Fan Q Awards

The Fan Q Awards were run by ongtime fans Paula Smith and Sharon Ferraro at the first Fan Q Awards at the second SeKWesterCon. According to Gordon Carleton, a rose was handed to the winners of that first award. from Jundland Wastes #14 
The "Q" stood for quality and the phrase, when spoken aloud, sounds like "thank you." "We thought, let's do a 'fan quality" award. We'll call it a 'FanQ' to thank all the people who were writing good stuff." from a 2010 interview with Paula Smith for Transformative Works and Cultures It was to be a recognition of the best work appearing in Star Trek fanzines. In the first year of the award, there were only two categories: In the "best writer" category, Leslie Fish won for The Weight, which was still being serialized in Warped Space. Connie Faddis won for "best artist" for her body of work in the previous year.
Fan Qs were awarded at various cons for the first few years until 1981, when they were awarded at MediaWest*Con 1, where they've been awarded ever since. In 1982, the first Fan Q awards were given to Star Wars fans.
klangley56 offers her take on what might have led to the creation of the FanQ Awards: "Back in The Day (1974) two ST zine authors, Jackie Lichtenberg and Laura Basta, were nominated in the zine category of the prestigious Hugo Awards. A furor arose in the ranks of SF fandom (part of the ongoing disgruntlement SF fandom felt towards ST fandom at the time). This was one of the factors that led to the creation ... of the FanQ Awards..." Source: comment in Fanfiction and the Nebula Awards, dated Feb. 23, 2008, accessed Feb. 9, 2011; reference link.
==Winners==
Winners of Fan Q Awards are listed by year:
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==Some Histoy==
From the 1981 MediaWest*Con program book:
 
The categories changed over the years, as did the fandoms honored; eventually it was decided that any fandom with three or more nominations in a category could have their own award.
In 1982, the sixth award year, it was announced there would be three genres: Star Trek, Star Wars and Other. In 1987, the form still had only three categories, Star Trek, Star Wars, and General, but the awards themselves ended up being more varied. See: here.
A sample e-mail ballot from 2004 can be found here. Sample FanQ Ballot from 2004 . 
==Controversies==
At various times, multiple communities of fans felt shut out or minimized from the FanQ nominating and award process. 
Others felt that the awards where taking themselves too seriously and for a few years organized mock awards that they called the QuanFoo Awards: 
In 1981, Lori Chapek-Carleton explained a change in rules in an attempt to bolster the number of people voting: 
In 1984, K/S fandom began offering their own awards in an effort to offer Star Trek slash writers some recognition: the K/Star Awards. The K/S fans would repeat this effort again in the late 1990s when the Philon Awards began in 1998.
In 1986, many Star Trek fans began to feel shut out of the Fan Q's, and they started the Surak Awards, given out at a variety of K/S and gen Trek cons. From Boldly Writing: 
By the early 1990s, more members of the slash fandom community felt that slash fan fiction still wasn't getting the Fan Q recognition it deserved. (Some fans alleged that for years, the Fan Q people simply threw away ballots which voted to nominate slash stories or novels.) In 1992, they started their own parallel award via a separate balloting process, the STIFfie Award which was given out at MediaWest*Con. Although the STIFfie Awards presentation was held annually at MediaWest*Con, they were not in any way affiliated with MediaWest*Con. The STIFfie Awards continued for another 9 years.
Possibly in response to this, in 1993, slash and gen zines were broken out into separate categories for the FanQ awards, and no longer competed against each other for categories like, "Best Zine", "Best Cartoon", etc.
A fan in November 1997 wrote: 
==Rogue Nominees and Winners?==
It appears that the last year for Fan Q Awards given to Beauty and the Beast (TV) fanworks was 1991. Fans of that fandom instead awarded the Beauty and the Beast Fan Quality Awards. Some fans did not understand the distinction, or chose not to explain to others about this unofficial split.
==The Splintering of Fandoms==
From the third progress report in 2004: 
==The Fading Print Fanzine Era==
In March 2015, one fan inquired whether the FanQ awards would ever embrace online fan fiction:
==Awards Booklet==
In 1981 and 1982, The convention committee published The Annual Fan Q Awards Nominations Booklet prior to the convention so that voters could sample the work of the nominees. It is unknown if this was a booklet that was published in other years.
==Meta/Further Reading==
* 1994 discussion at rec.arts.sf.tv.quantum-leap
==References==
 
Category:Multifandom Awards 
Category:1977 Awards
Category:1970s Awards
Category:1980s Awards
Category:1990s Awards
Category:2000s Awards
Category:2010s Awards