Dwarf Stars Award

The Dwarf Stars Award is an annual award presented by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association to the author of the best horror, fantasy, or science fiction poem of ten lines or fewer published in the previous year. The award was established in 2006 as a counterpoint to the Rhysling Award, which is given by the same organization to horror, fantasy, or science fiction poems of any length. Poems are submitted to the association by the poets, from which approximately 30 are chosen by an editor to be published in an anthology each fall. Members of the association then vote on the published poems, and first through third-place winners are announced. The 2006 anthology was edited by Deborah P. Kolodji, and subsequent anthologies have been edited by an array of editors, including Kolodji, Stephen M. Wilson, Joshua Gage, Geoffrey A. Landis, Linda D. Addison, Sandra J. Lindow, John Amen, Jeannine Hall Gailey, and Lesley Wheeler.

During the 18 nomination years, 60 poems by 45 poets have been selected as third place or better, of which 20 poets have won outright. This includes two-way ties for first place in 2022 and 2023, a three-way tie for second in 2016, a two-way tie for third place in 2018, and a three-way tie for third in 2023. Jane Yolen has been noted four times, a first and a third place and two second-place results; Kolodji, Julie Bloss Kelsey and LeRoy Gorman have each received a first and a second place; Greg Beatty a first and a third place; Sonya Taaffe has received two second-place results; Sandi Leibowitz and F. J. Bergmann have each received a second and a third-place result; and Ann K. Schwader and Sandra J. Lindow have each received two third-place results.