Major congrats are in order to Nora K. Jemisin (The Inheritance Trilogy, The Dreamblood Series), and Nnedi Okorafor (The Book Of Phoenix, Who Fears Death, Lagoon) for their 2016 Hugo Award wins for Best Novel for the The Fifth Season (Jemisin) and Best Novella, Binti (Okarafor).

Via Ms. Jemisin’s personal website, here is a snippet of her acceptance speech as read by Campbell nominee Alyssa Won in her place. Read the full text here:

“My apologies for not being present this evening; I’m deep in Deadline Hell right now on book 3 of the Broken Earth trilogy.

I’ve thanked them already in the acknowledgements, but I really want to thank the people who talked me down from quitting this book. At the nadir of my Chasm of Doubt — hat-tip to Kate Elliott for the term — I thought THE FIFTH SEASON was beyond my skill to write. I thought no one would want to read it. When it got nominated, I wondered how many of my fellow SFF fans, in a year headlined by reactionary pushback against the presence and performance of people like me in the genre, would choose to vote for the story of a fortysomething big-boned dredlocked woman of color waging an epic struggle against the forces of oppression.”

From the staff of BlackSci-Fi.com, Ms. Jemisin and Ms. Okarafor we salute you, and say congratulations for your huge wins.

You are BlackSci-Fi.