Boston, MA (July 2019) — In recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson’s writing, and with permission of the author’s estate, The Shirley Jackson Awards, Inc. has 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. 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 2018 Shirley Jackson Awards were presented on Sunday, July 14, 2019, at Readercon 30, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Quincy, Massachusetts. Readercon Guests of Honor Tananarive Due and Stephen Graham Jones were the hosts for the ceremony. The winners of the 2018 Shirley Jackson Awards are:

NOVEL

Winner:  Little Eve, Catriona Ward (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group)

Nominees:

  • Everything Under, Daisy Johnson (Jonathan Cape)
  • In the Night Wood, Dale Bailey (John Joseph Adams Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
  • Little Eve, Catriona Ward (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group)
  • Social Creature, Tara Isabella Burton (Double Day/Raven Books)
  • We Sold Our Souls, Grady Hendrix (Quirk Books)

NOVELLA

Winner:  The Taiga Syndrome, Cristina Rivera Garza (Dorothy, a Publishing Project)

Nominees:

  • Judderman, DA Northwood (Gary Budden) (Dead Ink Books/Cinder House Publishing)
  • The Atrocities, Jeremy C. Shipp (Tor.com)
  • The Only Harmless Great Thing, Brooke Bolander (Tor.com)
  • The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky, John Hornor Jacobs (HarperCollins Publishers)
  • The Taiga Syndrome, Cristina Rivera Garza (Dorothy, a Publishing Project)

NOVELETTE

Winner:  “Help the Witch,” Tom Cox (Help the Witch)

Nominees:

  • “Adriftica,” Maria Dahvana Headley (Robots vs. Fairies)
  • “Blood and Smoke, Vinegar and Ashes,” D.P. Watt (The Silent Garden)
  • Ghostographs: An Album, Maria Romasco Moore (Rose Metal Press)
  • “Help the Witch,” Tom Cox (Help the Witch)

“The Black Sea,” Chris Mason (Beneath the Waves – Tales from the Deep, April 2018) 

SHORT FICTION

Winner:  “The Astronaut,” Christina Wood Martinez (Granta 142: Animalia)

Nominees:

  • “Back Seat,” Bracken MacLeod (Lost Highways)
  • “Hell,” David Hansen (The Charcoal Issue of Fairy Tale Review, March 2018)
  • “How to be a Horror Writer,” Tim Waggoner (Vastarien: A Literary Journal vol 1., issue 2 – Summer / Grimscribe Press)
  • “The Astronaut,” Christina Wood Martinez (Granta 142: Animalia)
  • “The Woman Dies,” Aoko Matsuda, translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton (online edition of Granta 144: genericlovestory)

 SINGLE-AUTHOR COLLECTION

Winner:  All the Fabulous Beasts, Priya Sharma (Undertow Publications)

Nominees:

  • All the Fabulous Beasts, Priya Sharma (Undertow Publications)
  • Drawn Up from Deep Places, Gemma Files (Trepidatio Publishing)
  • Garden of Eldritch Delights, Lucy A. Snyder (Raw Dog Screaming Press)
  • Quartier Perdu, Sean O’Brien (Comma Press)
  • The Human Alchemy, Michael Griffin (Word Horde)

EDITED ANTHOLOGY

Winner:  Robots vs Fairies, edited by Navah Wolfe and Dominik Parisien (Saga Press)

Nominees:

  • Chiral Mad 4: An Anthology of Collaborations, edited by Michael Bailey and Lucy A. Snyder (Written Backwards)
  • Robots vs Fairies, edited by Navah Wolfe and Dominik Parisien (Saga Press)
  • The Silent Garden: A Journal of Esoteric Fabulism, edited by The Silent Garden Collective (Undertow Publications)
  • This Dreaming Isle, edited by Dan Coxon (Unsung Stories)
  • Tiny Crimes: Very Short Tales of Mystery and Murder, edited by Lincoln Michel and Nadxieli Nieto (Black Balloon)

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.