It seems like only days ago that I was announcing the results of the 2010 Readers' Poll, and yet here we are with the results for the 2011 poll already. Last year was a busy one for Strange Horizons. We welcomed an array of new regular columnists, including Robyn Fleming, Mark Plummer, Vandana Singh, and Genevieve Valentine, and published special issues celebrating the work of Nisi Shawl, Carol Emshwiller and Pat Cadigan. We also said farewell to poetry editor Mark Rudolph and fiction editor Karen Meisner, both of whom contributed an astounding amount to the magazine during their time here. And we began work on a major redesign that should come to fruition later this year—but more about that in due course.

The Readers' Poll is your chance to tell us what you thought the highlights of the magazine's year were We asked you to vote for your favorite works from the fiction, poetry, and articles departments, and your favorite columnists and reviewers. The poll was open from 13.00 PST on 6th February 2012 until 23.59 PST on 19th February 2012. The scoring system was the same as last year. Each person could vote for up to five works or nominees, ranking them 1 (first place) to 5 (fifth place). Each first-place vote was worth five points, each second-place vote was worth four points, and so on. It was not compulsory to vote in every category, nor to use all five slots in a given category. Multiple votes on one ballot for the same item were discarded, and we required a unique email address for the ballot to be submitted. Those addresses were only used to verify the validity of ballots, and were only saved for the duration of the poll.

As ever, many thanks to everyone who participated. And so to this year's winners; congratulations to them all!

The Results

Best Story

• First place: "Items Found in a Box Belonging to Jonas Connolly" by Laura E. Price
• Second place: "Widows in the World" by Gavin J. Grant
• Third place: "起狮，行礼 (Rising Lion—The Lion Bows)" by Zen Cho
• Fourth place: "Pataki" by Nisi Shawl
• Fifth place: "Librarians in the Branch Library of Babel" by Shaenon K. Garrity

Best Poem

• First place: "In the Third Cycle" by Rose Lemberg
• Second place: "If Alice. . ." by Alexandra Seidel
• Third equal: "The Curator Speaks in the Department of Dead Languages" by Megan Arkenberg
• Third equal: "Homebound" by Shweta Narayan
• Fifth place: "Tonight I Know" by Shweta Narayan

Best Article

• First place: "Perfectly Herself: A discussion of the work of Carol Emshwiller" by Ursula K. Le Guin, Helen Merrick, Pat Murphy, and Gary K. Wolfe
• Second place: "An Interview with Nisi Shawl" by JoSelle Vanderhooft
• Third place: "Running Away to Bordertown: an interview with Holly Black, Ellen Kushner, and Terri Windling by Karen Meisner
• Fourth place: "Mythpunk Roundtable" with Amal El-Mohtar, Rose Lemberg, Alex Dally MacFarlane, and Shweta Narayan, by JoSelle Vanderhooft
• Fifth place: "Pat Cadigan: A Retrospective" by Tanya Brown

Best Columnist

• First place: Genevieve Valentine
• Second place: Nisi Shawl
• Third place: Karen Joy Fowler
• Fourth place: Vandana Singh
• Fifth place: Matthew Cheney

Best Reviewer

• First place: Liz Bourke
• Second place: L. Timmel Duchamp
• Third equal: Sofia Samatar
• Third equal: Nic Clarke
• Fifth place: Niall Harrison