The Seers’ Table February 2025

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 the menu item “HWA Publications/Blogs/Seers’ Table.”   Geneve Flynn recommends: Author photo credit: Ayida Shonibar Ayida Shonibar (she/they) is an Indian-Bengali immigrant who grew up in Europe and currently works in North America. They write dark and wistful speculative fiction about misfits, monsters, mischief-makers. Spanning genres and age categories, Shonibar’s short stories, essays, and poetry have appeared in various publications. Their writing has been supported by a…

Something New, Something Old, Something Different: HWA Celebrating Black History Month 2025

The worldview of horror writers, editors, screenwriters, etc. population is a plethora of different groups. The definition of groups within a demographic is large and multi-faceted. One thing horror creators have in common is they want their work to generate a sense of fear or discomfort in the reader or viewer. This work is influenced by the experiences of the group in the world and their individual lives. Each creator’s work is flavored by the disturbing aspects of their life and the world around them. The HWA runs a monthly series each year highlighting horror writers and editors, etc. from different marginalized groups.

HWA discount for new Authors Guild membership

The Horror Writers Association is pleased to announce a new discount for HWA Members in partnership with the Authors Guild. The Authors Guild has extended a special discount for HWA Members. Any HWA member who is newly joining the Authors Guild will receive a 20% discount on new membership at the Authors Guild. The discount code will be available on the Members-Only Discounts page.

The HWA’s Library Advisory Council Announces the 2024 recipients of the YAWN Endowment

The Horror Writers Association’s Library Advisory Council is proud to announce the 2024 recipients of the Young Adults Write Now (YAWN) Endowment. This endowment is provided by the Horror Writers Association and is aimed at supporting teen writing programs in libraries as part of its ongoing dedication to furthering young adult literacy. We received a large number of excellent applications last year and are heartened by the number of libraries currently prioritizing teen writing programs. 

NUTS & BOLTS: Interview With Kasey and Joe R. Lansdale

Whether they come by way of Oz, Wonderland, or the Brothers Grimm, nightmare-inducing children’s stories are the gateway for many nascent fans into the strange, terrifying, and delightful genre of horror fiction. Joe R. Lansdale took a crack at children’s horror fiction with the Ray Bradbury-influenced Something Lumber This Way Comes, which is being rereleased by Pandi Press this month. Kasey Lansdale, executive editor of Pandi Press, provides some useful information about the publishing industry for aspiring authors in this month’s edition of Nuts & Bolts.  And Joe gives some tips on writing children’s fiction.

The 2024 Bram Stoker Awards® Preliminary Ballot Announced

The 2024 Bram Stoker Awards® Preliminary Ballot Announced The Horror Writers Association (HWA) is pleased to announce the Preliminary Ballot for the 2024 Bram Stoker Awards®. The HWA is the premier writer’s organization in the horror and dark fiction genre, with more than 2,000 members. We have presented the Bram Stoker Awards in various categories since 1987. For the full ballot please see HERE. Works on this ballot are not referred to as “nominees” or “finalists.” Only works appearing on the Final Ballot may be referred to as “nominated works” and their authors as “finalists.”  The HWA Board and the…

In Dreams: A Tribute To David Lynch

Written by Jonathan Lees “This whole world is wild at heart and weird on top.” -- Barry Gifford Echoing from the smokestacks of an industrial plant, crawling in a severed ear on a freshly cut, watered lawn, or scrawled within the torn diary pages of a troubled teenager, David Lynch sought out the inexplicable side of human nature, not to understand it, but to reinterpret its absurdity and beauty with the same fiery passion of two forbidden lovers escaping down the dividing lines of a dark highway. “I don’t know why people expect art to make sense. They accept the…

Horror Writers Association Gets 10 Year Commitment from Pitt Library System for StokerCon

The Horror Writers Association (HWA) and the University of Pittsburgh Library System (ULS) are excited to announce a new chapter in their collaboration leading up to StokerCon.  Building on their roles as Marquee Sponsor in 2023 and Raven Sponsor in 2024, the ULS has committed to a ground-breaking 10-year Legacy Sponsorship starting with StokerCon 2025.

Nuts & Bolts: Author Clay McLeod Chapman on Building a Catalogue

The market is crowded, the rules of social media are constantly changing, and the logistics of building a catalogue are more complicated than ever. The good news, according to author Clay McLeod Chapman, is that time-tested strategies such as supporting other authors and finding a unique voice will still get the job done. In this month’s edition of Nuts & Bolts, he gives advice for beginning authors about getting their material in print.

