HWA 2013 Specialty Press Award Goes to Gray Friar Press
Gray Friar Press, of Whitby, U.K., will receive the Horror Writers Association’s Specialty Press Award for 2013. The Award will be presented during the Bram Stoker Awards® Banquet, to be held this during the World Horror Convention in Portland, Oregon, on May 10, 2014.
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 Horror Writers Association (HWA) Board.
Gary Fry, founder and owner of Gray Friar, had this to say: “Gray Friar Press started out as a bit of a lark, with me — Gary Fry – when I produced a bunch of copies of a cheaply produced magazine to knock out online. I expected to sell 20 copies but was encouraged when I sold nearly 200. I promptly decided to do a second issue, and although sales dipped a bit, it still exceeded my expectations. At the time, I also had an idea for a bumper horror anthology in which contemporary authors build on the techniques of their predecessors by writing modern fiction informed by classic tropes. The result was the widely ambitious anthology Poe’s Progeny, which celebrates the great and the good from both past and present. It set GFP on its way. Since then, I’ve put out three or four books a year, focusing on a modest stable of authors I’ve admired for a long time. In between single author titles, I’ve dropped up more anthologies, occasionally edited by myself or by peers who’ve approached me with an appealing idea. I was really delighted to achieve Bram Stoker Award® recognition when Lisa Morton’s The Castle of Los Angeles (the first and only novel I’ve published thus far) picked up a gong for First Novel (shared), but this latest acknowledgement — Specialty Press Award — feels extra special, a vindication of some of the half-crazed, improvisatory ideas a young man from England had back in 2003. I never planned any of this; it just kind of happened. But sometimes the good things unfold that way, and I’ve never regretted the decision to form GFP and, I hope, bring some dark joy to the world. To be recognised in this way for having such fun feels criminal somehow, but hell, I’ll take the gong and dedicate it to all the fine folk I’ve worked with down the years, as well as GFP’s modest customer base. You’re all the business! And thanks, HWA — you rock, too.”
For more about Gray Friar Press, please visit their website at http://www.grayfriarpress.com .
The Horror Writers Association is a worldwide organization promoting dark literature and its creators. It has over 1200 members who write, edit and publish professionally in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, games, films, comics, and other media.
For more information about the HWA or the Bram Stoker Awards, please visit www.horror.org. More information on the Bram Stoker Awards Banquet, which is part of World Horror Convention 2014 is available at http://www.stokers2014.org. Media enquiries to president@horror.org.
