Baen Books Establishes New Writing Award Named in Honor of David A. Drake
Riverdale, New York, July 2026—Baen Books is pleased to announce its newest short story award, the David A. Drake Memorial Award.
As with the two current writing awards sponsored by Baen—the Jim Baen Memorial Award and the Baen Fantasy Adventure Award—the "Drake" will seek to find new writing talent and will reward winners with professional publication contracts for their stories as well as a lovely trophy. In the spirit of military science fiction and fantasy written by David Drake, especially the Hammers Slammers and RCN/Lieutenant Leary series, the contest will seek engaging stories with military themes.
David A. Drake (24 September 1945–10 December 2023) was a U.S. Army veteran of the Vietnam War, a lawyer, and a pioneer in the field of military science fiction and fantasy. His work often focused on the lives of ordinary soldiers, and featured a high degree of realism with respect to military life and battlefield conditions.
Baen will be looking for works of great science fiction or fantasy with strong military themes central to the characters and plot, not mere window dressing. The contest is open to all forms of science fiction and fantasy. Authors do not have to be veterans or active military members to participate, but veterans and those in the military are certainly encouraged to submit; we expect their experience and knowledge will undoubtedly lend their stories a certain verisimilitude. Baen will be looking, in sum, for the kinds of stories David Drake and Jim Baen would have loved to read.
Submissions of original, unpublished short stories of up to 8,000 words will be accepted from 24 September 2026 until 10 December 2026. As with Baen’s other two awards, submissions will be judged blindly by a panel of Baen Books editors and a widely published military science fiction author. Details of the submission process will be released at a later date.
Baen Books plans to announce the finalists of the inaugural award in February 2027, and present the award in June at Baen Books’ Traveling Roadshow at the LibertyCon science fiction and fantasy convention in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Baen Books is an independent publisher of fantasy and science fiction, in business for over 40 years. They are known for publishing the works of New York Times best-selling authors David Weber, S.M. Stirling, Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, Lois McMaster Bujold, Elizabeth Moon, Mercedes Lackey, John Ringo, and many others. Baen is distributed by Simon & Schuster.
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