JG Faherty to receive The Richard Laymon President’s Award from Horror Writers Association
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 JG Faherty to receive the 2013 Award. Rocky said, “JG (Greg) is one of the hardest working volunteers the HWA has ever had. In the past two years alone he has conceived and launched our Young Adult program, our Library Committee (which he Chairs) and its associated Literacy Program, and implemented a new database of librarians and authors to facilitate library outreach. For the past three years, he served as a Bram Stoker Awards® Jury Chair and as a Board Member. Since 2005 he has been a columnist appearing in every edition of our newsletter (that’s nearly 200 columns). There’s more but it is clear that in JG we have a member who leads by example.”
JG will receive the Award during the Bram Stoker Awards Banquet at the World Horror Convention in Portland, Oregon on May 10, 2014.
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, videogames, films, comics, and other media.
For more information about the HWA or the Bram Stoker Awards, please visit www.horror.org. Information on the Bram Stoker Awards Banquet is available at www.stokers2014.org. Media inquiries to president@horror.org.
JG Faherty is a professional Certified Resume Writer who previously worked in the areas of photography, laboratory science, sales, quality control management, and marketing. He is considered a national subject matter expert on resumes and other employment documents, and is frequently quoted in newspapers and websites. In addition to owning and operating his own company, www.a-perfect-resume.com, he has aided several other web-based resume firms get their start by creating their policies and procedures, and serves as a senior writer for some of the top resume firms in the country.
Although many of his previous jobs required extensive writing, JG never considered trying his hand at fiction until the age of 40. A lifelong fan of horror, science fiction, and fantasy, his writing naturally turned in that direction, although he has also extended his prose work into other areas, with multiple publications in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and several stints as an advice columnist in US and foreign magazines.
As a genre writer, JG also wrote book reviews for several years, appearing in Cemetery Dance, Horror World, and Dark Scribe Magazine. In addition, he served as the inaugural editor of Doorways Magazine.
JG’s first professional sale was a short story in 2005; since then, he’s gone on to have more than 50 short stories published in various magazines, ezines, and anthologies, including Cemetery Dance, Shroud Magazine, the HWA’s Blood Lite III: Aftertaste, Best New Zombie Tales, Slices of Flesh, Bound for Evil, Horror Library IV, Legends of the Mountain State 3 & 4, and Appalachian Winter Hauntings. His first novel, Carnival of Fear, came out in 2010, quickly followed by three others: Cemetery Club, The Burning Time, and his YA Paranormal Romance, Ghosts of Coronado Bay, which earned him a spot as a Bram Stoker Award nominee in 2011. In addition, he has had two novellas published. 2014 will see the release of a new novel, Hellrider, plus four novellas from Samhain Publishing.
JG began his involvement with the Horror Writers Association in 2002, and started working with the organization almost immediately as a volunteer for two Bram Stoker Award events. In 2005, he launched his Brain Matter column in the newsletter, followed six months later by his second column, It’s a Strange, Strange World. Both have run continuously ever since, with Brain Matter reaching the 100-column mark this month. In 2006, while assisting the Bram Stoker Award Committee, JG created a well-received multi-media presentation for the banquet.
In addition to being an Active Member of the HWA, JG holds active status in the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, and Romance Writers of America. He became a Board Member in the HWA in 2011, and has since launched the YA program, Library Committee (which he Chairs) and its associated Literacy Program, and implemented a new database of librarians and authors to facilitate regional and local member appearances. For the past three years, he served as a Bram Stoker Award Jury Chair, and in 2013 he helped coordinate a team that organized a series of interviews with Bram Stoker Award Weekend guests of honor to be shown during the broadcast and posted on YouTube. Also in 2013, working together with a team from the NY/Long Island chapter, he organized the HWA’s first presence at New York Comic Con.
