SFWA Nebula Award Finalists

Featured writers: Amy Chu, Tananarive Due, Somto Ihezue, and Annalee Newitz

In conjunction with the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, acclaimed speculative fiction writers nominated for the Nebula Awards talk about their craft, character-building on other planets and in new timelines, and how they create new worlds. Moderated by Tananarive Due, Toastmaster of the 2026 Nebula Awards, writers and their nominations include:

• Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Nebula Award for Best Novella)

• Carmilla Volume 3: The Eternal by Amy Chu (Nebula Award for Best Comic)

• “We Begin Where Infinity Ends” by Somto Ihezue (Nebula Award for Best Novelette)

FULL SCHEDULE

About the writers:

AMY CHU is a multi-genre writer for graphic novels and animation. Her most recent book is the Nebula Award nominated Carmilla: The Eternal (Dark Horse / Berger Books) the final chapter in the award-winning Carmilla the First Vampire trilogy. She teaches at the Kubert School and the School of Visual Arts, and is a board member of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. A frequent convention speaker, she has also judged the Harvey, Ringo and MoCCA awards. Amy holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a double bachelor’s degree in Architectural Design from MIT and East Asian Studies from Wellesley College.

TANANARIVE DUE is an award-winning author who teaches Black Horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA. A leading voice in Black speculative fiction for more than 20 years, Due has won an American Book Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a British Fantasy Award, and her writing has been included in best-of-the-year anthologies. Her books include The Reformatory (winner of a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Chautauqua Prize, Bram Stoker Award, Shirley Jackson Award, World Fantasy Award, and a New York Times Notable Book), The Wishing Pool and Other Stories, Ghost Summer: Stories, My Soul to Keep, and The Good House. She and her late mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, co-authored Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights.

SOMTO IHEZUE is a writer and filmmaker. He is an MFA fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Maryland. His writes about boyhood, land, disruption, and joy in Igbo communities. His work has been a finalist for the Nebula Award, the Locus Award, the British Fantasy Award, the ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award, and has appeared in Clarkesworld, POETRY, Uncanny, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Sauúti, and others. He has received residencies and fellowships from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Tin House, Clarion West, Sundress Academy for the Arts, Rabbit Island, and more. He was assistant editor of the Publishing Taught Me Anthology (SFWA & NEA) and co-editor of Will This Be a Problem? The Anthology.

ANNALEE NEWITZ writes science fiction and nonfiction. They are the author of four novels: Automatic Noodle, The Terraformers, The Future of Another Timeline, and Autonomous, which won the Lambda Literary Award. As a science journalist, they are the author of Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind, Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age and Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction, which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize in science. They are a writer for the New York Times and elsewhere, and have a monthly column in New Scientist. They have published in The Washington Post, Slate, Scientific American, Ars Technica, The New Yorker, and Technology Review, among others. They were the co-host of the Hugo Award-winning podcast Our Opinions Are Correct, and have contributed to the public radio shows Science Friday, On the Media, KQED Forum, and Here and Now. Previously, they were the founder of io9, and served as the editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.

Books by these writers:

Automatic Noodle
by Annalee Newitz

A cozy near-future novella about a crew of leftover robots opening their very own noodle shop, from acclaimed sci-fi author Annalee Newitz. But when their robot-run business starts causing a stir, a targeted wave of one-star reviews threatens to boil over into a crisis. To keep their doors open, they’ll have to call on their customers, their community, and each other—and find a way to survive and thrive in a world that wasn’t built for them.

Carmilla Volume 3: The Eternal
by Amy Chu, art by Soo Lee

The final chapter of this Bram Stoker Award-winning graphic novel reimagination of Sheridan LeFanu’s classic Carmilla! Athena’s daughter Ella journeys to Oxford, England where a mysterious university benefactor hires her for what seems like a simple research position, but leads her straight into the heart of danger…and the Lo family back into the complicated web of Carmilla herself. As deaths begin to pile up on campus, Ella becomes entangled with a secret supernatural society of hard partying immortals. And just as Athena once did, Ella is about to discover some family secrets of her own…

The Reformatory
by Tananarive Due

A gripping, page-turning “masterpiece” (Joe Hill, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman) set in Jim Crow Florida that follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he’s sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead.

Will This Be A Problem? The Anthology: Issue V
edited by Somto Ihezue and Olivia Kidula

From across the African continent and its diaspora, Will This Be A Problem? Issue V brings together a powerful collection of stories that blend the fantastical with the deeply real. These tales explore the enduring history of colonialism, capitalism, and marginalization while grappling with present concerns like climate change and artificial intelligence. Yet, amidst these weighty themes, the anthology also offers moments of much-needed escapism into worlds of magic, myth, and the unknown.