2022 HWA Lifetime Achievement and Service Awards

2022 HWA Lifetime Achievement and Service Awards The Horror Writers Association (HWA) is pleased to announce the recipients of its various special awards: the Lifetime Achievement Award, the Specialty Press Award, the Richard Laymon President’s Award, the Silver Hammer Award, and the Mentor of the Year Award. These will be presented June 17, 2023 during the Bram Stoker Awards® Presentation at StokerCon®2023 in Pittsburgh, PA. Lifetime Achievement Award The recipients of the HWA’s Lifetime Achievement Award are:  Elizabeth Massie, Nuzo Onoh, and John Saul.  The Lifetime Achievement Award is presented periodically to an individual whose work has substantially influenced the…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Jessica Amanda Salmonson

Jessica Amanda Salmonson is a recipient of the World Fantasy Award, Lambda Award, and ReaderCon Certificate. She loves rats and chihuahuas (they're the same thing) and currently has three big monitor lizards. She's vegetarian, but no longer radically so, and strives to be something of a Zoharic scholar. Did you start out writing or working in the horror field, and if so why? If not, what were you writing initially and what compelled you to move into horror? I always wrote fantasy and horror. These few questions are all about being old, which is not primary in my life or…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with David Kuraria

Bryce Stevens w/a David Kuraria has edited and collaborated with some of the biggest names in the Australian and international horror fiction field. A former editor of Terror Australis Magazine and Bloodsongs Magazine with Christopher Sequeira and Steve Proposch, he has edited three volumes of Cthulhu Deep Down Under, Cthulhu Land of the Long White Cloud, War of the Worlds: Battleground Australia, and Caped Fear: Superhuman Horror Stories. Stevens has also written for international magazines and anthologies since the mid-1990s to much acclaim, with his work selected many times to appear on Ellen Datlow’s Years Best Horror Honourable Mention and…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Joe R. Lansdale

Joe R. Lansdale is the author of fifty novels and four hundred shorter works, including stories, essays, reviews, film and TV scripts, stage plays, introductions, and magazine articles, as well as a book of poetry. His work has been made into films, animation, and comics, and he has won numerous awards, including the Edgar, Raymond Chandler lifetime award, numerous Bram Stoker Awards, Lifetime Horror Award, and the Spur Award. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas with his wife, Karen, and pit bull, Rudy. The viewpoints expressed in this interview are the opinions of the individual being interviewed and do not necessarily…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Thomas Ha

Thomas Ha is a husband, father, and writer, roughly in that order. He primarily writes dark fantasy, with some elements of horror, and occasionally lighter fantasy and sci-fi. His work often focuses on family, home, and the surreal and disturbing nature of the banal. What inspired you to start writing? I’ve written on and off for most of my life, but I don’t think I started writing seriously until the last few years when my kids were born. I know it’s a cliché—that parenthood brings some kind of meaning or clarity—but in many cases, and I guess in my case,…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Graham Masterton

Graham Masterton was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1946. He is mainly recognized for his horror novels, but he has also been a prolific writer of thrillers, disaster novels, and historical epics, as well as one of the world’s most influential series of sex instruction books. He became a newspaper reporter at the age of 17 and was appointed editor of Penthouse magazine at only 24.  His first horror novel, The Manitou, was filmed with Tony Curtis playing the lead, and three of his short horror stories were filmed by Tony Scott for The Hunger TV series. Ten years ago,…

The Seers’ Table May 2023

Linda D. Addison, Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Community You can see any of “The Seers’ Table” posts since inception (March 2016) by going to the HWA main page and selecting menu item “Our Blogs / Diverse Works”. Tish Jackson recommends: Tamika Thompson has been writing for her whole adult life, crisscrossing genres until landing squarely into horror with her new fiction collection Unshod, Cackling and Naked. As someone who writes for the love of the written word, she wears all the hats—author, producer, and journalist—while creating worlds for readers to fall into. She carries degrees from Columbia and…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Introduction by K.P. Kulski

