Bad Moon Books, of Garden Grove, California, and Hippocampus Press of New York, New York will both receive the Horror Writers Association’s Specialty Press Award for 2011. The award will be presented during the gala Bram Stoker Awards™ Banquet to be held this year in Salt Lake City on March 31.

The annual Specialty Press Award recognizes a publisher outside the mainstream New York City publishing community that specializes in dark-themed fiction. Winners are typically “small presses” specializing in limited editions, small print runs, or the work of new and relatively unknown authors. The winner of the award is determined by a majority vote of the HWA Board of Trustees.

Roy Robbins’s Bad Moon Books emphasizes horror and publishes novels, novellas, single-author collections, and poetry. They publish both finely-bound limited editions and trade editions, and their authors have included Clive Barker, Bruce Boston, Kealan Patrick Burke, Michael Louis Calvillo, Scott Edelman, John Everson, Nate Kenyon, Gregory Lamberson, John Little, Lisa Mannetti, Lisa Morton, Gene O’Neill, Gord Rollo, John Skipp and Cody Goodfellow, David Niall Wilson, and many others.

Bad Moon was started by Robbins, who is also a genre specialist bookseller, in 2007; their first title was Vampire Outlaw of the Milky Way by Weston Ochse. Since then, four of their books have won Bram Stoker Awards™, and their books have also received Black Quill Awards and numerous Bram Stoker Awards™ nominations.

Derrick Hussey’s Hippocampus Press specializes in classic horror with an emphasis on the works of H. P. Lovecraft and other pulp writers of the 1920s and 1930s. They publish novels, collections, anthologies, non-fiction and poetry, mostly in trade editions, and they also publish the periodicals Dead Reckonings and the Lovecraft Annual. Authors published by Hippocampus include Algernon Blackwood, Ramsey Campbell, Lord Dunsany, Thomas Ligotti, H. P. Lovecraft, H. L. Mencken, A. Merritt, Adam Niswander, W. H. Pugmire, Clark Ashton Smith, Jonathan Thomas, and other authors, both classic and contemporary.

Hussey started Hippocampus in 1999 with S. T. Joshi’s annotated edition of Supernatural Horror in Literature by H. P. Lovecraft. In 2010, Hippocampus Press received a Nightmare Award, and their publications have also won a Black Quill Award and been nominated for two International Horror Guild Awards, the Spectrum Award, and the Bram Stoker Award. They have also published a five-volume edition of Lovecraft’s essays, the “Lovecraft’s Library” series (classic works which inspired Lovecraft), and the definitive two-volume biography of Lovecraft, I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft, by S. T. Joshi.

Past winners of the Specialty Press Award include Dark Regions Press, Tartarus Press, Delirium Books, Earthling Publications, PS Publishing, and Bloodletting Press. Cemetery Dance won the first Specialty Press Award in 1997.

The Horror Writers Association periodically gives The Silver Hammer Award to an HWA volunteer who has done a truly massive amount of work for our organization, often unsung and behind the scenes. It was instituted in 1996, and is decided by a vote of HWA’s Board of Trustees.

The award is so named because it represents the careful, steady, continuous work of building HWA’s “house” – the many institutional systems that keep the organization functioning on a day-to-day basis. The award itself is a chrome-plated hammer with an engraved plaque on the handle. The chrome hammer is also a satisfying allusion to The Beatles’ song, “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” a miniature horror story in itself.

The Board has voted to give the 2011 Award to Guy Anthony De Marco, who currently serves on the web team, and does a magnificent job of managing the web credentials, among many other duties. Prior to this he served as Chapter Chair. Guy has served the Association and its membership for the majority of the time since he joined in 2007.

HWA’s Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Marge Simon, commented, “The HWA is a success because of the tremendous workload carried by our many volunteers, mostly unnoticed. Guy is an exemplar of these efforts and the Board is pleased to recognise him.”

Guy will receive The Hammer Award at the Bram Stoker Awards™ Banquet in Salt Lake City on 31 March 2012.

The Horror Writers Association is a worldwide organization promoting dark literature and its creators. It has over 700 members who write, edit and publish professionally in fiction, nonfiction, videogames, films, comics, and other media.

