The Silmaril Awards are all about celebrating fantasy fiction. But whereas most awards go to authors or books, these awards go to the characters themselves! Sound like fun? Read on.
Started in 2016, these awards are a four week online celebration of all that’s best in fantasy literature. There are several awards in various categories given every year. The characters who receive them have to be from books generally considered to be in the fantasy genre. And a given character cannot receive an award more than once. These are lifetime awards.
Also, as Tolkien is, for us, the gold standard of fantasy, his characters are not eligible to be nominated. That’s because they’ll be the ones presenting the awards in this cross-dimensional online ceremony.
Nominations are submitted on the websites of each of the presenters for that year. Anyone can submit a nomination and you can second (and third and fourth, etc.) any number of nominations besides your own.
After the nomination period (lasting one week), the five characters receiving the most nominations will make it onto the ballot and you’ll have one week to vote. After the votes are tallied, the winners will be announced, one per day, over the final two weeks of the awards.
And the winner is…
The awards the winners will receive are silmarils, the otherworldly gems featured in Tolkien’s book, The Silmarillion. Though there were a limited number of these gems in his world, in ours we have found a great many more!
The dates for this year’s awards are:
Nominations week — Sept 2-6
Voting week — Sept 9-13
Awards ceremonies — Sept 16-27
Follow this site, or join our Facebook Group to discuss your favorite characters and keep up with updates and announcements.
Mae govannen, and may the best characters win!