Mandolin Quoted in the Washington Post

A Washington Post article about the Nebula Awards opens by quoting the joke Rachel (aka Mandolin) told in her acceptance speech:

Before Rachel Swirsky won the Nebula award for best novella Saturday, she went to an authors’ reception and learned some tips from veterans of the science fiction awards circuit.

“Apparently the Hugo makes a great paper-towel holder,” Swirsky says. “And if you put a sock over the World Fantasy Award,” it looks like a profile of Jacques Cousteau. But what to do with a Nebula — a heavy glass block — no one knew. And so Swirsky, a first-time author whose novella, “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window,” recounts the weary adventures of a resurrected magician, made a vow in her acceptance speech at the Washington Hilton:

“I will figure out” what to do with a Nebula. […]

Someone asks Connie Willis — who has won seven previous Nebu­las in various categories — whether she has any advice for Swirsky’s quest to find an alternative use for the award.

“If you got enough of them, you could use them like Legos,” says Willis doubtfully, weighing her solid, rectangular trophy in her hands. “But you would really need an awful lot.”

Incidentally, “first-time author” Mandolin has had approximately fifty stories and poems published so far, if I recall correctly.