An Affiliate Member of HWA, Guy Anthony De Marco is a speculative fiction author, musician, teacher and computer expert. His short stories have appeared in several online and print magazines, including Necrotic Tissue (three issues), OG’s Speculative Fiction and AlienSkin. Guy’s stories also appear in the Help Anthology, two entries in 365 Days of Horror from Pill Hill Press, and the Every Day Fiction Two anthology. He lives in Nebraska with his wife, Tonya, and has passed along the writing bug to his children, Kelsey, Caitlin and Eryk.

The Horror Writers Association (HWA), the international association of writers, publishing professionals, and supporters of horror literature, in conjunction with the Bram Stoker Family Estate and the Rosenbach Museum & Library, have announced the nominees for the Bram Stoker Vampire Novel of the Century Award™, to be presented at the Bram Stoker Awards Banquet at World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City, Utah, on March 31, 2012. The Award will mark the centenary of the death in 1912 of Abraham (Bram) Stoker, the author of Dracula.

A jury composed of writers and scholars selected, from a field of more than 35 preliminary nominees, the six vampire novels that they believe have had the greatest impact on the horror genre since publication of Dracula in 1897. Eligible works must have been first published between 1912 and 2011 and published in or translated into English.

The nominees are:

The Soft Whisper of the Dead by Charles L. Grant (1983). Grant (1946-2006)was a prolific American writer of what he called “dark fantasy” and “quiet horror,” writing under six pseudonyms as well as his own name. Grant also edited numerous horror and fantasy anthologies. The novel is part of Grant’s series of 12 books set in his fictional small town Oxrun Station, Connecticut. Grant was a former president of Horror Writers Association and received its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999.

Salem’s Lot by Stephen King. First published in 1975, this was only the second work by the now-legendary American author of dozens of fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and horror stories, comics, and novels. Set in the town of Jerusalem’s Lot, it tells of a man’s return to his hometown, where he finds a plague of vampirism. The book has twice been made into television mini-series and has been recorded by the BBC. King’s work has won countless Bram Stoker Awards™ from HWA, and King (1947- ), a lifelong New England resident, was recognized with HWA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002.

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. First published in 1954, the novel is set in the mid-1970′s, when a plague has swept the world, bringing with it zombie-like creatures identified as vampires. Richard Neville, the book’s protagonist, may be the last living human. The work has been filmed three times under various titles, most recently in 2007, under its original title, starring Will Smith. Matheson (1926- ), an American, has written screenplays as well as short and long fiction, and many of his works have been filmed or made into teleplays. He wrote frequently for The Twilight Zone in its heyday. Matheson received HWA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990.

Anno Dracula by Kim Newman first appeared in 1992. The novel imagines an alternate history in which Van Helsing and his cohorts failed in their attempt to rid England of Dracula. In this timeline, Dracula went on to marry Queen Victoria, ushering in an era of vampire aristocracy in England and elsewhere. The book is followed by two other novels and a number of shorter works set in the Anno Dracula universe, all meticulously researched to include numerous historical details and many characters of Victorian and more recent popular literature. Newman (1959- ) is an English writer of fantasy and horror, as well as reference books in the field, and frequently appears as a host and critic for the BBC and other media.

Interview with the Vampire by Southern American author Anne Rice first appeared in 1976 and achieved enormous popularity, selling more than 8 million copies. The book introduces the vampires Louis and Lestat, who, along with a dozen other unique individual vampires, appear in a long series by Rice known as the Vampire Chronicles. The novel was filmed in 1994 starring Tom Cruise as Lestat and Brad Pitt as Louis; another work in the series, Queen of the Damned, was filmed in 2002; the novel was also produced as a Broadway musical in 2006. Rice (1941- ) has written numerous other gothic fantasy novels, selling more than 100 million copies worldwide, and has won many awards, including HWA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003.

Hotel Transylvania by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, published in 1978, is the first of a 25-book (so far) series featuring le Comte de Saint Germain, a 2000+-year-old vampire, whose adventures in many historical periods are recounted. This novel overlaps in many details with the historical facts of le Comte de Saint-Germain, a mysterious figure . An American writer, Yarbro (1942- ) publishes three or four books a year, under various pseudonyms, in a variety of genres, including mysteries and romance tales. She was awarded HWA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008.

The winning book will be announced on March 31, 2012. HWA will also celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary on that date.

