(updated 11/11/2024)
2025 Derringer Awards
Coordinator: Paula Messina
2025 Derringer Awards Assistant Coordinator: Mark Schuster
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ABOUT THE DERRINGERS
Since 1998, the Short Mystery
Fiction Society has awarded the annual Derringers—named after the popular
pocket pistol—to outstanding published stories and individuals / persons /
writers who have greatly advanced or supported the form.
As of 2004, an annually-elected Coordinator
administers the Derringer Awards process. Detailed below, the process runs
January 1–April 30 and recognizes stories published the previous year.
The current regular Derringer Awards are:
· Best
Flash Story (Up to 1,000 words)
· Best
Short Story (1,001 to 4,000 words)
· Best
Long Story (4,001 to 8,000 words)
· Best
Novelette (8,001 to 20,000 words)
As of 2009, a committee of the sitting SMFS
Officers, Derringer Coordinator, and two regular members selects a living
writer whose outstanding body of short fiction merits the Society's Edward
D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer for Lifetime Achievement.
The winning short stories are
announced on May 1. Winners receive medals that are presented during
Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention. To donate toward the cost of the
medals, contact the Derringer Coordinator.
SUBMISSIONS (January 1–30, 2025)
Who may submit?
With the exceptions of the Society President and
Vice President, who have neither authority over the Derringer process nor
Derringer eligibility, and the Awards Coordinator and Assistant Coordinator,
who have authority over the Derringer process but no Derringer eligibility,
Members who joined the society no later
than December 31, 2024 may submit eligible stories written by anyone, including
themselves
and
Editors of venues featuring mystery or crime
short stories may submit eligible stories published in those venues.
Story eligibility
To be considered for the 2025 Derringer Awards, a submission must be:
a) a mystery or crime story up
to 20,000 words, and
b) originally published in 2024 in English,
c) published in a single publication,
periodical, collection, or anthology, and
d)
available in print and/or electronic form.
e) The submission may originate from any country
or location.
Publication Date:
A story’s eligibility is determined by the
venue’s cover or front page date, which must be no later than December 31,
2024.
In the case of self-published stories, a
publishing platform, such as Amazon Kindle, must be used to establish story
availability, and it must have a publication date stamp. Stories appearing on a
website must have a visible first publication date to be considered.
Submission Limits
Any member who joins
SMFS by December 31, 2024, may submit up to TWO (2) eligible stories in any
combination of standard publication or self-publication.
Editors may submit as
follows:
THREE (3) editorial
submissions from venues that published fewer than 25 eligible stories during
the year;
FOUR (4) editorial submissions from venues that published 26–50 eligible
stories during the year;
FIVE (5) editorial submissions from venues that published 51–75 eligible
stories during the year;
SIX (6) editorial submissions from
venues that published more than 75 stories during the year.
For multi-editor venues, the editors split the number of
submissions determined above.
(e.g. 4 editorial
submissions are allowed from a four-editor venue featuring 26 eligible stories.
If one editor submits 4 stories, the other three editors may not submit any.)
Editors of multiple
venues:
THREE (3) editorial
submissions are allowed if they edited a total up to 25 eligible stories;
FOUR (4) editorial submissions are allowed if they edited a total of 26–50
eligible stories;
FIVE (5) editorial submissions are allowed if they edited a total of 51–75
eligible stories;
SIX (6) editorial submissions are allowed if they edited a total of more than
75 stories.
The number of submissions allowed from any one venue is bound by the venue's
total eligible stories.
(E.g. An editor who worked on 100 stories across 5 venues would be allowed 6
total submissions. If one of the venues featured only ten stories, the editor
could submit 3 from it, but then would have only 3 submissions left to split
among 90 stories and 4 venues.)
· Editors
who became members of the Society by December 31, 2024,
may submit, in addition to their editorial submissions, two eligible stories
from venues other than their own.
If an editor is
responsible for a publication containing stories they wrote, that editor may
submit only up to TWO (2) of their own stories.
An editor may decide not
to submit his/her venue's stories. S/he cannot prevent other members of the Society from
submitting them UNLESS s/he acquired controlling rights over the stories.
Format and Address
Submissions that do not adhere to the rules will
be rejected. Time permitting, an effort
will be made by Derringer officials to notify submitters of the rejection and
permit resubmission under the rules.
However, this is not guaranteed, particularly in the closing days of the
submission period.
The 2025 Derringer competition uses William
Shunn's industry-standard layout linked
to below, except that the manuscript should:
(a.) use
12-point Times New Roman font,
(b.) be in .doc or .docx file
type, and
(c.) the personal contact information
normally included at top left of page one must be omitted.
William Shunn's short-story formatting page can
be found here. Remember, the personal
contact information at top left must not be included. If included, the
manuscript will be rejected.
