Boston, MA (October 2009) -- 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 are voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics, with input from a Board of Advisors. The awards are 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 jurors for the 2009 Shirley Jackson Awards are, alphabetically:
F. Brett Cox, co-editor (with Andy Duncan) of Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic (Tor, 2004); author of numerous short stories, critical essays, and reviews; English faculty at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont.
John Langan, author of House of Windows (Night Shade, 2009) and Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters (Prime, 2008); nominated for the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild Awards; English faculty at SUNY New Paltz.
Erika Mailman, author of novels The Witch's Trinity (Random House, 2007; a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book and finalist for Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel) and Woman of Ill Fame (Heyday Books, 2007); MFA in Creative Writing, University of Arizona, Tucson.
Lisa Tuttle, author of numerous short stories and novels, most recently, The Pillow Friend, The Mysteries, and The Silver Bough; winner of the 2007 International Horror Guild Award for Mid-Length Fiction for “Closet Dreams”.
The Board of Advisors for the Shirley Jackson Awards includes editor Bill Congreve; renowned scholar and editor S.T. Joshi; author and teacher Jack M. Haringa (co-editor, with Joshi, of the critical journal Dead Reckonings); and author Mike O’Driscoll; editor Ann VanderMeer; and award-winning and best-selling novelist Stewart O’Nan. In 2009, Peter Straub, Elizabeth Hand, and Stefan Dziemianowicz (bios below) join this illustrious group along with former jurors Sarah Langan and Paul Tremblay.
Peter Straub is the author of seventeen novels, which have been translated into more than twenty languages. They include Ghost Story, Koko, Mr. X, In the Night Room, and two collaborations with Stephen King, The Talisman and Black House. He has written two volumes of poetry and two collections of short fiction, and he edited the Library of America’s edition of H. P. Lovecraft’s Tales and the forthcoming Library of America’s 2-volume anthology, American Fantastic Tales. He has won the British Fantasy Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, two International Horror Guild Awards, and two World Fantasy Awards. In 1998, he was named Grand Master at the World Horror Convention. In 2006, he was given the HWA’s Life Achievement Award. In 2008, he was given the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award by Poets & Writers.
Elizabeth Hand is the author of many novels, including Winterlong, Waking the Moon (Tiptree and Mythopoeic Award-winner), Glimmering, Mortal Love, and Generation Loss, and three collections of stories, most recently Saffron and Brimstone. She has been awarded a Maine Arts Commission Fellowship. She is a regular contributor to the Washington Post and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Stefan Dziemianowicz has compiled more than forty anthologies of horror, mystery, and science fiction, and collections of macabre fiction by Louisa May Alcott, Robert Bloch, Joseph Payne Brennan, August Derleth, Henry Kuttner, Jane Rice, Bram Stoker, Henry S. Whitehead, and others. A former editor of Necrofile: The Review of Horror Fiction and the Necronomicon Press short fiction series, he co-edited Supernatural Literature of the World: An Encyclopedia. He is the author of Bloody Mary and Other Tales for a Dark Night and The Annotated Guide to Unknown and Unknown Worlds. His reviews have appeared in Publishers Weekly, Locus, and the Washington Post Book World.
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 2009 Shirley Jackson Awards will be presented at Readercon 21, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Burlington, Massachusetts.
Websites: ShirleyJacksonAwards.org
Readercon.org
Media representatives who are seeking further information or interviews should contact JoAnn F. Cox.
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1 comment:
Would it be possible to have the winners' locations with their names on the official website?
It is always of interest to see where the winners are from. Of course one suspects Stephen King is somewhat easy to identify as our neighbour, but not all are as easy to recognise.
Warm regards,
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