Fantasy hard-hitters Neil Gaiman, Ursula K LeGuin,  Gene Wolfe, Diana Wynne Jones and Terry Pratchett are amongst the finalists for the 2009 Mythopoeic Awards, announced yesterday.

The awards are given by the Mythopeoic Society, a non-profit organisation promoting ’study, discussion and enjoyment of fantastic and mythic literature’.

Nominees for the Scholarship Awards, which reward study of fantasy literature, are especially interesting to note. Mostly because they’ve just listed lots more things to go on my reading list!

The finalists, in full, are:

Adult Literature

• Carol Berg, Flesh and Spirit and Breath and Bone (Roc)
• Daryl Gregory, Pandemonium (Del Rey)
• Ursula K. Le Guin, Lavinia (Harcourt)
• Patricia A. McKillip, The Bell at Sealey Head (Ace)
• Gene Wolfe, An Evil Guest (Tor)

Children’s Literature

• Kristin Cashore, Graceling (Harcourt Children’s Books)
• Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book (HarperCollins)
• Diana Wynne Jones, House of Many Ways (HarperCollins)
• Ingrid Law, Savvy (Dial)
• Terry Pratchett, Nation (HarperCollins)

Scholarship Awards

Inklings Studies

• Gavin Ashenden, Charles Williams: Alchemy and Imagination (Kent State, 2008)
• Veryln Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson, eds. Tolkien on Fairy-stories: Expanded Edition, with Commentary and Notes (HarperCollins, 2008)
• John Rateliff, The History of the Hobbit, Part One: Mr. Baggins; Part Two: Return to Bag-end (Houghton Mifflin, 2007)
• Michael Ward, Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis (Oxford, 2008)
• Elizabeth A. Whittingham, The Evolution of Tolkien’s Mythology: A Study of the History of Middle-earth (McFarland, 2008)

Myth and Fantasy Studies

• Charles Butler, Four British Fantasists:  Place and Culture in the Children’s Fantasies of Penelope Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper (Children’s Literature Association & Scarecrow Press, 2006)
• Jason Marc Harris, Folklore and the Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction (Ashgate, 2008)
• Farah Mendlesohn, Rhetorics of Fantasy (Wesleyan Univ. Press, 2008)
• Marek Oziewicz, One Earth, One People:  The Mythopoeic Fantasy Series of Ursula K. Le Guin, Madeleine L’Engle and Orson Scott Card (McFarland, 2008)
• Richard Carl Tuerk, Oz in Perspective: Magic and Myth in the Frank L. Baum Books (McFarland, 2007)