Sir Julius Vogel Award

On April 5, Rebecca won the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Fan Writing, for a body of work that includes her Big Worlds On Small Screens column here, regular posts on her own blog and SFF reviews on Fantasy Literature.com.

So I decided to postpone Rebecca’s review of Sound of My Voice in favour of the opportunity to respond to her award win — and here she is!

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Rebecca Fisher On Her Sir Julius Vogel Award Win For Best Fan Writing

When Helen asked for my permission to nominate me for the Sir Julius Vogel Award for best Fan Writing, my first reaction was simply: “why not?” Though I was familiar with the awards, at the time I was not even 100% sure what the term “fan writing” actually meant.

I’ve been writing Big Worlds on Small Screens for almost two years now, and reviewing and interviewing for Fantasy Literature since 2008. My personal blog, “They’re All Fictional”, has been active for a year, and my LiveJournal since 2009, two forums in which I informally write about anything that takes my fancy: films, books, television shows, theatre productions, usually in the format of reviews and meta. This, as my preliminary research told me, was what encompassed “fan writing”.

I write and post such things for one straightforward reason: because I enjoy doing it. Whether you’re predominantly a film-lover or a book-lover or a theatre-lover it all comes down to a love of stories, and there are millions of individuals out there whose social media platforms revolve around discussing, exploring, critiquing, supplementing and analysing these stories in whatever form they may take.

Such discourse can result in all kinds of things, from obtaining further insight into a piece of work, to honing your own writing skills by examining the strengths and weaknesses of someone else’s, to (most importantly) being exposed to new material that you might not have otherwise discovered.

That an award for “Fan Writing” even exists is a validation of on-line communities that devote themselves to discussing the stories that exist all around us, and as such it’s simultaneously humbling and gratifying to win an award for doing something that I love.

I’m very honoured to have been included in this year’s shortlist of nominees, and would especially like to thank Helen for her nomination, June Young for guiding me through the process, and of course everyone out there who voted for my hobby!

~ Rebecca

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About Rebecca:

Rebecca Fisher is a graduate of the University of Canterbury with a Masters degree in English Literature, mainly, she claims, because she was able to get away with writing her thesis on C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman. She is a reviewer for FantasyLiterature.com, a large website that specializes in fantasy and science-fiction novels, as well as posting reviews to Amazon.com and her They’re All Fictional blog.

To read Rebecca’s detailed introduction of both herself and the series, as well as preceding reviews, click on: