# Kitschies

The Kitschies were British literary prizes presented annually from 2009 to 2024 for "the year's most progressive, intelligent and entertaining works that contain elements of the speculative or fantastic" published in the United Kingdom. The awards discontinued after November 2024 when the final winners were announced.

## Awards and criteria

The Kitschies were administered by a non-profit association with the stated mission of "encouraging and elevating the tone of the discussion of genre literature in its many forms". The founders, Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin, said that they sought to bring attention to works with a fantastic or speculative element that were progressive in terms of content and composition.
The award was a juried prize that selected the books which "best elevate the tone of genre literature." Qualifying books needed to contain "an element of the fantastic or speculative" and have been published in the UK. Winners received prize money and a textile tentacle trophy.
The Kitschies were initially established in 2009 by the website pornokitsch.com. The Kraken Rum was the sponsor between 2010 and 2013. For 2014 and 2015, Fallen London (a creation of UK game developer Failbetter Games) was the sponsor. The award did not run in 2016. From 2017 the sponsor was Blackwell's Bookshop.
For the last ten or eleven years of operation, the Kitschies were awarded in five categories:
* Red Tentacle for the best novel (£1,000, since 2009)
* Golden Tentacle for the best debut novel (£500, since 2010)
* Inky Tentacle for the best cover art (£500, since 2011)
* Invisible Tentacle for the best natively digital fiction (since 2014)
* Glentacle, awarded at the judges' discretion (since 2010, called "Black Tentacle" until 2020)

## Organisation

The judging panel changes annually and the unpaid directors have changed due to workload or illness. The number of submissions increased from 70 in 2009 to 234 in 2013.
For each year, the judges, directors, and the number of submissions for each year were as follows:
| Year | Literary | Art | Natively digital fiction | Award Directors | Submissions |
| 2009 | Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin | N/A | N/A | Jared Shurin and Anne C. Perry | 70 |
| 2010 | Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin | N/A | N/A | Jared Shurin and Anne C. Perry | 50 |
| 2011 | Anne C. Perry, Jared Shurin, Lauren Beukes, and Rebecca Levene | Hayley Campbell, Craig Kennedy, Catherine Hemelryk, and Darren Banks | N/A | Jared Shurin | 150 |
| 2012 | Jared Shurin, Rebecca Levene, and Patrick Ness | Lauren O'Farrell, Gary Northfield, and Ed Warren | N/A | Jared Shurin | 211 |
| 2013 | Nick Harkaway, Catherine Webb, Will Hill, Anab Jain, and Annabelle Wright | Hazel Thompson, Sarah Anne Langton, Emma Vieceli, and Craig Kennedy | N/A | Glen Mehn | 234 |
| 2014 | Catherine Webb, Adam Roberts, Kim Curran, Frances Hardinge, and Glen Mehn | Ed Warren, Dapo Adeola, Jim Kay, and Siân Prime | Laura Grace, James Wallis, Phil van Kemenade, and Clwere Reddington | Glen Mehn | 198 |
| 2015 | Sarah Lotz, James Smythe, Nazia Khatun, Nikesh Shukla and Glen Mehn | Sarah McIntyre, Regan Warner, Dapo Adeola, and Lauren O'Farrell | John Wallis, Emily Short, and Rebecca Levene | Glen Mehn | 176 |
| 2016 | No award | No award | No award | No award | No award |
| 2017 | Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Leila Abu El Hawa, Joshua Idehen, Alasdair Stuart, and Ewa Scibor-Rylska | Dapo Adeola, Sharan Dhaliwal, Jet Purdie, and Stuart Taylor | N/A | Glen Mehn and Leila Abu El Hawa | 142 |
| 2018 | Adam Roberts, Sharan Dhaliwal, Daniel Carpenter, Lucy Smee, and Matt Webb | Dapo Adeola, Lily Ash Sakula, and Maeve Rutten | N/A | Glen Mehn and Leila Abu El Hawa | 178 |
| 2019 | Catherine Webb, Kirsty Logan, Tasha Suri, Michaela Grey, and Alasdair Stuart | Kim Curran, James Spackman, Kaiya Shang, and Sharan Matharu | N/A | Leila Abu El Hawa and Anne Perry | 196 |
| 2020 | M. R. Carey, Clwere Rees, Mahvesh Murad, Kaiya Shang, and Daphne Lao Tong | Paul Wiseall, Fleur Clarke, Claire Richardson, and Jeffrey Alan Love | N/A | Leila Abu El Hawa and Anne Perry | 177 |

## Recipients

All award information, unless otherwise referenced, is from the Kitschies Award's blog and tumblr, or from the sponsor Blackwell's website.