The Richard Laymon President’s Award for Service was instituted in 2000 and is named in honor of Richard Laymon, who died in 2000 while serving as the Horror Writer’s Association’s President. As its name implies, it is given by the HWA’s sitting President. The Award is presented to a volunteer who has served HWA in an especially exemplary manner and has shown extraordinary dedication to the organization.

HWA’s President Rocky Wood has chosen Karen Lansdale to receive the 2011 Richard Laymon Award. Karen is recognized as one of the Founders of the HWA – indeed the Award is for her dedication and hard work at that time. “It’s clear that Karen was the true driving force behind the successful launch of the HWA,” Wood said.

According to one prominent writer who was there at the time, “In the eighties horror fans and writers were growing in leaps and bounds. It was a boom time. Rick McCammon thought it might be nice if there was an organization that catered to those writers. He had an idea called HOWL, The Horror and Occult Writers League. He put an ad out to see if there was interest. There was. A lot. Rick recognized he didn’t have time to deal with such an endeavor. He told Karen Lansdale about his idea, and she jumped at it. She took his list and made a simple photo-copied newsletter and sent it those addresses. The response was phenomenal. At that moment in time Horror was as big as the Beatles.Over the next few months Karen set about acquiring articles from numerous writers in the field, and the organization was changed to The Horror Writers of America. Later, to The Horror Writer’s Association. She talked to editors about the new endeavor, wrote short articles about HWA for Mystery Scene, drummed up interest at conventions, and set the election of officers in motion. As it grew, Dean Koontz offered to take over, invest some of his own money in making it more professional, and from there it developed into what it is today. Without Karen’s contribution, and months of hard work, it wouldn’t have happened. This was before computers were knocking out newsletters in minutes by switching this and moving that. It was photo-copied, stapled, put in envelopes, addressed, stamped and mailed out by one person – Karen. The only thing Karen didn’t do was deliver the mail herself. She might have, but at that time she was holding down a full time job as a fire department dispatcher and didn’t have a mail pouch!”

Rocky Wood said, “In this 25th Anniversary year of the HWA’s incorporation, there is no better person to recognize than Karen, without whose drive we would not be celebrating that anniversary. For that sterling service I as President, and our entire membership, show our respect and gratitude by bestowing the Richard Laymon Award.”

Karen will receive the Award at the Bram Stoker Awards™ Banquet in Salt Lake City on March 31, 2012.

The Horror Writers Association is a worldwide organization promoting dark literature and its creators. It has over 700 members who write, edit and publish professionally in fiction, nonfiction, videogames, films, comics, and other media.

For more information about the HWA or the Bram Stoker Awards, please visit: Horror Writers Association. More information on the banquet is available here: Bram Stoker Awards Banquet

The Horror Writers Association has chosen two long-time icons of the genre to receive the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award this year. The award, given in recognition of the recipient’s overall body of work, will go to Rick Hautala and to Joe R. Lansdale.

Under his own name, Rick Hautala has written close to thirty novels, including the million-copy best seller Nightstone, as well as Winter Wake, The Mountain King, and Little Brothers. He has published two short story collections: Bedbugs and Occasional Demons. A new collection, The Back of Beyond, is due soon. He has had over sixty short stories published in a variety of national and international anthologies and magazines. Writing as A. J. Matthews, his novels include the bestsellers The White Room, Looking Glass, Follow, and Unbroken, all of which will be reprinted within the coming year or two by Dark Regions Press. His forthcoming books from Cemetery Dance Publications include Indian Summer, a new “Little Brothers” novella, as well as two novels, Chills and Waiting. He recently sold The Star Road, a science fiction novel co-written with Matthew Costello, to Brendan Deneen at Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s.

Born and raised in Rockport, Massachusetts, Rick is a graduate of the University of Maine in Orono with a Master of Arts in English Literature. He lives in southern Maine with author Holly Newstein. Combined, they have five sons, all of whom have grown up and moved out, leaving the house frighteningly quiet. Most of his books and stories — and all of them, soon — will be available in all major e-book formats from a variety of e-publishers.

