After checking and double checking, we now have our finalists for the 2019 Paula Wilshe and Marian Kelly awards. We appreciate all your nominations. It’s wonderful to see such a large number and diversity of creations in Starsky & Hutch.
In some categories–The Paula Wilshe Award for New Writers, the Marian Kelly Award for Best Artist, and the MK Award for Best Vidder–the finalists were the entire slate of nominees. In other categories, we had distinct finalists: the MK Best Writer finalists are the top 10, the MK Best Art is the top 11, and the MK Best Vid is the top 13.
However, the most complicated category was the MK Award for Best Writing. There were 68 nominees, the largest field we’ve ever had; it’s an amazing rec list. As nominations kept coming in, we realized we would have no clear finalists. Additionally, we’ve heard concerns that short writing nominees are at a disadvantage when competing with long works. So, we decided to divide the entire list of nominees according to their word counts.
We now have 5 categories for Best Writing: works up to 7,500 words; 7,501 to 15,000 words; 15,001 to 40,000 words; 40,001 to 80,000 words; and works over 80,000 words. So instead of trying to figure out which of 68 works you want to cast one vote for, you now get to vote in each category. Five separate votes for Best Writing. This is a new experiment for us. We hope it works!
Congratulations to all the nominees and finalists.
A few more things about the voting process. You can vote in as few or as many categories as you like. When you’ve voted in every category you’re interested in, you must click on SUBMIT at the end of the survey to register your vote. Once you click on SUBMIT you are done; you cannot change your vote or vote again. If two days later you decide you should’ve voted for a different creator or creation, it’s too late.
The SHareCon website has links to all the finalists and their works. You can read and contemplate, view and review, watch and ponder, then vote and submit. As always, please shout out with any questions and the awards committee will be happy to help.
Click here to vote for the 2019 Paula Wilshe and Marian Kelly awards. Voting is open from July 27th through 9pm EDT August 25th.
Thank you!