### Red Tentacle (best novel)

Red Tentacle winners and finalists :
| Year | Author | Nominated Work | Result |
| 2009 | China Miéville | The City & the City | Won |
| 2009 | Joe Abercrombie | Best Served Cold | Nominated |
| 2009 | Jane Austen (posth.) and Seth Grahame-Smith | Pride and Prejudice and Zombies | Nominated |
| 2009 | Lev Grossman | The Magicians | Nominated |
| 2009 | Reif Larsen | The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet | Nominated |
| 2010 | Lauren Beukes | Zoo City | Won |
| 2010 | Scott K. Andrews | Children's Crusade | Nominated |
| 2010 | China Miéville | Kraken | Nominated |
| 2010 | K. J. Parker | The Folding Knife | Nominated |
| 2010 | Jean-Christophe Valtat | Aurorarama | Nominated |
| 2011 | Siobhan Dowd and Patrick Ness | A Monster Calls | Won |
| 2011 | Jesse Bullington | The Enterprise of Death | Nominated |
| 2011 | China Miéville | Embassytown | Nominated |
| 2011 | Jane Rogers | The Testament of Jessie Lamb | Nominated |
| 2011 | Lavie Tidhar | Osama | Nominated |
| 2012 | Nick Harkaway | Angelmaker | Won |
| 2012 | Jesse Bullington | The Folly of the World | Nominated |
| 2012 | Frances Hardinge | A Face Like Glass | Nominated |
| 2012 | Adam Roberts | Jack Glass | Nominated |
| 2012 | Juli Zeh | The Method | Nominated |
| 2013 | Ruth Ozeki | A Tale for the Time Being | Won |
| 2013 | Anne Carson | Red Doc | Nominated |
| 2013 | Patrick Ness | More Than This | Nominated |
| 2013 | Thomas Pynchon | Bleeding Edge | Nominated |
| 2013 | James Smythe | The Machine | Nominated |
| 2014 | Andrew Smith | Grasshopper Jungle | Won |
| 2014 | Nina Allan | The Race | Nominated |
| 2014 | William Gibson | The Peripheral | Nominated |
| 2014 | Nnedi Okorafor | Lagoon | Nominated |
| 2014 | Will Wiles | The Way Inn | Nominated |
| 2015 | Margaret Atwood | The Heart Goes Last | Won |
| 2015 | Dave Hutchinson | Europe at Midnight | Nominated |
| 2015 | N. K. Jemisin | The Fifth Season | Nominated |
| 2015 | Adam Roberts | The Thing Itself | Nominated |
| 2015 | Hugo Wilcken | The Reflection | Nominated |
| 2016 | No awards held | No awards held | No awards held |
| 2017 | Nina Allan | The Rift | Won |
| 2017 | Deon Meyer, translated by L. Seegers | Fever | Nominated |
| 2017 | Jess Richards | City of Circles | Nominated |
| 2017 | William Sutcliffe | We See Everything | Nominated |
| 2017 | Michelle Tea | Black Wave | Nominated |
| 2018 | Madeline Miller | Circe | Won |
| 2018 | Becky Chambers | Record of a Spaceborn Few | Nominated |
| 2018 | Simon Ings | The Smoke | Nominated |
| 2018 | Tade Thompson | Rosewater | Nominated |
| 2018 | Lavie Tidhar | Unholy Land | Nominated |
| 2019 | Jan Carson | The Fire Starters | Won |
| 2019 | Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone | This Is How You Lose the Time War | Nominated |
| 2019 | Vicki Jarrett | Always North | Nominated |
| 2019 | Yōko Ogawa | The Memory Police | Nominated |
| 2019 | Jane Rawson | From the Wreck | Nominated |
| 2020 | Susanna Clarke | Piranesi | Won |
| 2020 | Curdella Forbes | A Tall History of Sugar | Nominated |
| 2020 | N. K. Jemisin | The City We Became | Nominated |
| 2020 | Natasha Pulley | The Lost Future of Pepperharrow | Nominated |
| 2020 | Kim Stanley Robinson | The Ministry for the Future | Nominated |
| 2021 | No awards held | No awards held | No awards held |
| 2022 | Becky Chambers | The Galaxy, and the Ground Within | Won |
| 2022 | Zen Cho | Black Water Sister | Nominated |
| 2022 | Un-su Kim, trans. by Sean Lin Halbert | The Cabinet | Nominated |
| 2022 | Adrian Tchaikovsky | Bear Head | Nominated |
| 2022 | Catriona Ward | The Last House on Needless Street | Nominated |