Lifetime Achievement Award Committee member Christopher Golden had this to say about Hautala: “Rick Hautala is the horror writer’s horror writer. Since his first novel, Moondeath, was published in 1980, he has held the torch of the genre high, for all to see. At the height of the horror boom of the Eighties, he stood shoulder to shoulder with the giants of the era, perfecting the contemporary ghost story. With such novels as The Night Stone, Little Brothers, and Winter Wake, Hautala helped to influence a great many young writers who were just coming of age. Self-effacing and approachable, he has always combined a blue collar work ethic with literary sensibilities shaped by his love of Shakespeare and Hawthorne. His passion for the horror genre is second only to his love for writing, and all of these elements have conspired over decades to transform him into a determined mentor, offering critical feedback and quiet encouragement to many new authors as they begin their own careers. Over the course of more than thirty years, he has produced as many novels, both under his own name and as AJ Matthews. Hautala has also authored the scripts for award-winning short films, and dozens of short stories and novellas, including his wistful and unsettling masterwork, Miss Henry’s Bottles. Despite the mark he has made on the genre and his quiet mentorship of other writers, Rick has rarely been recognized for his work. Thus we are doubly pleased to present Rick Hautala with the HWA’s Lifetime Achievement Award.”

Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over thirty novels and numerous short stories. His work has appeared in national anthologies, magazines, collections, as well as numerous foreign publications. He has written for comics, film, newspapers, and internet sites. His work has been collected in eighteen short story collections, and he has edited or co-edited over a dozen anthologies. He has received the Edgar Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards™, The British Fantasy Award, the Grinzani Cavour Prize For Literature, the Herodotus Historical Fiction Award, The Inkpot Award for his contributions to Science Fiction and Fantasy, and many others. His novella Bubba Hotep was made into a cult film directed by Don Coscarelli, starring Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis. His story “Incident On and Off a Mountain Road” was made into a film for Showtime’s Masters of Horror. He has had numerous film options, and is currently co-producing several films, among them The Bottoms, based on his Edgar Award winning novel, with Bill Paxton and Brad Wyman, and The Drive-In with Greg Nicotero. He is Writer In Residence at Stephen F. Austin State University, and is the founder of the martial arts system, Shen Chuan, Martial Science and its affiliate, Shen Chuan Family System. He is a member of both the United States and International Martial Arts Hall of Fame. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas with his wife, dog, and two cats.

Lifetime Achievement Award Committee Chairman Del Howison noted of Lansdale: “I’m not quite sure how Joe R. Lansdale has time for anything except writing. If he stopped writing today his countless novels, short stories, comics, etc. would make for a library many authors could only dream of producing. But, of course, he won’t stop writing, not as long as he is breathing. It’s part of him. It may even be keeping him alive. It’s his Mojo for dealing with the world and putting in order those things that seem out of order. He knows the secret, everything is out of order and that is what Joe writes about. The first time I met Joe was … it really doesn’t matter when the first time anybody meets Joe is because from the moment of ‘Hello’ you are like family. But, you know how at family gatherings there is always that odd uncle or weird cousin? Well, that is Joe the author, a sense of humor with a jaundiced eye. His legion of fans love him for it and if you haven’t read him you’ll be hooked from the start. In a recent Fangoria article the author stated, ‘Lansdale is one of those authors who can be infuriating to other writers, because he is just so damn good.’ But that is wrong. Joe is not infuriating, he is inspiring. His prose be can heart-wrenching and atmospheric as in The Bottoms or so hilarious it can cause you to do a spit-take over your morning coffee while reading any of his Hap and Leonard books. I believe his secret is honesty. What he writes is from his heart and it is true. The Horror Writer’s Association is extremely proud to honor Joe Lansdale with the Lifetime Achievement Award.”

The Lifetime Achievement Award is the most prestigious of the Bram Stoker Awards, given by the HWA in acknowledgment of superior achievement not just in a single work but over an entire career. Past Lifetime Achievement Award winners include such noted authors as Stephen King, Anne Rice, Joyce Carol Oates, Ray Bradbury, F. Paul Wilson, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Brian Lumley, William F. Nolan, and Peter Straub. Winners must have exhibited a profound, positive impact on the fields of horror and dark fantasy, and be at least sixty years of age or have been published for a minimum of thirty-five years. Recipients are chosen annually by a committee; the 2011 Committee was chaired by author and editor Del Howison, and members were Christopher Golden, Jonathan Maberry, Yvonne Navarro, and Gene O’Neill.

