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 for an author’s overall body of work, will go to Brian Lumley and to William F. Nolan.
Brian Lumley’s first short story collection, The Caller of the Black, was published by Arkham House in 1971. Lumley went on to garner followers around the world for his series of Necroscope novels, which began in 1986. He has published dozens of short stories, including many in the Cthulhu Mythos begun by H. P. Lovecraft, and he is also the author of the popular “Titus Crow” and “Psychomech” stories. His books have been published in both mass market and small press limited editions, and his early titles command high prices in the collector’s market. He is the subject of 2002’s The Brian Lumley Companion (co-written with Stanley Wiater), and his most recent release is Harry and The Pirates: And Other Tales from the Lost Years (Tor, 2009). Lumley is a former President of the Horror Writers Association.
William F. Nolan is a true Renaissance man of literature, having written science fiction (including the immensely popular Logan’s Run series, the first volume of which was co-written with George Clayton Johnson), mysteries, screenplays, and non-fiction, but some of his most outstanding work as an editor and short fiction author has been in the horror genre. His 1984 collection Things Beyond Midnight was first published by Scream/Press (and since been reprinted by Babbage Press), and in 2003 Leisure Books published Dark Universe. As a screenwriter, Nolan co-wrote the legendary television film Trilogy of Terror, a highly-regarded adaptation of The Turn of the Screw (ABC, 1974), and 1976’s Burnt Offerings. In 2002, he was voted a “Living Legend in Dark Fantasy” by the International Horror Guild, and in 2006 he was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. Nolan most recently served as editor on the anthology The Bleeding Edge.
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, 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.
The awards will be presented on March 27, 2010 in conjunction with the World Horror Convention in Brighton, U.K. The convention will take place from March 25-28 at Brighton’s historic Royal Albion Hotel. For more information on the World Horror Convention, please visit their website: WHC 2010
