	Always North
	Yōko Ogawa	The Memory Police
	Jane Rawson	From the Wreck
2020	Susanna Clarke	Piranesi	Won	[37]
	Curdella Forbes	A Tall History of Sugar	Nominated	[37]
	N. K. Jemisin	The City We Became
	Natasha Pulley	The Lost Future of Pepperharrow
	Kim Stanley Robinson	The Ministry for the Future
2021	No awards held
2022	Becky Chambers	The Galaxy, and the Ground Within	Won	[38]
	Zen Cho	Black Water Sister	Nominated	[38]
	Un-su Kim, trans. by Sean Lin Halbert	The Cabinet
	Adrian Tchaikovsky	Bear Head
	Catriona Ward	The Last House on Needless Street
2023	W. P. Wiles	The Last Blade Priest	Won	[39]
	Paul McAuley	Beyond the Burn Line	Nominated	[39]
	E. J. Swift	The Coral Bones
	Mariana Enriquez translated by Megan McDowell	Our Share of Night
	Emily McGovern	Twelve Percent Dread
2024	Sandra Newman	Julia	Won	[40]
	Martin MacInnes	In Ascension	Nominated	[40]
	M. R. Carey	Infinity Gate
	Julianne Pachico	Jungle House
	Banana Yoshimoto	The Premonition

Golden Tentacle (best debut novel)

Year	Author	Nominated Work	Result	Ref
2009	Not awarded			[26]
2010	Maurice Broaddus	King Maker	Won	[27]
2011	Kameron Hurley	God's War	Won	[28]
	Douglas Hulick	Among Thieves	Nominated	[28]
	Erin Morgenstern	The Night Circus
	Ransom Riggs	Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
	Fred Venturini	The Samaritan
2012	Karen Lord	Redemption in Indigo	Won	[29]
	Madeline Ashby	vN	Nominated	[29]
	Jenni Fagan	Panopticon
	Rachel Hartman	Seraphina
	Tom Pollock	The City's Son
2013	Ann Leckie	Ancillary Justice	Won	[30]
	Anne Charnock	A Calculated Life	Nominated	[30]
	Monica Hesse	Stray
	Ramez Naam	Nexus
	Robin Sloan	Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
2014	Hermione Eyre	Viper Wine	Won	[31]
	Monica Byrne	The Girl in the Road	Nominated	[31]
	Becky Chambers	The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
	Emmi Itäranta	Memory of Water
	Hanya Yanagihara	The People in the Trees
2015	Tade Thompson	Making Wolf	Won	[32]
	A. Igoni Barrett	Blackass	Nominated	[32]
	Kirsty Logan	The Gracekeepers
	Paul Meloy	The Night Clock
	Sara Taylor	The Shore
2016	No awards held
2017	Alex Wells	Hunger Makes the Wolf	Won	[34]
	RJ Barker	Age of Assassins	Nominated	[34]
	Carmen Marcus	How Saints Die
	JY Yang	The Black Tides of Heaven
	Liz Ziemska	Mandelbrot the Magnificent
2018	Ahmed Saadawi	Frankenstein in Baghdad	Won	[35]
	Tomi Adeyemi	Children Of Blood and Bone	Nominated	[35]
	Sue Burke	Semiosis
	R. F. Kuang	The Poppy War
	Rebecca Ley	Sweet Fruit, Sour Land
2019	Clare Rees	Jelly	Won	[36]
	Katie Hale	My Name Is Monster	Nominated	[36]
	Wayétu Moore	She Would Be King
	Alix E. Harrow	The Ten Thousand Doors of January
	Rory Power	Wilder Girls
2020	Micaiah Johnson	The Space Between Worlds	Won	[37]
	Kawai Strong Washburn	Sharks in the Time of Saviours	Nominated	[37]
	Laura Jean McKay	The Animals in That Country
	Deepa Anappara	Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line
	Jordan Ifueko	Raybearer
2021	No awards held
2022	Hilary Leichter	Temporary	Won	[38]
	Caroline Hardaker	Composite Creatures	Nominated	[38]
	Calvin Kasulke	Several People Are Typing
	Everina Maxwell	Winter's Orbit
	Xiran Jay Zhao	Iron Widow
2023	Julia Armfield	Our Wives Under the Sea	Won	[39]
	Zain Khalid	Brother Alive	Nominated	[39]
	Vauhini Vara	The Immortal King Rao
	Ray Nayler	The Mountain in the Sea
	Ayanna Lloyd Banwo	When We Were Birds
2024	Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi	The Centre	Won	[40]
	Aubrey Wood	Bang Bang Bodhisattva	Nominated	[40]
	Katy Hays	The Cloisters
	Emily Habeck	Shark Heart
	Deena Mohamed	Your Wish Is My Command

