Boston, MA (October 2014) — 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 2014 Shirley Jackson Awards are, alphabetically:
Andy Duncan is the author of 29 published stories and two story collections. Beluthahatchie and Other Stories(Golden Gryphon, 2000) won a World Fantasy Award. The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories(PS, 2012) includes the World Fantasy Award-winning title story, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award-winning “The Chief Designer,” and the Nebula Award-winning “Close Encounters.” His novella Wakulla Springs, co-written with Ellen Klages (Tor.com, 2013), was a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus and World Fantasy awards. He has been a juror for the Philip K. Dick, Bram Stoker and World Fantasy awards, and in 2013 was named a permanent Sturgeon Award juror. He lives with his wife, Sydney, in Frostburg, Maryland, where he is an associate professor of English at Frostburg State University.
Nancy Holder is a New York Times bestselling author of adult and young adult horror and dark fantasy novels, short fiction, and comic books and graphic novels. She has received five Bram Stoker Awards and is a former trustee of the Horror Writers Association. She has also received a Pioneer Award for Young Adult Literature from the RT Booklovers Review, as well as a Scribe Award from the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers. Her work has appeared on the recommended lists of the American Library Association, American Reading Association, New York Public Library Stuff for the Teen Age, the Horror Writers Association, and many other organizations. She is currently creating the World of Dracula for the Storium gaming system and is an editor at Moonstone Books. She also teaches in the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing Program. She lives in San Diego.
Livia Llewellyn is a writer of horror, dark fantasy and erotica. Her fiction has appeared in ChiZine, Subterranean, Apex Magazine, Postscripts, Nightmare Magazine, as well as numerous anthologies. Her first collection, Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & Other Horrors, was published in 2011 by Lethe Press. Engines received two Shirley Jackson Award nominations, for Best Collection and Best Novelette (for “Omphalos”). Her story “Furnace” received a 2013 Shirley Jackson Award nomination for Best Short Fiction.
Simon Kurt Unsworth’s latest collection, Strange Gateways (PS Publishing), follows 2011’s critically acclaimed Quiet Houses (Dark Continents Publishing) and 2010’s Lost Places (Ash Tree Press). His stories have been published in a large number of critically acclaimed anthologies including the World Fantasy Award-winning Exotic Gothic 4, the Gray Friar Press’s Terror Tales of the Cotswolds, Terror Tales of the Seaside and Where the Heart Is, the Ash Tree Press’s At Ease with the Dead, Shades of Darkness and Exotic Gothic 3, Stephen Jones’ Haunts: Reliquaries of the Dead, Ellen Datlow’s Hauntings and Lovecraft Unbound, and Salt Publishing’s Year’s Best Fantasy 2013. He has been in six of Stephen Jones’ The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, and he was also in The Very Best of Best New Horror. His novel The Devil’s Detective is due out from DoubleDay in the US and Del Ray in the UK in March 2015.
Kaaron Warren, Bram Stoker Nominee and Shirley Jackson Award winner, has lived in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Fiji. She’s sold many short stories, three novels (the multi-award-winning Slights, Walking the Tree and Mistification) and four short story collections. Her collection Through Splintered Walls won a Canberra Critic’s Circle Award for Fiction, an ACT Writers’ and Publisher’s Award, two Ditmar Awards, two Australian Shadows Awards and a Shirley Jackson Award. Her story “Air, Water and the Grove” won the Aurealis Award for Best SF Short Story and will appear in Paula Guran’s Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror. Her latest collection is The Gate Theory.
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.
Website: ShirleyJacksonAwards.org
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Media representatives who are seeking further information or interviews should contact JoAnn F. Cox: admin at shirleyjacksonawards dot org