K.P. KULSKI is a Hawaii-born Korean-American author, historian, and career vampire of patriarchal tears. Channeling a lifelong obsession with history and the morose, she’s managed to birth the gothic horror novel Fairest Flesh and novella House of Pungsu. She bartered nine years of her life to the U.S. Navy and Air Force for food and later taught college history to a captive audience. Trapped by a force field, she currently resides in the woods of Northeast Ohio where she (probably) brews potions and talks to ghosts. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter: @garnetonwinter or visit garnetonwinter.com.   API/ANHPI Heritage Month…

Celebrating Our Elders: An Introduction by Linda D. Addison

Linda D. Addison, award-winning author of five collections, including How To Recognize A Demon Has Become Your Friend, the first African-American recipient of the HWA Bram Stoker Award®, received the HWA Mentor of the Year Award, the HWA Lifetime Achievement Award and SFPA Grand Master of Fantastic Poetry. Her site: www.LindaAddisonWriter.com. Introduction:  HWA Celebrating Our Elders interview series by Linda D. Addison The word wisdom is often used when talking about Elders, but what does that mean? Of all the meanings for this word, common sense is one that stood out to me. When we say someone has good common sense,…

Poets of the Dark: Interview with Denise Dumars

Denise Dumars has published hundreds of poems in journals, magazines, and anthologies, as well as authoring several volumes of poetry. She has been nominated for the Rhysling Award for speculative poetry several times, the Dwarf Stars award for poems of under 10 lines, and her book, Paranormal Romance: Poems Romancing the Paranormal, was nominated for the Elgin award. She is currently nominated for the Pushcart Prize. A retired college English professor, Denise is a fulltime writer now, writing fiction and nonfiction as well as poetry. Denise speaks on poetry and reads poetry at various conferences and conventions, including the The…

Poets of the Dark: Interview with Amanda Worthington

Amanda Worthington is a writer of the speculative whose work is alternately dark and whimsical. When she's not writing, she's probably enjoying the great outdoors, reading, working a crossword, or cuddling one of her 3 floofy cats. Her newest release is No Quarter: A Novella in Verse. What sparked your interest in horror poetry? Was there a particular event or work that inspired you to delve into the darker side of poetry? When I was about 12, I returned home from school one day and confessed that I hated reading because it was boring. My bibliophile mother would have none of…

Poets of the Dark: Interview with Colleen Anderson

Colleen Anderson is a Canadian author writing fiction and poetry and has had two collections and over 300 poems published in such venues as Grievous Angel, Polu Texni, The Future Fire, HWA Poetry Showcase and many others. She is a member of HWA and SFPA and a Canada Council grant recipient for writing. She has performed her work before audiences in the US, UK and Canada and has placed in the Balticon, Rannu, Crucible and Wax poetry competitions. Colleen also enjoys editing and co-edited Canadian anthologies Playground of Lost Toys (Aurora nominated) and Tesseracts 17, and her solo anthology Alice…

REVIEW: Whalefall by Daniel Kraus

Daniel Kraus’ novel, WHALEFALL, was reviewed by the HWA’s Mental Health Initiative Notable Works readers. On its surface, WHALEFALL is a story of Jay Gardiner, a young man swallowed by a sperm whale. His determination to escape the whale is charted on one timeline, while the backstory of significant life events is traced on another. Jay is Jonah, his old self annihilated in the belly of the beast, and his biblical journey becomes something deeply personal. The dive is not just into the ocean, but into the unexplored depths of Jay’s depression, grief, survivor guilt, abuse, and most importantly, reaction to…

Poets of the Dark: Interview with Madison McSweeney

Madison McSweeney is the author of The Doom That Came to Mellonville (Filthy Loot), The Forest Dreams With Teeth (Demain Publishing), and the poetry chapbook Fringewood (Alien Buddha Press). Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies like Zombie Punks F*ck Off (Weirdpunk/CLASH), American Gothic Short Stories (Flame Tree), and Nightmare Sky (Death Knell Press). She lives in Ottawa, Canada, tweets from @MMcSw13 and blogs at www.madisonmcsweeney.com What sparked your interest in horror poetry? Was there a particular event or work that inspired you to delve into the darker side of poetry? The first poem I can remember writing back in primary school was super spooky, so I think I’ve always been this way. I was…