Please include the number of words in your
submission as shown in the format.
You MUST remove all of your personal
information from the manuscripts. This
includes, for example, the information everywhere within the body of the
document, in the header or footer, or in the document’s properties.
Removing the information about the author is the submitter’s responsibility and
failure to do so, or to follow the other formatting guidelines outlined here,
will result in the story being removed from consideration.
When submitting your stories, please include
"[Derringers (+category)]" and the story’s title in the subject line. This will make it easy to spot your submission
so that nothing is lost. Example: [Derringers Flash] The Case of the
Sample Title.
Submitters must include the following information in the body of the
submission email:
·
the author’s contact
information;
·
whether you are
submitting as SMFS member, publication editor, or both;
·
the story title,
author's name or pseudonym used for the story;
·
the story’s 2024 publication date as well as where
and when the story was originally published; and
·
the URL to the published
story if applicable.
Again, failure to include any of this
information will result in the story being removed from consideration.
Send stories and questions to derringerawards.2025@gmail.com.
Anyone submitting someone else's work must have and is presumed to have
acquired the proper permissions from the author. By submitting someone else's
work, a submitter assumes responsibility for having the proper permissions.
The Coordinator posts updates of the stories received throughout the January
submission period. This avoids duplicate submissions and serves to check that
stories submitted are received. If any story submitted does not appear in an
update and has met the listed eligibility requirements, follow up with the
Coordinator at derringerawards.2025@gmail.com.
All submissions must be received by midnight (Eastern time) January 30, 2025.
January 31 will be used to prep submissions to be sent to the judges.
JUDGING (February 1–March 30, 2025)
The Coordinator assigns eligible submissions to award categories by length:
·
Best
Flash Story (Up to 1,000
words)
·
Best
Short Story (1,001 to 4,000
words)
·
Best
Long Story (4,001 to 8,000
words)
·
Best
Novelette (8,001 to 20,000
words)
Each category requires three
primary and one alternate SMFS members to judge the category down to five
finalists. To protect their identities and the privacy of the judging process,
members sign up to judge by contacting the coordinator directly by
December 31, 2024.
Volunteers may specify which
category they wish to judge, subject to availability, but they cannot judge
categories including stories they wrote or published as an editor. The
Coordinator keeps this in mind when assigning judges, but any
erroneously-assigned judges should inform the Coordinator, who decides how to
rectify the error.
Before sending the Derringer submissions to the
judges, the Coordinator ensures the manuscripts show neither the author's name
nor the details of publication. This is not to mandate blind judging, but to
encourage open-minded judging. Judges may recognize authors and publication
details but are nevertheless expected to score all stories in their rightfully
assigned categories regardless.
If the load of stories appears
to be a problem, the Coordinator has the discretion to make adjustments (i.e. number
of stories, number of judges, schedule, etc.) to make the competition work
smoothly.
SCORING
The Scoring Guidelines below have been used for
over a decade to provide a measure of commonality among different judges'
approaches. They are not litmus tests to be applied in a cookie-cutter manner
by all judges to all submissions, but are rather a source for general areas of
consideration that can be used to the extent considered appropriate in
conjunction with a judge's individual experience, acumen, and skills.
Using the Scoring Guidelines below as desired, each judge rates
each of the four larger general areas of:
1. OVERALL WRITING
2. CHARACTERS
3. PLOT
4. OVERALL FEELING.
A judge assigns each of these areas a score of 1 to 10. The judge should note
these individual scores but need not formally record them. The judge then adds
the four individual areas' scores together to arrive at a cumulative score of 4
- 40. For each submission, each judge in the category reports this single,
cumulative score on the scoring sheet provided by the Derringer Coordinator.
If, at any point during the reading of any entry, a judge concludes that the
impression formed thus far is final and without reasonable expectation of
change regardless of what remains to be read and evaluated, the judge is not
bound to continue reading that entry.
SCORING GUIDELINES
1. OVERALL WRITING
·
How well does the
writing grab and hold your attention?
·
Do the prose style and
dialogue serve the story well?
·
Does the story's setting
or overall atmosphere draw you in?
·
Does the story rise
above others in the category for the way it's written?
2. CHARACTERS
·
Are they well developed
and convincing?
·
Is there good interaction
between characters?
·
How well does the writer
handle viewpoints or inhabit each character?
·
Do the characters serve
the story well?
3. PLOT
·
How well are the story
events structured from beginning to end?
·
Does the story rise
above others in the category for its plot?
·
Does the story set up
and then meet or cleverly subvert expectations?
4. OVERALL FEELING
·
Did you have a good
reaction to the story not described by the other elements?
·
How memorable was the
story?
The alternate judge in a category is called if one of the primary judges is
unable to serve to completion. The alternate will be asked to read and evaluate
only the entries that the primary judge was unable to assess.