### Golden Tentacle (best debut novel)

| Year | Author | Nominated Work | Result |
| 2009 | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded |
| 2010 | Maurice Broaddus | King Maker | Won |
| 2011 | Kameron Hurley | God's War | Won |
| 2011 | Douglas Hulick | Among Thieves | Nominated |
| 2011 | Erin Morgenstern | The Night Circus | Nominated |
| 2011 | Ransom Riggs | Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children | Nominated |
| 2011 | Fred Venturini | The Samaritan | Nominated |
| 2012 | Karen Lord | Redemption in Indigo | Won |
| 2012 | Madeline Ashby | vN | Nominated |
| 2012 | Jenni Fagan | Panopticon | Nominated |
| 2012 | Rachel Hartman | Seraphina | Nominated |
| 2012 | Tom Pollock | The City's Son | Nominated |
| 2013 | Ann Leckie | Ancillary Justice | Won |
| 2013 | Anne Charnock | A Calculated Life | Nominated |
| 2013 | Monica Hesse | Stray | Nominated |
| 2013 | Ramez Naam | Nexus | Nominated |
| 2013 | Robin Sloan | Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore | Nominated |
| 2014 | Hermione Eyre | Viper Wine | Won |
| 2014 | Monica Byrne | The Girl in the Road | Nominated |
| 2014 | Becky Chambers | The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet | Nominated |
| 2014 | Emmi Itäranta | Memory of Water | Nominated |
| 2014 | Hanya Yanagihara | The People in the Trees | Nominated |
| 2015 | Tade Thompson | Making Wolf | Won |
| 2015 | A. Igoni Barrett | Blackass | Nominated |
| 2015 | Kirsty Logan | The Gracekeepers | Nominated |
| 2015 | Paul Meloy | The Night Clock | Nominated |
| 2015 | Sara Taylor | The Shore | Nominated |
| 2016 | No awards held | No awards held | No awards held |
| 2017 | Alex Wells | Hunger Makes the Wolf | Won |
| 2017 | RJ Barker | Age of Assassins | Nominated |
| 2017 | Carmen Marcus | How Saints Die | Nominated |
| 2017 | JY Yang | The Black Tides of Heaven | Nominated |
| 2017 | Liz Ziemska | Mandelbrot the Magnificent | Nominated |
| 2018 | Ahmed Saadawi | Frankenstein in Baghdad | Won |
| 2018 | Tomi Adeyemi | Children Of Blood and Bone | Nominated |
| 2018 | Sue Burke | Semiosis | Nominated |
| 2018 | R. F. Kuang | The Poppy War | Nominated |
| 2018 | Rebecca Ley | Sweet Fruit, Sour Land | Nominated |
| 2019 | Clare Rees | Jelly | Won |
| 2019 | Katie Hale | My Name Is Monster | Nominated |
| 2019 | Wayétu Moore | She Would Be King | Nominated |
| 2019 | Alix E. Harrow | The Ten Thousand Doors of January | Nominated |
| 2019 | Rory Power | Wilder Girls | Nominated |
| 2020 | Micaiah Johnson | The Space Between Worlds | Won |
| 2020 | Kawai Strong Washburn | Sharks in the Time of Saviours | Nominated |
| 2020 | Laura Jean McKay | The Animals in That Country | Nominated |
| 2020 | Deepa Anappara | Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line | Nominated |
| 2020 | Jordan Ifueko | Raybearer | Nominated |
| 2021 | No awards held | No awards held | No awards held |
| 2022 | Hilary Leichter | Temporary | Won |
| 2022 | Caroline Hardaker | Composite Creatures | Nominated |
| 2022 | Calvin Kasulke | Several People Are Typing | Nominated |
| 2022 | Everina Maxwell | Winter's Orbit | Nominated |
| 2022 | Xiran Jay Zhao | Iron Widow | Nominated |

