McGuire was awarded the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer by the 2010 World Science Fiction Convention. This award was announced at Aussiecon 4 on September 5, 2010.. As this award is in the form of a tiara and the award was presented in Australia, Seanan has blogged that this makes her "Officially the Princess of the Kingdom of Poison and Flame".
In 2010, McGuire's novel
FEED (written under the pseudonym Mira Grant) ranked #74 in an National Public Radio listener poll of the top 100 Thriller novels of all time.
McGuire has won two Pegasus Awards:
- Best Writer/Composer (2008)
- Best Performer (2007)
She has received five other nominations:
- Best Mad Science Song (2010), for "What A Woman's For"
- Best Tragedy Song (2008), for "The Black Death"
- Best Torch Song (2006), for "Maybe It's Crazy"
- Best Writer/Composer (2005 and 2006)
McGuire was Interfilk guest at Conterpoint 2007.