Awards Eligibility 2025

These are my published short stories and poetry eligible for nomination for 2025 awards.

I hope you will consider my work if you're voting for speculative awards including the Rhysling (poetry), Nebula (fiction and poetry), Hugo, World Fantasy, Bram Stoker, British Fantasy, BSFA, and Dragon awards, as well as others not listed here!

All poetry is eligible for the Rhysling and Nebula, among others.

If you're interested in reading a piece listed here that's not available for free online, feel free to reach out to me via the form on my Contact page.

Top Pieces for Awards Consideration: Poetry

* To Be the Change (43 lines). Published in Strange Horizons, March 10. Genre: Fantasy

Reviewed by Charles Payseur in Locus Magazine #773 as "a piece that challenges those who believe their power and corruption to be eternal, recognizing that no amount of power or control can prevent people from knowing and follow­ing their hearts and being themselves. Nocito does a beautiful job bringing the prophecy, and its fulfillment, to vivid life."

My father’s least favorite prophecy
has been reviewed by five generations of scholars
and soundly dismissed by them all.

When the heir becomes a daughter …

What the Birds Taught Me (26 lines). Published in Heartlines Spec, July 31. Genre: solarpunk

I learned how to sing from a sparrow’s beak,
a steel prosthetic to replace its old and crumpled one.

* Eagle-Eyed (46 lines). Published in Eye to the Telescope Issue 57: Birds. Genre: slipstream

The doctors had no explanation
   for the bird’s eyes set into
   my flawed and human head.

Top Pieces for Awards Consideration: Short Fiction

To Catch A Name (3900 words). Published in Morgana le Fay anthology (Flame Tree Press), March 31 (UK)/April 15 (US). Genre: fantasy

I cobble him together, that imagined nighttime boy, out of hawthorn boughs and apple blossoms and the gentle, thumping rhythm of my own heartbeat.
Then I hide him in my garden.

The Science of Transient Cartography (2100 words). Published in The Daily Tomorrow, February. Genre: science fiction/futuristic
Note: Contact if interested in reading

My pa likes to say, his curmudgeonly jaw working at the spoon he often inserts between his lips when he’s trying to suck the last vestiges of honey from the well-worn metal ornamentation, that when he was a boy, maps were static things, only changing when wars were fought and lost and won.
I usually like to remind him that we don’t have wars anymore.

* A Single Song (750 words). Published in Factor Four Magazine Issue 48 (July 1). Genre: dark fantasy

A harp made of bones, they say, will only ever play a single song.

All Awards-Eligible Poetry Published in 2025

Beauty's Captor (34 lines). Published in Star*Line Issue 48.3 (Summer 2025). Genre: fantasy
Note: Available to subscribers only.

Sleeping Beauty reimagined from the point of view of the vines

Bait (24 lines). Published in Black Cat Tales (Black Cat Publishing), June 13. Genre: dark fantasy

They don't realize
they're the bait.

them // us (46 lines). Published in Utopia Science Fiction, March 1. Genre: science fiction
Note: Available to subscribers only.

They
drop from the sky at moonrise
when silver beams twist around their silver capsule.

All Awards-Eligible Short Fiction Published in 2025

Speak (1000 words). Published in Utopia Science Fiction, August 1. Genre: science fiction

Upcoming!

Blood Stains True (3300 words). Published in Vampire Hunters: An Incomplete Record of Personal Accounts (Speculation Publications), July 22. Genre: historical fantasy

I write now, however, not with concerns that a vampire walks beside me, but with a pressing mythological question—an academic curiosity, you might say. This entire affair has been most unusual, and so I shall start with its beginning, as is usually best for any matter where one pursues the truth.

An Unexpected Wombat (500 words). Published in Worlds of Possibility, June. Genre: slipstream/fantasy

Described by editor Julia Rios as a story that "shows us another kind of coming of age vision as a trans person finds hope and comfort amidst inner chaos."
Note: Currently free to read for subscribers only.

I hold absolutely still, motionlessness morphing into illusion. When I finally stir, I become my mind’s self, standing knee-deep in snowflakes containing my memories.

A Knot for the Hawk (3000 words). Published in Loki (Flame Tree Press), June 8 (UK)/July 22 (US). Genre: fantasy

The problem with godly jokes, the ironic reason that perhaps made me such a trickster to begin with, is that they are very difficult to undo.

Through Time and Calamity (750 words). Upcoming in Starship Librarians (Tyche Publishing). Genre: science fiction

Upcoming!