Inky Tentacle (best cover art)

Year	Work	Author	Artist(s)	Result	Ref
2009			Not awarded		[26]
2010			Not awarded		[27]
2011	The Last Werewolf	Glen Duncan	Peter Mendelsund (designer)	Won	[28]
	Rivers of London	Ben Aaronovitch	Stephen Walter (illus.) and Patrick Knowles (design)	Nominated	[28]
	The Prague Cemetery	Umberto Eco	Suzanne Dean (design) and John Spencer (illus.)
	Equations of Life	Simon Morden	Lauren Panepinto (design)
	A Monster Calls	Patrick Ness and Siobhan Dowd	Jim Kay (illus.)
2012	A Boy and a Bear in a Boat	Dave Shelton	Dave Shelton (illus.)	Won	[29]
	The Teleportation Accident	Ned Beauman	La Boca (design)	Nominated	[29]
	The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket	John Boyne	Oliver Jeffers (illus.)
	Costume Not Included	Matthew Hughes	Tom Gauld (illus.)
	Flame Alphabet	Ben Marcus	Peter Mendelsund (design)
2013	The Age Atomic	Adam Christopher	Will Staehle (art)	Won	[30]
	Dreams and Shadows	C. Robert Cargill	Sinem Erkas (design and illus.)	Nominated	[30]
	Homeland and Pirate Cinema	Cory Doctorow	Amazing15 (design)
	Stray	Monica Hesse	Gianmarco Magnani (art)
	Apocalypse Now Now	Charlie Human	Joey Hi-Fi (art)
2014	Tigerman	Nick Harkaway	Glenn O'Neill (cover)	Won	[31]
	The Ghost of the Mary Celeste	Valerie Martin	Steve Marking (design)	Nominated	[31]
	A Man Lies Dreaming	Lavie Tidhar	Ben Summers (cover)
	Through the Woods	Emily Carroll	Emily Carroll and Sonja Chaghatzbanian (cover)
	The Book of Strange New Things	Michel Faber	Rafaela Romaya and Yehring Tong (cover)
2015	The Door That Led to Where	Sally Gardner	Jet Purdie (art direction and design)	Won	[32]
	The Vorrh	Brian Catling	Pablo Declan (design)	Nominated	[32]
	Monsters	Emerald Fennell	Jet Purdie (art design) and Patrick Leger (illus.)
	The Honours	Tim Clare	Peter Adlington (design and illus.)
	Get in Trouble	Kelly Link	Alex Merto
2016	No awards held
2017	The History of Bees	Maja Lunde	Jack Smyth and the Simon & Schuster Art Department (cover)	Won	[34]
	The Land of Neverendings	Kate Saunders	David Dean (illus.)	Nominated	[34]
	Black Wave	Michelle Tea	Rose Stafford (illus.) and Hannah Naughton (design)
	The Real-Town Murders	Adam Roberts	Black Sheep (illus. and jacket design)
	Our Memory like Dust	Gavin Chait	Richard Shailer (design)
2018	Killing Commendatore	Haruki Murakami	Suzanne Dean (cover)	Won	[35]
	The Book of Joan	Lidia Yuknavitch	Rafaela Romaya (design)	Nominated	[35]
	The Smoke	Simon Ings	James Nunn (design)
	Squwere Eyes	Anna Mill and Luke Jones	Anna Mill and Luke Jones (design)
	Slender Man	Anonymous	Mike Topping (design)
2019	The Memory Police	Yoko Ogawa	Tyler Comrie (cover)	Won	[36]
	Across The Void	S. K. Vaughan	Ceara Elliot (cover)	Nominated	[36]
	The Heavens	Sandra Newman	Leo Nickolls (cover)
	Zed	Joanna Kavenna	Faber & Faber (cover)
	This Is How You Lose the Time War	Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone	Greg Stadnyk (cover)
2020	The Arrest	Jonathan Lethem	Allison Saltzman (cover) and Dexter Maurer (illus.)	Won	[37]
	Little Eyes	Samantha Schweblin	Ben Summers (cover)	Nominated	[37]
	Monstrous Heart	Clair McKenna	Andrew Davis (cover)
	The Harpy	Megan Hunter	Lucy Scholes (cover) and Amy Judd (illus.)
	The City We Became	N. K. Jemisin	Lauren Panepinto (cover)
2021	No awards held
2022	The Seep	Chana Porter	Julia Lloyd (art and design)	Won	[38]
	Nightbitch	Rachel Yoder	Suzanne Dean	Nominated	[38]
	Velvet Was the Night	Silvia Moreno-Garcia	Tim Green
	A Desolation Called Peace	Arkady Martine	Jaime Jones
	Iron Widow	Xiran Jay Zhao	Ashley Mackenzie
2023	Paper Crusade	Michelle Penn	Klara Smith	Won	[39]
	Celestial	M. D. Lachlan	Nick Shah, Tomas Almeida, Joanna Ridley & Helen Ewing	Nominated	[39]
	Motherthing	Ainslie Hogarth	Mark Abrams
	Poster Girl	Veronica Roth	Lydia Blagden
	The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida	Shehan Karunatilaka	Peter Dyer
2024	Out There Screaming	Jordan Peele & John Joseph Adams	Janay Nachel Frazier, Stuart Wilson & Arnold J. Kemp	Won	[40]
	Julia	Sandra Newman	Luke Bird	Nominated	[40]
	Lioness	[[Emily Perkins (novelist)|Emily Perkins]]	Greg Heinimann Design
	Remember, Mr Sharma	A. P. Firdaus	Nathan Burton
	The Vegan	Andrew Lipstein	Cecilia R. Zhang