The LAAs will be presented on March 31 as part of the Bram Stoker Awards presentation, and both Hautala and Lansdale will be present to accept. The awards will cap off “Celebrate HWA Day,” celebrating both the 25th Anniversary of HWA’s incorporation and the 25th presentation of the Bram Stoker Awards. The presentation will be held at the World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City, which takes place from March 29 to April 1st.

The Horror Writers Association is a worldwide organization promoting dark literature and its creators. Started in 1985, it has over 700 members who are writing professionally in fiction, nonfiction, videogames, films, comics, and other media.

The World Fantasy Convention 2011 was held in San Diego, California last weekend, where the winners were announced at the Awards Banquet. The judges this year were Andrew Hook, Sascha Mamczak, Mark Rich, Sean Wallace, and Kim Wilkins. And the winners were…

Life Achievement

Peter S. Beagle
Angélica Gorodischer

Novel

Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death (DAW)

Novella

Elizabeth Hand, “The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon” (Stories: All-New Tales)

Short Story

Joyce Carol Oates, “Fossil-Figures” (Stories: All-New Tales)

Anthology

Kate Bernheimer, ed., My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me (Penguin)

Collection

Karen Joy Fowler, What I Didn’t See and Other Stories (Small Beer Press)

Artist

Kinuko Y. Craft

Special Award—Professional

Marc Gascoigne, for Angry Robot

Special Award—Non-professional

Alisa Krasnostein, for Twelfth Planet Press

The Horror Writers Association is looking for submissions for screenplays in the horror genre that came out or will come out in 2011. This is a new category for the Stoker Awards this year. Here are the general award submission guidelines:

Categories: Novel, First Novel, Graphic Novel, Young Adult Novel, Long Fiction, Short Fiction, Fiction Collection, Screenplay, Poetry Collection, Anthology, Nonfiction

Each year, for the past twenty-four years, the Horror Writers Association (HWA) has presented the Bram Stoker Awards for Superior Achievement within the Horror Genre. The Awards are named in honor of Bram Stoker, the famous author of the seminal work of horror, Dracula. The Bram Stoker Awards were instituted immediately after the HWA’s incorporation in 1987.

In a bold move, this year the Twenty-Fifth Annual Bram Stoker Awards will now be partly Juried with one half of the shortlist being selected by a Jury for each of the categories, as opposed to the prior method of all nominees being selected by recommendation of the general membership. The HWA has also added new categories for Screenplay, Graphic Novel and Young Adult.

Half the Bram Stoker Awards nominees in each category will come from a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics within each category, and the remaining half by recommendations from the general HWA membership, which exceeds 550 members. The “Active” class of members (the HWA’s highest professional category of membership) then vote to determine the final award recipients. The awards are for “Superior Achievement” in works published in the preceding calendar year for each of the eleven categories listed above.

Fiction: To be eligible for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement, a work of fiction must exhibit intrinsic story values that by general agreement identify it as a work of dark fantasy, horror, or the occult. A work need not contain any supernatural element to be considered horror.

Nonfiction: To be eligible, a work of nonfiction – including but not limited to criticism, biography, autobiography, scholarly analysis, and reference – must be related to one or more of the above-mentioned three facets of the horror field.
Publishers and authors wishing to promote their works to a specific Jury are requested do so by first emailing the relevant Jury chair (listed below) with a query on how to submit works to that Jury (it is possible that your work is already under consideration).

Do NOT send hard copy books to HWA’s Post Office box or directly to Jurors without prior permission, as this will likely put you in breach of the anti-spamming rules and may disqualify your work.

To send in material, please contact the appropriate Jury Chair for each category listed below:

Novel – stokernovel@horror.org
First Novel – stokerfirstnovel@horror.org
Collection – stokercollection@horror.org
Anthology – stokerantho@horror.org
Graphic Novels – stokergraphicnovel@horror.org
Young Adult – stokeryanovel@horror.org
Long Fiction – stokerlongfic@horror.org
Short Fiction – stokershortfic@horror.org
Screenplays – stokerscreenplay@horror.org
Nonfiction – stokernonfic@horror.org
Poetry – stokerpoetry@horror.org

For comprehensive details about the rules and process for submissions, please visit: Stoker Rules