In Memoriam: Bruce Boston

Bruce Boston: an Appreciation by Mary A. Turzillo Bruce David Boston, emperor of the weird, the esoteric, the absurd.  Once a year at least, my husband Geoffrey Landis and I would sit around the table in his and Marge Simon's house in Ocala, drinking wine and eating cheesecake or dried fruit.  The conversations were esoteric, comical, scandalous, divine.  There were other meetings, although as years went by, Bruce became more retiring and skipped Conference on the Fantastic, where he'd been a Creative, and other conferences where he would have been lionized, and even StokerCon.             There was no one like Bruce.  His work was galactic and…

The Seers’ Table December 2024

  Kate Maruyama, Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Committee.   We have some rich reading in time to buy gifts for friends, dig in! You can see any of “The Seers’ Table” posts since inception (March 2016) by going to the HWA main page and selecting the menu item “HWA Publications / Blogs / Seers’ Table.” Linda D. Addison recommends: Ao-Hui Lin enjoys finding terror in the day-to-day of domestic life, particularly in motherhood, which is why she doesn’t want her children reading her fiction. The truth was frightening enough. When she’s not at her day job, writing AI…

Nuts & Bolts: “Rambo” Creator David Morrell Discusses His Mentor

Before he could create Vietnam veteran John J. Rambo in First Blood, thriller and horror author David Morrell had to find that pesky “ferret.” That’s how his mentor Philip Klass, aka legendary science fiction author William Tenn, used to describe it. Professor Klass, who’d taken David under his wing at Penn State University, used to say that if you’re a writer, a dominant emotion fuels your craft. No exceptions. It could be anger or joy. Sorrow or lust. Like it or not, you’re stuck with it because it’s an integral part of you. The professor compared it to a ferret rooting around in your psyche. Elusive. Ravenous. And worst of all, unwilling to be found.

The Seers’ Table November 2024

The Seers Table! November 3, 2024 by HWAWeb Linda B. 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 the menu item “HWA Publications / Blogs / Seers’ Table.” Tish Jackson recommends: Sami Ellis is a queer horror writer from the Carolinas with a message. Her debut novel, Dead Girls Walking, can be considered a slasher novel but encompasses themes of coming of age, bullying, and problematic family dynamics. The main character is on a mission to find out…

The Seers’ Table October 2024

Kate Maruyama, Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Community Spooky season is here with a wonderful variety of flavors of horror! Dig into stirring poetry, creep through some short stories, sample some body horror of a debut novelist, and enter a slow burn of a thriller horror just as it gets hot.   Linda Addison recommends: Screenshot Corey Niles was born and raised in the Rust Belt. His debut novel, Blood & Dirt, was released in August 2022. His poetry and short fiction have appeared in over twenty publications, including Nightmare Magazine, Ghost Orchid Press, and Lycan Valley Press. He…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: DO GO IN THE BASEMENT

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: DO GO IN THE BASEMENT BY TIM WAGGONER   When I was child in the mid-1960s to the mid-1970’s, I attended a Quaker church in my small southwestern Ohio town. My parents, as far as I know, never attended a church (at least not as adults). My maternal grandmother and great-grandmother did, however, and for reasons I’m not entirely clear on, my parents let them take me. I mostly went to Sunday school, though. My family thought it was too difficult for kids to sit through a full church service, and they didn’t make me try. I did…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: UNDERWORLD CONNECTIONS

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: UNDERWORLD CONNECTIONS By Lee Murray   Another spooky season is upon us and, once again, I’m scratching my head, trying to come up with something to contribute to our HWA Halloween Haunts blog. Because, as I’ve said many times before, Halloween isn’t really a thing down here in Aotearoa New Zealand. There are lots of reasons: the mostly secular nature of the nation, the bouncy southern hemisphere spring-lamb timing, and the fact that uncanny supernatural things are a part of our everyday, so perhaps we don’t see the need for a unique celebration of the macabre. Very few…

Halloween Haunts: THE LEGEND OF STINGY JACK

Halloween Haunts: THE LEGEND OF STINGY JACK by Debra Every   Herein lies a tale fit nary for babe nor child. Only the brave shall know the legend of Stingy Jack. In a town long gone, nestled ‘tween the McGillycuddy Reeks of Killarney, lived John Finnegan O’Connell, a blacksmith by trade; a wastrel by pleasure. Born under a black moon, he grew from churlish child to mean-spirited man. A trickster. A drunkard. A miser of coin and conscience. He stole bread from the sick, clothes from the poor, coin from the clergy. And ne’er did he help his brethren in…

Halloween Haunts: The Great Pumpkin Massacre

Halloween Haunts: The Great Pumpkin Massacre By Paul Carro   Okay, we all know one. A neighbor. Yeah, that neighbor. The one that might not quite be a demon but certainly knows them personally. My neighbor (let’s call him Toby) was my friend by proximity. He lived two doors down from me, but make no mistake, in any other universe, I would have run in the other direction were I to encounter him in the streets. It is with some pride that I admit I survived the Toby experience. Then again, I became a horror author, so I guess we…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: ABRACADABRA, I KNOW WHO I AM

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: ABRACADABRA, I KNOW WHO I AM Rosemary Thorne   I remember my name and the year I was born. My beautiful house is so nearby that if I close my eyes, I can feel the familiar shine that leads to its shape. No, seriously, I’ve always had a prodigious memory, I know every detail of my life exactly as she wrote them back then: the smell of the rose bushes, the vivid color of the petals at sunset, the drops of blood on the wooden desk, her sudden flat face covered in white powder jumping over me, and…

Halloween Haunts: The Horror We Share

Halloween Haunts: The Horror We Share By Naching T. Kassa   Every time Halloween season comes around, I think of my dad and how he introduced me to horror. My mom, the kindest person I have ever known, wasn’t very fond of our favorite genre. She’d been terrified after seeing Psycho for the first time and lost all interest in anything that wasn’t Universal Horror or Kolchak the Nightstalker. My dad, on the other hand, had been a big fan of drive-in movies and had watched them as a teen in the 50s. I think I was three when he…