Novelist and University of Guelph writing professor Thomas King and L.A.-based author, graphic novelist, and musician Cecil Castellucci have been named winners of this year’s Sunburst Awards for excellence in Canadian literature of the fantastic. The authors were chosen from shortlists of five in each of two categories.

Castellucci won in the YA category for Tin Star (Roaring Brook/Raincoast), the first novel in a planned series about a teenager who struggles to survive parent-less in a space station where she is the only human, and which played scene to a brutal assault that haunts her memory.

King won in the adult category for his novel The Back of the Turtle (HarperCollins Canada), for which he also received a Copper Cylinder Award from the Sunburst Society last week. The book follows a First Nations scientist who finds himself torn after he’s sent to clean up the ecological mess his company has left on the reserve his family grew up on.

Each winner will receive a $1,000 prize and a Sunburst medallion.

The Sunburst Society was also set to introduce its first-ever short-story prize this year, but has postponed its introduction until 2016 due to an overwhelming number of submissions.