The annual Aurora Awards broadcast is happening today at 5 pm EDT.  The broadcast will last a little over an hour, with presentations for award winners in numerous professional and fan categories.

On Spec is a finalist in the Best Related Work category and we thank you for your support.

Managing Editor Diane L. Walton is one of this year’s inductees for the Hall of Fame Award, presented by the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association (CSFFA).

Below you can find the ways you can watch online.  These links will also work after the ceremony is completed, so you may watch at a later date.

Lorina Stephens’ June book review is for a new work by award-winning Canadian fantasy author Guy Gavriel Kay. Check out her review of Written on the Dark here. 

Happy Canada Day everyone!

On Spec has the honour of sharing the news that our Managing Editor, Diane L. Walton, is a 2025 inductee in the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association Hall of Fame!  From the CSFFA website, the annual award is described below.

“The Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Association Hall of Fame was created to honour people who have over the past number of decades made a great contribution to the genre of Science Fiction and Fantasy. These would include not just people who write but includes people who have made a contribution either professionally or as a fan. We include artists, musicians, scientists, publishers, editors, organizers and fans.”

Diane wants to sincerely thank fellow editor Barb Galler-Smith for her nomination, as well as the Hall of Fame selection committee for what is likely a daunting choice. As the List of Inductees will show, this is a pretty impressive group to be a part of!

We are proud to announce that “Giant of the Stars” by Alex Langer, (On Spec VOL 34 No 3) is a finalist in the Fiction category for the annual Alberta Magazine Publishers Awards. The winners will be announced at their banquet in September.  Well done, Alex!

Tangent reviewer Victoria Silverwolf has a new review of On Spec VOL 35 No 2. You can see it here.

With a cover  by Dan O’Driscoll, our new issue is ready for the readers. Subscribers and reviewers will be receiving links to download their copies.

New readers, or those whose subscription may have lapsed can easily get a copy from our Ko-fi page.

For a look at the Table of Contents, click on the link below.

Issue_132_TOC

While On Spec is strictly a short fiction and poetry magazine, we know that many of our readers are also fans of longer works of fiction, especially by Canadian writers.

We are pleased to share the news that the Sunburst Award, after a hiatus of several years, is back with the 2025 jury’s  Long List of books published in 2024.  From this list, a Short List will be released in July, and the winning book will be announced this Fall.  The winner of the Sunburst receives a cash prize and a lovely medallion bearing the Sunburst design. 

Just in time for you to get your summer reading list together. – Make sure that your local library carries these wonderful books!

There’s still time to enter the Hummimgbird Flash Fiction contest provided by our friends at Pulp Literature Magazine!

We are very proud to announce the one of our own fiction editors at On Spec has won a prestigious Alberta writing award.  Lareina Abbott was awarded the Jon Whyte Memorial Unpublished Essay Award for her essay entitled “Laid Bear”. 

The essay is taken from her unpublished back to culture memoir. You can follow Lareina’s Instagram page here. 

Congratulations to all the winners and runners-up!

Convention appearances for On Spec are rare these days, but Managing Editor Diane L. Walton will be at Y-Con in beautiful Yarmouth, NS this weekend, selling out some of our inventory of print copies of On Spec.

She’s also making a presentation, cheekily titled “IT CAME FROM THE SLUSHPILE: The Good, Bad and Ugly of Stories we get at On Spec” (No real authors were harmed in the making of this presentation)