Note from a Juror on the SJA

Dear friends of the SJA,

With the SJA final ballot announced (phew!), now seems like a good time to talk about the Shirley Jackson Awards, why they were established, how they work, and what our goals are.

Over the last few years, dark fiction has returned, and is even popping up on the best-seller lists. Big publishers are paying attention, and acquiring titles they wouldn’t have touched with ten-foot poles in the 90s and early 00’s. Dark fiction is getting serious critical attention. The New York Times’ Book Review initiated a semi-annual column devoted to horror. So, now seemed like a good time to start an award honoring those works of fiction that would likely be overlooked by Booker Awards and Pen-Faulkner Awards as well as Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, but whose merit, often brilliance, is undeniable.

And so, the Shirley Jackson Awards. Ms. Jackson’s work represents everything we seek in our nominees. Smart, dark, and able to tread the line between psychological and visceral with aplomb. Not only was her short story “The Lottery” published in The New Yorker, but it also elicited the most hate mail that magazine has ever received. Now that’s a writer.

A few of us got together and decided that such a new award might draw more attention to our vibrant, dynamic genre. The Stokers (happily for me) honor a slightly different kind of horror fiction, and I suspect that the final ballot of IHG, the other juried award, will look quite different from our own. All the finalists for all the awards deserve the recognition they receive, and it is our earnest hope that the SJA will expand dark fiction readers’ conceptions of horror. In fact, we hope people who’ve never read what’s traditionally considered horror will seek out our nominees, because it’s not about the confines of genre. It’s about these splendid works that transcend their labels. The dark fiction market is growing, and fortunately, there is more than enough room for all of us.

And onto the manner in which nominees were selected. The jury (F. Brett Cox, John Langan, Paul Tremblay, and I) read widely and often. We read until our eyes were bleary. We read the recommendations of the advisory board, we read the submissions from publishers, we solicited material, heard about somebody who heard from somebody about a good book, and tracked it down. We begged, borrowed, and stole material. Okay, we didn’t steal. Well, maybe that other Langan. Anyway, we’re writers, too, so we took it seriously, because it’s important.

When we were ready, we voted privately among the four of us, and arrived at our stellar final ballot. We disqualified our own fiction, but we did consider the fiction written or edited by advisors. Ellen Datlow volunteered to withdraw her anthology Inferno in order to preserve the reputation of the award, and prevent catcalls of favoritism, but we jurors agreed that the disqualification of such a work from consideration would ultimately harm the reputation of the SJA. It’s too good not to consider, and if we truly want our final ballot to reflect the best work of the year, our consciences could not allow us to disqualify it.

I imagine this will happen again, and often. Our excellent and growing list of advisors will no doubt edit and produce some of the best fiction of the year—that’s why they’re our advisors. While jurors will rotate over the years to keep the award fresh, our commitment to impartiality will remain constant, and we take that job seriously.

And so, this year, we’ve come out with what, collaboratively, we believe is the best fiction in the tradition of Shirley Jackson, to be published in 2007. Read the nominees. I dare you to disagree!

Thanks again for your support; it means a lot.

Sincerely,
Sarah Langan

2007 Shirley Jackson Awards Finalists and Award Ceremony Location Announced

Nominees Announced for Inaugural Year of The Shirley Jackson Awards

Boston, MA (May 2008) -- In recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson's writing, and with permission of the author's estate, the Shirley Jackson Awards have been established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.

The Shirley Jackson Awards will be voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics, with input from a Board of Advisors. The awards will be given for the best work published in the preceding calendar year in the following categories: Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Single-Author Collection, and Edited Anthology.

The nominees for the 2007 Shirley Jackson Awards are:

NOVEL

Baltimore, Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden (Bantam Spectra)
Generation Loss, Elizabeth Hand (Small Beer Press)
Sharp Teeth, Toby Barlow (William Heinemann Ltd)
The Terror, Dan Simmons (Little, Brown)
Tokyo Year Zero, David Peace (Knopf)

NOVELLA

12 Collections, Zoran Zivkovic (PS Publishing)
Illyria, Elizabeth Hand (PS Publishing)
The Mermaids, Robert Edric (PS Publishing)
"Procession of the Black Sloth," Laird Barron (The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, Night Shade Books)
The Scalding Rooms, Conrad Williams (PS Publishing)
"Vacancy," Lucius Shepard (Subterranean #7, September 2007)