### Inky Tentacle (best cover art)

| Year | Work | Author | Artist(s) | Result |
| 2009 | | | Not awarded | Not awarded |
| 2010 | | | Not awarded | Not awarded |
| 2011 | The Last Werewolf | Glen Duncan | Peter Mendelsund (designer) | Won |
| 2011 | Rivers of London | Ben Aaronovitch | Stephen Walter (illus.) and Patrick Knowles (design) | Nominated |
| 2011 | The Prague Cemetery | Umberto Eco | Suzanne Dean (design) and John Spencer (illus.) | Nominated |
| 2011 | Equations of Life | Simon Morden | Lauren Panepinto (design) | Nominated |
| 2011 | A Monster Calls | Patrick Ness and Siobhan Dowd | Jim Kay (illus.) | Nominated |
| 2012 | A Boy and a Bear in a Boat | Dave Shelton | Dave Shelton (illus.) | Won |
| 2012 | The Teleportation Accident | Ned Beauman | La Boca (design) | Nominated |
| 2012 | The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket | John Boyne | Oliver Jeffers (illus.) | Nominated |
| 2012 | Costume Not Included | Matthew Hughes | Tom Gauld (illus.) | Nominated |
| 2012 | Flame Alphabet | Ben Marcus | Peter Mendelsund (design) | Nominated |
| 2013 | The Age Atomic | Adam Christopher | Will Staehle (art) | Won |
| 2013 | Dreams and Shadows | C. Robert Cargill | Sinem Erkas (design and illus.) | Nominated |
| 2013 | Homeland and Pirate Cinema | Cory Doctorow | Amazing15 (design) | Nominated |
| 2013 | Stray | Monica Hesse | Gianmarco Magnani (art) | Nominated |
| 2013 | Apocalypse Now Now | Charlie Human | Joey Hi-Fi (art) | Nominated |
| 2014 | Tigerman | Nick Harkaway | Glenn O'Neill (cover) | Won |
| 2014 | The Ghost of the Mary Celeste | Valerie Martin | Steve Marking (design) | Nominated |
| 2014 | A Man Lies Dreaming | Lavie Tidhar | Ben Summers (cover) | Nominated |
| 2014 | Through the Woods | Emily Carroll | Emily Carroll and Sonja Chaghatzbanian (cover) | Nominated |
| 2014 | The Book of Strange New Things | Michel Faber | Rafaela Romaya and Yehring Tong (cover) | Nominated |
| 2015 | The Door That Led to Where | Sally Gardner | Jet Purdie (art direction and design) | Won |
| 2015 | The Vorrh | Brian Catling | Pablo Declan (design) | Nominated |
| 2015 | Monsters | Emerald Fennell | Jet Purdie (art design) and Patrick Leger (illus.) | Nominated |
| 2015 | The Honours | Tim Clare | Peter Adlington (design and illus.) | Nominated |
| 2015 | Get in Trouble | Kelly Link | Alex Merto | Nominated |
| 2016 | No awards held | No awards held | No awards held | |
| 2017 | The History of Bees | Maja Lunde | Jack Smyth and the Simon & Schuster Art Department (cover) | Won |
| 2017 | The Land of Neverendings | Kate Saunders | David Dean (illus.) | Nominated |
| 2017 | Black Wave | Michelle Tea | Rose Stafford (illus.) and Hannah Naughton (design) | Nominated |
| 2017 | The Real-Town Murders | Adam Roberts | Black Sheep (illus. and jacket design) | Nominated |
| 2017 | Our Memory like Dust | Gavin Chait | Richard Shailer (design) | Nominated |
| 2018 | Killing Commendatore | Haruki Murakami | Suzanne Dean (cover) | Won |
| 2018 | The Book of Joan | Lidia Yuknavitch | Rafaela Romaya (design) | Nominated |
| 2018 | The Smoke | Simon Ings | James Nunn (design) | Nominated |
| 2018 | Squwere Eyes | Anna Mill and Luke Jones | Anna Mill and Luke Jones (design) | Nominated |
| 2018 | Slender Man | Anonymous | Mike Topping (design) | Nominated |
| 2019 | The Memory Police | Yoko Ogawa | Tyler Comrie (cover) | Won |
| 2019 | Across The Void | S. K. Vaughan | Ceara Elliot (cover) | Nominated |
| 2019 | The Heavens | Sandra Newman | Leo Nickolls (cover) | Nominated |
| 2019 | Zed | Joanna Kavenna | Faber & Faber (cover) | Nominated |
| 2019 | This Is How You Lose the Time War | Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone | Greg Stadnyk (cover) | Nominated |
| 2020 | The Arrest | Jonathan Lethem | Allison Saltzman (cover) and Dexter Maurer (illus.) | Won |
| 2020 | Little Eyes | Samantha Schweblin | Ben Summers (cover) | Nominated |
| 2020 | Monstrous Heart | Clair McKenna | Andrew Davis (cover) | Nominated |
| 2020 | The Harpy | Megan Hunter | Lucy Scholes (cover) and Amy Judd (illus.) | Nominated |
| 2020 | The City We Became | N. K. Jemisin | Lauren Panepinto (cover) | Nominated |
| 2021 | No awards held | No awards held | No awards held | No awards held |
| 2022 | The Seep | Chana Porter | Julia Lloyd (art and design) | Won |
| 2022 | Nightbitch | Rachel Yoder | Suzanne Dean | Nominated |
| 2022 | Velvet Was the Night | Silvia Moreno-Garcia | Tim Green | Nominated |
| 2022 | A Desolation Called Peace | Arkady Martine | Jaime Jones | Nominated |
| 2022 | Iron Widow | Xiran Jay Zhao | Ashley Mackenzie | Nominated |

