Pornokitsch

The 2014 Kitschies are now open for submissions - if you're a publisher-type, you can learn about what to do here. 

This year's Red and Golden judges are a pretty spectacular lot: Kate Griffin (one of last year's judges), Adam Roberts,  Frances Hardinge (both previous finalists for the Red Tentacle), Kim Curran and Glen Mehn. As always it is a nice range of academics, authors and readers, fantasy, SF, YA and more. Details here. There's a great line-up in the works for the Inky Tentacle as well, which will be announced later.

The prize also has a new Director: Glen Mehn. As well as being a wonderfully enthusiatic genre reader, Glen's a social entrepeneur by trade - his actual profession is making good ideas happen (which makes running The Kitschies a bit of a busman's holiday, I suspect). Glen's been a member of the prize's board for two years and has demonstrated that he is, appropriately enough, incredibly progressive, supremely intelligent and vastly entertaining. The prize is in great - the best - hands. Please wave a tentacle at him at @gmehn and, of course, @thekitschies. 

Anne and I are both immensely proud of The Kitschies. Somehow, over the course of five years, it grew from a silly idea into a good one into a - miraculously - working one. We did a lot right (sometimes intentionally) and a lot wrong (and mostly learned from our mistakes), and, on the whole, we're really  delighted with what the prize accomplished.

The very nature of the award is a progressive one - Anne and I always wanted it to become better every single year. And that means that, unlike our noble squid totem, we've had to learn to let go. Anne had to cease direct involvement with the award when she joined Hodder & Stoughton over two years ago and, after five years with the prize, it is my time to move on as well. Thank you to all the friends, judges, publishers, authors,  bloggers, libraries, booksellers, sponsors and readers that got us this far. Like you, we can't wait to see what happens next.