Kessel won a Nebula Award in 1982 for his novella "Another Orphan", in which the protagonist finds himself living inside the novel "Moby-Dick", and a second for his 2008 novelette "Pride and Prometheus", a story melding the tales of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" and Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein". This novelette also won a 2009 Shirley Jackson Award. The intervening 26 years was the longest gap between competitive awards in Nebula history. His short story "Buffalo" won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and the Locus poll in 1992.