The 2016 Hugo Awards were announced last night at MidAmeriCon II in Kansas City, MO, and after an attempt by an online group to once again derail the list of winners it was made even more satisfying when all four Hugo fiction categories were awarded to women, with two of them being women of color.

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"When there were people of color in these books, they were in the background, or they died quickly, or any number of other stereotypes. For the most part, they just weren't there. And in Octavia Butler's works, they not only were there, they were prominent; they were protagonists. The world looked like the world that I actually saw around me."

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I'M SO EXCITED FOR THIS!!!!! (via Comic Book Resources)

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We were too busy doing our panel to record our panel at New York Comic Con this weekend, so we reached out to a friend of the blog (this isn't the first time he's written for us, but, well, it's been a while) to provide us with recap. So if you weren't there, here's what happened! Buh-gow! This past weekend, The Mary Sue hosted its first-ever panel discussion; in it, a group of six fans and creators talked about diversity in media, finding a character you can identify with, and what makes the X-Men so fabulous.

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I read N.K. Jemisin's Inheritance trilogy last year and found myself devouring a high fantasy series that refused to take the Eurocentric, gender normative, heteronormative default setting of high fantasy as granted. And now, the author herself will be joining us at New York Comic Con for a talk on minority representation in geek media! Orbit Books has offered us this reveal of the cover to her newest book, The Fifth Season, scheduled to hit bookshelves in August 2014. Previously in N.K. Jemisin

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Are you coming to New York Comic Con? Did you know that New York is our home base? Did you know we're planning cool stuff to do there like a panel and a meetup? It's been a few weeks of trying to get the coolest people to be on our NYCC panel, but the dust has settled and we can finally announce when, where, and, most excitingly, who.

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2012 marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of Dawn, the first book in Octavia Butler's famous Xenogenesis series (also known as Lilith's Brood). Butler was, and perhaps still is, probably the best known African-American female writer in science fiction. She's also the first science fiction writer to receive a MacArthur genius grant, and a list of other science fiction writers who would list her as an inspiration is long. Here, author N.K. Jemesin (whose Inheritance Trilogy is very much worth the read) talks about the effect Butler had on her life and writing.

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I'm going to try to do this in a hurry, because if you pay attention at all to the publishing industry, then there's absolutely nothing new or shocking about Rachel Manija Brown & Sherwood Smith's revelation in Publisher's Weekly that various editors and agents attempted to de-gay their Young Adult novel, followed by many similar confessions in the comments of that post--because you've just seen it all before. And after a while, you (okay, I) get tired of saying the same things over and over. So let's just recap the last 5 years or so of YA publishing, shall we?

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The votes are in, and WorldCon attendees in Reno learned Saturday night that this year's Hugo for Best Novel goes to Connie Willis, perennial favorite ever since her first win for Best Short Story over 30 years ago. The author of the Oxford Universe, made famous in the time-traveling steampunk fantasies The Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, Willis picked this one up for her 2010 omnibus release of the latest two novels in the series, Blackout and All Clear. Like To Say Nothing of the Dog, Blackout/All Clear return the reader to World War II and Willis' relish for combining meticulous historical realism with brilliant technological innovation and moments of pure fantasy.

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