Sydney Taylor Book Award 2024 Winners Announced

The 2024 winners of the Sydney Taylor Book Award and honor books have been announced. Listen to interviews with the committee chair, read reviews, and purchase STBA seals for your copies of winning titles at AJL’s Shop page.

Viktor “sdy” Orudzhev, the rifler who helped Monte qualify for the first major in CS2 history, will no longer play with the team after failing to pass the RMR for Paris. It seems that disagreements started after sdy lost to Heroic in the BO1 match, and the Ukrainian organization decided to part ways with him.

The news comes just a few days after sdy won the ESL Challenger Jonkoping on HLTV and 1xBet, claiming a landslide victory over Eternal Fire in the final. It was a career-best LAN event for the rifler, who claimed his first HLTV MVP award in the process.

sdy has been replaced by the more experienced Ilya “Dimitriy” Fominyhorov, who was a member of SK Gaming before joining MAD Lions and now sdy’s former team. Fominyhorov won two BLAST Premier events in the past and has over a million followers on Twitter.

The move also helps Natus Vincere fill the remaining spot in the upcoming CS:GO World Finals qualifier, where they will fight for a $200,000 prize pool and a place at IEM Cologne. The tournament starts on June 15.