Minotaur is an Aurora Award Nominee!

I have amazing news that I can finally share!

Minotaur has been nominated for Best YA Novel in the Prix Aurora Awards! They are a prestigious award run by The Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association (CSFFA) and the ballots are voted on by members of the CSFFA.

It’s a long process, and I am just so thrilled that I’m an official Aurora Award Nominee. So many wonderful works are submitted for consideration in a variety of different categories each year and only the top five from each category make it on the ballot. I’m gobsmacked and so very happy that Minotaur has made it on the ballot for Best YA Novel!

This is a surreal moment for me because the ballot includes authors I’ve read for so long. They are authors who gave me a home when I felt like I didn’t fit in anywhere. It’s amazing to me that I’m on a ballot with people who have been such a comfort and refuge and I sit beside them as their equal. In short, I’m having a little bit of a fanboi moment.

Minotaur features a disabled protagonist named Roanne. It’s hard to believe that in the first draft of Minotaur, Roanne wasn’t disabled at all. I knew in my heart that she was disabled, but I didn’t show the reader this because I didn’t want her disability to be the focus of the novel.

That didn’t feel right to me.  In the second draft, I struggled putting more of myself in the novel. I knew that the disability Roanne has had to be like mine because if I was going to have a disabled character, it had to be one that I knew well. It had to write from lived experiences. I only revealed that Roanne lived with a disability halfway through the book. That felt a little underhanded to me. I didn’t want the disability that Roanne lived with to be the big reveal of the book. I didn’t want the reader to feel tricked or like a disability was a secret or something to be hidden.

In the third draft of the book, Roanne is shown as disabled in the very first chapter. I didn’t hide her disability, there are no big scenes calling notice to the fact that she walked with a cane, and I never named the chronic illness that Roanne lives with. Minotaur is set within a labyrinth where all the people there live in fear of a mythical beast that can and will rip them to shreds. I wanted Roanne’s disability to be the one part of normal within a large and terrifying world.

The fact Minotaur is a Prix Aurora Award Nominee is just the most amazing thing. You can find the current ballot here, featuring yours truly and so many other talented writers and artists: https://www.csffa.ca/awards-information/current-ballot/

Voting for the winner of the 2026 Aurora Awards is from June to July. Only members of the The Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association can place their vote. This is where you come in! The Prix Aurora Award and the CSFFA honour science fiction, fantasy and horror. If you like that kind of story, consider becoming a member. It only costs $10 and you’ll get to read all of the nominated works. That’s like a ton of books for $10, not to mention membership in the CSFFA. More info can be found here: https://www.csffa.ca/

I’m so excited that I finally get to share all this! Stay tuned for more info soon!

Minotaur is available from your local bookstore and is published by Rebel Satori Press.