The Robert E. Howard Foundation Awards
2012 Nominees
In 2001 Frank Coffman, then editor of The Dark Man, proposed the creation of the Robert E. Howard Studies Association. One of the components of the group was to be the Cleo Awards, named after the Cleopatra statue that Howard had purchased in New Orleans. In anticipation of the group’s success, Coffman sponsored one round of awards; however, the group failed to take off. Nominees for this first round of Howard-related awards were selected by members of REHupa, REH-e-UPA, and Dennis McHaney’s Yahoo! group the Inner Circle. The results were announced at Howard Days on June 9, 2001.
In 2005, there was talk that the Cleo Awards might make a comeback. When the plan faltered, Leo Grin, editor of The Cimmerian, picked up the ball and created his own set of awards: The Cimmerian Awards. Nominees and winners were selected by the readers of his journal. These awards lasted through the 2007 award season (presented in 2008).
With the demise of The Cimmerian Awards, the Robert E. Howard Foundation picked up the torch. In 2010 they presented awards for both 2008 and 2009. These awards are ongoing.
The Cleo Awards
The Cimmerian Awards
Robert E. Howard Foundation Awards:
VOTING RULES
Voting is open to all members of the Robert E. Howard Foundation, including Board members, with votes distributed on the following weighted scale:
Supporting Members – 10 votes
Friends of REH – 20 votes
Legacy Circle – 30 votes
The resulting total is the number of votes you have to allocate to each award category. Note that you apply your total votes to each category. For example, if you have 30 total votes, you get to apply 30 votes to the book categories, 30 to the magazine category, 30 to the first place essay, 30 to the second place essay, etc.
Voters can distribute their group of votes any way they wish for each award. You can choose to place all of your votes with a single nominee, or you can spread them among several nominees in that category.
Some categories have years where no viable nominee or winner presents itself. In such cases, no award for that category is given for that year.
Although every effort has been made to find and list all possible nominees for an award, feel free to write-in anything that isn’t on this list, as long as it was first publicly published (i.e. outside of REHupa) during the previous calendar year.
In categories where there is only one nominee, the nominee still needs your vote. Such people require at least a 60% vote of approval to get the award, a benchmark designed to prevent any truly horrible books from winning an award by default, simply because there was nothing else in that category for that year. So for one-nominee categories who you support, assign your votes to them as APPROVE, or withhold your votes with a DISAPPROVE if you do not feel they are deserving of any award. Any returned ballots with nothing written in such categories will be counted as APPROVE.
Voting opens as soon as a list of nominees are posted and announced and closes at the end of the voting window. The winners are then announced at a ceremony during the annual Robert E. Howard Days festival in Texas (held each year on the second weekend in June).
Individual votes are kept in the strictest confidence; only gross aggregate percentages are ever revealed to anyone.
We highly appreciate comments on why you made each vote, which may be used in a future issue of the REHF Newsletter.
Send your ballots to REHFAwards@gmail.com Be sure to include your name with your ballot if you want your votes to count. Voting ends April 15, 2012.