### Invisible Tentacle (best natively digital fiction)

| Year | Author / Developer | Nominated Work | Form of Media | Result |
| 2014 | Cardboard Computer written by Jake Elliott | Kentucky Route Zero Act III | video game | Won |
| 2014 | Jeff Noon and others | @echovirus12 | Twitter fiction | Nominated |
| 2014 | Inkle Studios written by Meg Jayanth and Jon Ingold, directed by Joseph Humfrey and Jon Ingold | 80 Days | video game | Nominated |
| 2014 | Simogo | Sailor’s Dream | video game | Nominated |
| 2015 | Dontnod Entertainment | Life Is Strange | video game | Won |
| 2015 | Iain Pears | Arcadia | interactive novel | Nominated |
| 2015 | @FrogCroakley | Daniel Barker’s Birthday | Twitter fiction | Nominated |
| 2015 | BBC Writers Room | The Last Hours of Laura K | | Nominated |
| 2015 | Hidetaka Miyazaki / FromSoftware | Bloodborne | video game | Nominated |

### Glentacle (Discretionary award previously called the Black Tentacle)

This award was called "Black Tentacle" until 2020, when it was renamed in memory of Kitschies co-founder Glen Mehn.
| Year | Winner | Citation |
| 2009 | No award | |
| 2010 | Memory, novel by Donald Westlake. | "to recognize a novel that doesn't quite fit the award description but is so exceptional it merits the highest praise...noir, pure and simple, by a master of the genre … while we're sorry that Memory went unpublished while Westlake was alive, we're delighted that Hard Case brought the manuscript to light" |
| 2011 | SelfMadeHero, comics publisher | "for their 2011 body of work and their contribution to elevating geek culture" |
| 2012 | Lavie Tidhar, Charles Tan, and Sarah Newton | "for the World SF Blog, a website showcasing international speculative fiction" |
| 2013 | Malorie Blackman, British writer, Children's Laureate for 2013 | "for outstanding achievement in encouraging and elevating the conversation around genre literature" |
| 2014 | Sarah McIntyre, author and illustrator | "for tireless work to promote the rights of artists and to encourage others to value their work" |
| 2015 | The genre community, personified by Patrick Ness | "for its response to the humanitarian refugee crisis" Ness began a fund that raised over £690,000 for Save the Children |
| 2016 | No awards held | No awards held |
| 2017 | No award | No award |
| 2018 | No award | No award |
| 2019 | Nazia Khatun, Claire North, and Leila Abu El Hawa | "for services to the SF/F community." |
| 2020 | Simon Key of the Big Green Bookshop in Hastings | "demonstrated extraordinary generosity and selflessness to readers, introducing and running his "Buy a Stranger a Book" initiative every Wednesday to allow readers to access books at a time that even libraries were closed." |
| 2021 | No awards held | No awards held |
| 2022 | Comma Press | "for their remarkable 'book of' and +100 series of anthologies" |