All stories must be scored and returned to the Coordinator by March 30, 2025.
March 31 is reserved for the Coordinator to verify the outcome of scoring. For
each Derringer category, the five stories with the highest averages become the
Finalists.
FINALISTS ANNOUNCED (April 1, 2025)
On April 1, the Coordinator announces the Finalists on the SMFS Groups.io
discussion board and announces them publicly on SMFS’s blog.
VOTING (April 1–29, 2025)
On April 1, the Coordinator uploads the finalist
manuscripts to Shortmystery's Files section and creates polls to conduct the
vote. All members who join prior to January 1 of 2025 are eligible to vote.
Members who join between January 1 and April 30 of 2025 cannot participate in
the Derringer judging or voting process. During the month of April, these
Members may read the finalist manuscripts, but will not be able to vote or post
to the SMFS list.
April 30 is reserved for the Coordinator to verify the poll results and prepare
the announcement of winners. The Coordinator then deletes the manuscripts from
Shortmystery's Files section.
WINNERS ANNOUNCED (May 1, 2025)
On May 1, the Coordinator announces the Winners on the SMFS Groups.io discussion board and
announces them publicly on SMFS’s blog.
MEDAL PRESENTATION AT BOUCHERCON (August/September 2025)
When possible the five honorees receive their
Derringer medals during Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention.
If you'd like to donate toward future medals, please contact the Current
Derringer Coordinator. Any
winners who are unable to attend will receive their medals by mail.
NEW: DERRINGER AWARD FOR BEST ANTHOLOGY
Beginning with the awards presented in 2025, the SMFS will also present a Derringer Award for Best Anthology. This is being done on a two-year trial basis. If there are no significant problems or objections from the membership, the award will become permanent with the awards presented in 2027.
Because this award is fundamentally different from those presented to individual stories, a different procedure is required, and is described below. For the sake of simplicity and clarity, this description uses the dates which will apply for the initial presentation of the award (covering works published in 2024), but these specific dates should obviously be updated for each successive year.
Rationale
The four existing competitive Derringer Awards are
presented for short stories, and the finalists in each category are determined
by a group of volunteer judges. This
model is not practical for a Best Anthology award which evaluates full-length
books, not stories under 20,000 words.
No small group of volunteers can be expected to read all of the eligible
anthologies in a given year in order to determine a list of finalists or choose
a winner. It also will not be possible,
as is done with the short story finalists, to make the nominated texts
available to the entire membership of the SMFS for free. A Best Anthology Derringer must therefore be
governed by a different set of rules.
Those described here are closely modeled on the process by which the
Anthony Awards are presented.
Eligibility
To be eligible, an anthology of mystery and crime
short stories must have been published in English, in print and/or electronic
form, during the calendar year in question.
It must contain stories, of any length up to 20,000 words, by at least
five different authors. Collections
(that is, a selection of works by a single author) are not eligible. A minimum of seventy-five percent of the
anthology’s contents (calculated as a percentage of the number of stories, not
number of words) must have been previously unpublished in English. For the purposes of eligibility, new
translations of stories originally published in languages other than English
will be considered as previously unpublished.
Anthologies edited by currently serving officers of
SMFS are not eligible.
Anthologies containing stories by serving SMFS officers retain
eligibility, in fairness to the editors and other contributors.
Nominations
SMFS members who join the Society prior to January 1,
2025, may nominate 2024 publications for the award. Each member is permitted to make two
nominations. Nominations will be accepted
from January 1, 2025, to January 30, 2025, following procedures as directed by
the serving Derringer Coordinator.
The Derringer Coordinator will tabulate the
nominations, and the five anthologies receiving the most nominations will be
declared the finalists (in the event of a tie, and only in the event of a tie,
there may be more than five finalists).
The Derringer Coordinator will announce the finalists
on February 1, 2025, in order to permit SMFS members time to acquire and read
the anthologies if they wish to do so.
Submitting Nominations
Include only one nomination per email. Include "[Derringers Anthology]" and the anthology’s title in the subject line.
Submitters must include the following information in the body of the submission email:
- your name
- anthology title
- editor(s) name(s)
- publisher
- publication date
Send your nominations and questions to derringerawards.2025@gmail.com
Voting
Voting will be held from April 1, 2025, to April 29,
2025, at the same time as the voting for the other competitive Derringers. As with those categories, voting will be via
a poll on the SMFS groups.io site, with each member who joined prior to January
1, 2025, allowed one vote.
The Derringer
coordinator will tabulate the votes and announce the winner on May 1, 2025,
along with the winners of the other competitive Derringer categories. The award will be presented to the editor(s)
of the winning anthology, if possible at that fall’s Bouchercon.
