Bram Stoker Award 2011 Official Press Release

Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Awards for Superior Achievement

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:

Jury Chair Emails:

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

*new categories this year

For comprehensive details about the rules and process for submissions, please visit the HWA website. http://www.horror.org/stokerules-10.htm

The Jury will consider all works submitted up to 31 December 2011 but, due to the reading time required before our Short list is submitted on 15 January 2012, we strongly recommend that if at all possible authors, editors and publishers submit works for consideration to the Jury no later than 30 November.

Tracy L. Carbone is the primary contact. Please contact her at tracy@tracylcarbone.com for any questions about the award.