Invisible Tentacle (best natively digital fiction)

Year	Author / Developer	Nominated Work	Form of Media	Result	Ref
2014	Cardboard Computer written by Jake Elliott	Kentucky Route Zero Act III	video game	Won	[31]
	Jeff Noon and others	@echovirus12	Twitter fiction	Nominated	[31]
	Inkle Studios written by Meg Jayanth and Jon Ingold, directed by Joseph Humfrey and Jon Ingold	80 Days	video game
	Simogo	Sailor’s Dream	video game
2015	Dontnod Entertainment	Life Is Strange	video game	Won	[32]
	Iain Pears	Arcadia	interactive novel	Nominated	[32]
	@FrogCroakley	Daniel Barker’s Birthday	Twitter fiction
	BBC Writers Room	The Last Hours of Laura K
	Hidetaka Miyazaki / FromSoftware	Bloodborne	video game

Glentacle (Discretionary award previously called the Black Tentacle)

This award was called "Black Tentacle" until 2020, when it was renamed in memory of Kitschies co-founder Glen Mehn.^[41][8]

Year	Winner	Citation
2009	No award	[26]
2010	Memory, novel by Donald Westlake.	"to recognize a novel that doesn't quite fit the award description but is so exceptional it merits the highest praise...noir, pure and simple, by a master of the genre … while we're sorry that Memory went unpublished while Westlake was alive, we're delighted that Hard Case brought the manuscript to light"[42]
2011	SelfMadeHero, comics publisher	"for their 2011 body of work and their contribution to elevating geek culture"[43]
2012	Lavie Tidhar, Charles Tan, and Sarah Newton	"for the World SF Blog, a website showcasing international speculative fiction"[44]
2013	Malorie Blackman, British writer, Children's Laureate for 2013	"for outstanding achievement in encouraging and elevating the conversation around genre literature"[45][46]
2014	Sarah McIntyre, author and illustrator	"for tireless work to promote the rights of artists and to encourage others to value their work"[47]
2015	The genre community, personified by Patrick Ness	"for its response to the humanitarian refugee crisis" Ness began a fund that raised over £690,000 for Save the Children[48][49]
2016	No awards held
2017	No award
2018
2019	Nazia Khatun, Claire North, and Leila Abu El Hawa	"for services to the SF/F community."[50]
2020	Simon Key of the Big Green Bookshop in Hastings	"demonstrated extraordinary generosity and selflessness to readers, introducing and running his "Buy a Stranger a Book" initiative every Wednesday to allow readers to access books at a time that even libraries were closed."[51][52]
2021	No awards held
2022	Comma Press	"for their remarkable 'book of' and +100 series of anthologies"