PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NOVEMBER 21, 2025
SIDEWISE AWARDS WELCOMES THREE NEW JUDGES
The Sidewise Awards for Alternate History will see a change in the judging panel beginning with the reading list for 2025 and 2026.
Olav Rokne, who has served on the panel since 2019 will be stepping down from active judging duties, although he will continue to support the Sidewise Awards behind the scenes. We thank Olav for his involvement over the past six years and look forward to continuing to work with him.
We are pleased to announce the addition of three judges to the panel: Andrea Horbinski, Alana Phelan, and Arturo Serrano. They will join returning judges Matt Mitrovich, Kurt Sidaway, and Steven H Silver.
Arturo Serrano will be joining the judges for the 2025 reading year, with Andrea Horbinski and Alana Phelan joining for the 2026 reading yeat.
Andrea Horbinski holds a PhD in history and new media from the University of California, Berkeley. An sff fan since approximately age four, she wrote her middle school graduation speech on Star Wars. She has written about alternate history as well as fandom, anime, and manga in journals including The WisCon Chronicles, Transformative Works and Cultures, Internet Histories, Mechademia, and Strange Horizons. She is also the author of Manga’s First Century: How Creators and Fans Made Japanese Comics, 1905-1989 (University of California Press, 2025).
Alana Phelan (she/her) is a queer, disabled writer and editor in southern New Jersey. She is the co-owner of For Hire Enterprises, which was awarded an Effing Foundation for Sex Positivity grant in 2020 for its work. She has previously done committee work for the American Librarian Association’s Rainbow Book List. You can find her online as The Polyamorous Librarian, or as the webmistress for the Mary vs the Movies podcast, where she is also a recurring guest.
Arturo Serrano is a Colombian reviewer for the Ignyte-winning, Hugo-winning blog Nerds of a Feather. He’s also a member of the editorial teams of the magazines Strange Horizons and Galactic Journey, and recently became one of the volunteer translators at Global Voices. He previously wrote reviews for Hypable and was one of the translators at the bilingual magazine Constelación. In 2021, he self-published the alternate history novel To Climates Unknown. Since 2023, he’s been a judge for the British Fantasy Awards. Currently, he’s finishing a degree in Creative Writing. His obsessions include nonviolent gaming, Linux distro-hopping, and music in Esperanto.
Submitting works
Submission information for the Sidewise Awards, along with mailing addresses for all of the judges, can be found at https://www.uchronia.net/sidewise/submit.html. Books and stories for consideration can be submitted throughout the year and the judges prefer to receive them as close to the publication date as possible.
About the Sidewise Awards
The Sidewise Awards for Alternate History were conceived in late 1995 to honor the best allohistorical genre publications of the year. The first awards were announced in summer 1996 and honored works from 1995. The award takes its name from Murray Leinster’s 1934 short story “Sidewise in Time,” in which a strange storm causes portions of Earth to swap places with their analogs from other timelines. The Awards were founded by Evelyn C. Leeper, Robert Schmunk, and Steven H Silver. Silver is the award’s administrator and an active judge. Schmunk maintains the award’s website.
The Sidewise Awards for works published in 2025 are expected to be presented at LACon V in Anaheim, California the weekend of August 27–31, 2026. The awards for works published in 2026 are expected to be presented at Montréal Worldcon 2027 the weekend of September 2–6, 2027.
For more information, contact Steven H Silver at shsilver@stevenhsilver.com or go to http://www.uchronia.net/sidewise.
Steve Davidson is the publisher of Amazing Stories.
Steve has been a passionate fan of science fiction since the mid-60s, before he even knew what it was called.
