We are pleased and honored to announce that both Apex Magazine and “A Monster in the Shape of a Boy” by Hannah Yang (published in issue 131) are finalists for the Locus Award!

Co-editor-in-chief Lesley Conner says, “Hannah’s story is the kind that you immediately need to reread as soon as you finish it. The full ramifications of what is going on hits, there’s a moment of ‘oh my god,’ and then it’s right back to the beginning. I absolutely love when a story hits like that and “A Monster in the Shape of a Boy” does it so well.” It is a truly mind-boggling story, in the best sense of the word – we hope you’ll give it a read at the link above!

Hannah Yang is a speculative fiction writer. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in The Dark Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, and other marvelous places. She has a BA from Yale University and lives in Colorado. Follow her work at hannahyang.com or on Twitter at @hannahxyang.

We’d also be grateful if you gave a read to what Apex Magazine published in 2022. You can find a comprehensive list of what we published in 2022 in our awards eligibility post. This includes stories like “It Happened in ‘Loontown” by Lavie Tidhar (noir, but all the characters are balloons), “Nine Theories of Time” by Spencer Nitkey (a story that makes the unrelenting march of time ache in your bones), “Hoodie” by Tonya Liburd (the Apex 2022 Readers’ Choice Award winner), “Your Space Between” by Marie Croke (the story of how a boy lost his brother to a pocket dimension, and the heartbreak of how he got him back), “The Day When the Last War is Over” by Sergey Gerasimov (the skeleton of a girl wakes up into a world where only bones still live), and “The Walking Mirror of the Soul” by Renan Bernardo (in which your innermost thoughts are displayed on the skin of aliens).

We are so grateful to our readers, and honored to be on the list of finalists with such fantastic publications. Best of luck to “A Monster in the Shape of a Boy”, and congratulations to all of the finalists!