NOVELETTE

"The Forest," Laird Barron (Inferno, Tor)
"The Janus Tree," Glen Hirshberg (Inferno, Tor)
"The Swing," Don Tumasonis (At Ease with the Dead, Ash-Tree Press)
"The Tenth Muse," William Browning Spencer (Subterranean #6, February 2007)
"Thumbprint," Joe Hill (Postscripts #10, March 2007)

SHORT STORY

"Holiday," M. Rickert (Subterranean #7, September 2007)
"The Monsters of Heaven," Nathan Ballingrud (Inferno, Tor)
"A Murder of Crows," Elizabeth Ziemska (Tin House 31, Spring 2007)
"Something in the Mermaid Way," Carrie Laben (Clarkesworld, March 2007)
"The Third Bear," Jeff VanderMeer (Clarkesworld, April 2007)
"Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse," Andy Duncan (Eclipse One, Night Shade Books)

COLLECTION

The Bone Key, Sarah Monette (Prime Books)
The Entire Predicament, Lucy Corin (Tin House)
The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, Laird Barron (Night Shade Books)
Like You'd Understand, Anyway, Jim Shepard (Knopf)
Old Devil Moon, Christopher Fowler (Serpent’s Tail)

ANTHOLOGY

At Ease with the Dead, edited by Barbara and Christopher Roden (Ash-Tree Press)
Dark Delicacies 2, edited by Del Howison and Jeff Gelb (Running Press)
Inferno (Tor), edited by Ellen Datlow (Tor)
Logorrhea, edited by John Klima (Bantam Spectra)
Wizards, edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois (Berkley)

Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) wrote such classic novels as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as well as one of the most famous short stories in the English language, "The Lottery." Her work continues to be a major influence on writers of every kind of fiction, from the most traditional genre offerings to the most innovative literary work. National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novelist Jonathan Lethem has called Jackson "one of this century’s most luminous and strange American writers," and multiple generations of authors would agree.

The Shirley Jackson Awards will be presented on Sunday, July 20th 2008, at Readercon 19, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Burlington, Massachusetts.

Website: ShirleyJacksonAwards.org

Media representatives who are seeking further information or interviews should contact JoAnn F. Cox.

2007

We're now closed to publisher submissions to The Shirley Jackson Awards for works published in 2007. Thank you to all of the publishers who submitted works for consideration.

Eligibility Rules

1. Works must have elements of psychological suspense, horror, or dark fantasy to be considered.

2. The Shirley Jackson Awards will be presented annually for each year beginning January 1 and ending on December 31. Awards are given for work appearing for the first time in English during that calendar year.

3. Determinations of nominations (the final ballot) and final recipients are made solely by the Jury.

4. Members of the Advisory Board recommend works to the Jurors but do no nominate or vote on works.

5. General eligibility concerning the judges and advisory board members:

a. Judges’ works are not eligible during the calendar year for which they are serving as judges.

b. Advisory Board members’ works are eligible.

6. Only book and magazine (both online and print) publishers may formally submit works to the jury. Please contact Administrator JoAnn Cox for details admin at shirleyjacksonawards.org

7. Awards will be made in the following categories:
a. Novel: A work of fiction at least 40,000 words in length.
b. Long Fiction (Novella): fiction between 17,500 and 39,999 words in length.
c. Mid-Length Fiction (Novelette): fiction between 7,500 and 17,499 words in length.
d. Short Fiction: fiction 7,499 words or less.
e. Collection: At least 40,000 words, consisting of at least 3 fictional works by a single author. A collection may contain nonfiction, illustrations, or collaborative works; however at least half of the collection’s contents must be fiction.
f. Anthology: At least 40,000 words, consisting of at least 3 stories by 3 or more authors. An anthology may contain nonfiction, but its content must be at least half fiction. In addition, to be eligible for this award, no less than half of the material contained in the anthology must be original, that is, unpublished prior to its appearance in the anthology.

8. Each category must have three qualified nominees in order to be in contention for an awards year. If three nominations cannot be made for the Awards year, the category will be dropped for that year.

9. The final ballot should contain no more than five works per category. In the event that two works are tied for 5th place, the jurors may revote to break the tie or may include both works on the final ballot, for a total of six items in the category. In the event more than two works are tied for 5th place, the jurors will revote to break the tie. The form of the revote will be at the discretion of the jurors.

10. Special Awards may be given at the discretion of the Jury and shall be announced at the same time the final ballot is made public.