Poets of the Dark: Interview with Suzanne Reynolds-Alpert

Suzanne Reynolds-Alpert is a Technical Services Librarian who writes short fiction and poetry in the horror, scifi, and dark fantasy genres. Her short stories have appeared in the anthologies Dastardly Damsels (forthcoming), Wicked Women, The Final Summons, and Killing It Softly (Vol.1). Read her poetry in the HWA Poetry Showcase Vol. VI, the anthologies Beneath Strange Stars and Wicked Witches, and in The Wayfarer: A Journal of Contemplative Literature. She published a short collection of poetry, Interview with the Faerie (Part One) and Other Poems of Darkness and Light in 2013. When not working, Suzanne can be found reading, exploring…

Poets of the Dark: Interview with Austin Gragg

Austin Gragg is a queer writer, poet, and stay-at-home dad. He’s been a finalist and multi-honorable mention in the Writers of the Future Contest, and Publishers Weekly has praised Austin’s dark fantasy as “decadent”. Austin spent four years working on the venerable Space & Time Magazine (Est. 1966) and closed his time there with a two-issue run as editor-in-chief. Formerly, Austin has been a public librarian, digital literacy instructor, and IT guy of all stripes. He studied creative writing at UMKC and lives in his hometown of Independence, MO with his partner, daughter, and four lovely, obnoxious cats. What sparked…

Poets of the Dark: Interview with Timothy P. Flynn

Timothy P. Flynn is a dark poet from Massachusetts. His previous poetry resides in Space and Time magazine, Anthocon’s book collections: Anthology Years 1-3, Wicked Tales, Wicked Creatures, Scifaikuest, haikuniverse, Haiku Journal and the HWA Poetry Showcase Vol 5 & Vol 6, and in the current HWA Poetry Showcase Vol 9. Flynn's first chapbook, Embrace the Madness, is available via eBook on Amazon. He is a member of the New England Horror Writers, an Affiliate member of the HWA, and recipient of the 2021 HWA Dark Poetry Scholarship. Follow him on Twitter: @TimothyPFlynn or on Instagram: instagram.com/timothypflynnwriter What sparked your…

Poets of the Dark: Interview with Steven Clapp

Steven Clapp is a horror and speculative fiction author from Southern California.  His past publication credits include a poem in the Horror Writers Association poetry anthology, Poetry Showcase Vol. 9 along with several short stories published in San Diego Writers Ink's annual anthology, A Year in Ink (Vol.12-15) as well as winning San Diego Writers Ink's Edgar Allan Poe Short Story Contest in 2018. Prior to that, his story "Freak"  was published in the Australian e-zine The Mind Creative. April, 2014) What sparked your interest in horror poetry? Was there a particular event or work that inspired you to delve…
Nuts and Bolts: Writing Tips From Master of Horror Joe R. Lansdale

Nuts and Bolts: Writing Tips From Master of Horror Joe R. Lansdale

Nuts and Bolts: Writing Tips From Master of Horror Joe R. Lansdale By Tom Joyce Joe R. Lansdale is the author of nearly four dozen novels, including Rusty Puppy, the Edgar Award-winning The Bottoms, Sunset and Sawdust, and Leather Maiden. He has received nine Bram Stoker Awards, the American Mystery Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature. He lives with his family in Nacogdoches, Texas. Whether it’s horror, a western, or a crime thriller, you’ll never get bored reading a Joe R. Lansdale story. In this month’s edition of “Nuts & Bolts,” the splatterpunk pioneer and multi-genre legend…

Poets of the Dark: Interview with Lori R. Lopez

Lori R. Lopez wears many hats as an award-winning Author and Poet.  She is also an Artist, Songwriter-Musician, Actress, Filmmaker, Tree-Hugger, Activist, Vegan, and Animal-Lover.  Lori roamed graveyards as a kid and conducted funerals for dead birds, squirrels, insects and spiders.  Her offbeat books include The Dark Mister Snark, An Ill Wind Blows, Darkverse:  The Shadow Hours, Odds & Ends, The Fairy Fly, Leery Lane, and The Witchhunt.  Stories and verse have appeared in The Sirens Call, Spectral Realms, Space & Time, JOURN-E, The Horror Zine, Weirdbook, Bewildering Stories, Impspired, Altered Reality, Aphelion, Oddball Magazine, Terror Tract; Anthologies such as…