Boston, MA (September 2011) — 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 2011 Shirley Jackson Awards are, alphabetically:

Laird Barron is the author of two collections: The Imago Sequence, and Occultation, both of which won the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Collection. His work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies. An expatriate Alaskan, he currently resides in the mountains of Montana. His LiveJournal, Domination of Black, is http://imago1.livejournal.com

Matthew Cheney has published fiction and nonfiction with a wide variety of venues, including One Story, Weird Tales, Locus, Rain Taxi, Las Vegas Weekly, Web Conjunctions, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and elsewhere. He is a regular columnist for the online magazines Strange Horizons and Boomtron, the former series editor forBest American Fantasy, and a past juror for the Speculative Literature Foundation’s Fountain Award. He currently lives in New Hampshire, where he teaches at Plymouth State University and The New Hampton School. His blog,The Mumpsimus, was nominated for a World Fantasy Award in 2005.

Maura McHugh’s short stories have appeared in markets such as Black Static, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror and Shroud Magazine. She is the writer of two comic book series: Róisín Dubh and Jennifer Wilde, and her story “The Nail” will appears in theWomanthology comic book anthology. One of her screenplays was made into a short film, and she has served on the jury of the Octocon Golden Blaster Awards and the Galway Junior Film Fleadh Pitching Awards. She co-organized the Campaign for Real Fear short horror fiction competition with author Christopher Fowler. She lives in Ireland. Her website is http://splinister.com.

Kaaron Warren has three novels in print: The critically-acclaimed and award-winningSlights, Walking the Tree and Mistification. She has two short story collections, The Grinding House and Dead Sea Fruit. Her short fiction has appeared in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and she was one of the winners of Maura McHugh’s ‘Campaign for Real Fear’. She lives in Canberra, Australia, with her family. Her website is http://kaaronwarren.wordpress.com/

Gary K. Wolfe is contributing editor and reviewer for Locus magazine, and is a board member of the Locus Science Fiction Foundation. He has written considerable academic criticism of science fiction and fantasy, including the Eaton Award-winning The Known and the Unknown: The Iconography of Science Fiction. Soundings: Reviews 1992-1996 received the British Science Fiction Association Award for best nonfiction, and both it and Bearings: Reviews 1997-2001 were Hugo Award finalists. Wolfe has also received the SFRA Pilgrim Award, the IAFA Distinguished Scholarship Award, and a World Fantasy Award for criticism and reviews. Evaporating Genres: Essays on Fantastic Literature, appeared in 2011. Wolfe is Professor of Humanities and English at Roosevelt University in Chicago.

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

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