The 2021 Nero Award, given for "the best American Mystery written in the tradition of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe stories," has been won by Stephen Spotswood for Fortune Favors the Dead (Doubleday).
The Black Orchid Novella Award, presented jointly by the Wolfe Pack and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and honoring the novella format popularized by Rex Stout, has been won by Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson for "The Man Who Went Down Under." The novella will be published in the July 2022 issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.
Honorable mentions for the Black Orchid Novella Award went to:
"Bad Apples" by Kathleen Marple Kalb (writing as Nikki Knight)
"The Inside Shake" by Jason Koontz
"House of Tigers" by William Burton McCormick
"The Mystery of the Missing Woman" by Regina M. Sestak
"Lovely As" by Jacqueline Vick
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The Speculative Literature Foundation has announced:
S. Qiouyi Lu has won the 2021 Diverse Writers Grant for "Razing Babel." Judges said, "The second person point of view is really effective in putting you in the narrator's mindframe... this is a really cool concept and great writing."
Elena Pavlova has won the 2021 Diverse Worlds Grant for "The Life and Adventures of Hillmeria Cat." Judges called the submission "strange and beautiful."