2021 Bram Stoker Awards® Winners

Denver, Colorado, May 16, 2021 The Horror Writers Association (HWA), the premier organization of writers and publishers of horror and dark fantasy, announces this year’s Bram Stoker Awards® winners at its first in-person ceremony during StokerCon™ at Denver, Colorado’s Curtis Hotel. “The Horror genre continues its amazing renaissance. We are truly in a golden period, with every category overflowing with tremendous works,” said John Palisano, HWA President. “The winners and finalists show a diverse group of amazing voices from new and veteran creators. Our HWA members and awards juries have shown dedication and objectivity to the selection process for outstanding…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Lee Murray

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Lee Murray is an author, editor, screenwriter, and poet from Aotearoa New Zealand. A USA Today Bestselling author, double Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson Award winner, her work includes military thrillers, the Taine McKenna Adventures, supernatural crime-noir series The Path of Ra (with Dan Rabarts), and short fiction collection, Grotesque: Monster Stories.  Lee is the curator-editor of eighteen volumes of dark fiction, among them Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women (with Geneve Flynn). Lee’s first poetry collection, Tortured Willows, is a collaboration with Angela Yuriko Smith, Christina Sng and Geneve Flynn. Read more at https://www.leemurray.info/

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Nadia Bulkin

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Nadia Bulkin is the author of the short story collection She Said Destroy (Word Horde, 2017). She has been nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award five times. She grew up in Jakarta, Indonesia with her Javanese father and American mother, before relocating to Lincoln, Nebraska. She has two political science degrees and lives in Washington, D.C.

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Grace Chan

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Grace Chan is an Aurealis and Norma K Hemming Award-nominated speculative fiction writer. She can’t seem to stop scribbling about brains, minds, space, technology, and identity. Her short fiction can be found in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Fireside, Aurealis, and many other places. Her debut novel, Every Version of You, will be published in August 2022.

Grace was born in Malaysia and lives in Melbourne, Australia. Her other interests include salt-and-vinegar anything and secretly filming her friends’ NYE karaoke highlights. In a decaffeinated state, she may cease to exist. You can find her online at www.gracechanwrites.com and on Twitter as @gracechanwrites.

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Elaine Cuyegkeng

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Elaine Cuyegkeng is a Chinese Filipino writer. She grew up in Manila where there are many, many creaky old houses with ghosts inside them. She loves eldritch creatures both real and imaginary, ’80s pop stars, and caffeinated drinks with too much sugar. She now lives in Melbourne with her partner, their faerie child and their two small cat children. She is the 2021 Eugie Foster Award recipient for “The Genetic Alchemist’s Daughter” and has been nominated for the BSFA, Aurealis and Ditmar Awards. She has been published in the Bram Stoker winning anthology Black Cranes:Tales of Unquiet Women, in Pseudopod, Strange Horizons, Lackington’s, The Dark, and Rocket Kapre. You can find her on @layangabi on Twitter.

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with J.A.W. McCarthy

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Photo by Jenny Jimenez

J.A.W. McCarthy is the author of Sometimes We’re Cruel and Other Stories (Cemetery Gates Media, 2021). Her short fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including Vastarien, LampLight, Apparition Lit, Tales to Terrify, and The Best Horror of the Year Vol 13 (ed. Ellen Datlow). She is Thai American and lives with her husband and assistant cats in the Pacific Northwest. You can call her Jen on Twitter @JAWMcCarthy, and find out more at www.jawmccarthy.com.

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Frances Lu-Pai Ippolito

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Frances Lu-Pai Ippolito is a Chinese American writer, judge, and mother based in Portland, Oregon. When she’s not spending time with her family outdoors, she’s crafting short stories in horror, sci-fi, fantasy, or whatever genre-bending she can get away with. Her work can be found in Nailed Magazine, Red Penguin’s Collections, Buckman Journal’s Issue 006, Flame Tree Press’s Asian Ghost Stories, Strangehouse’s Chromophobia, Moms Who Write’s Order of Us, and Death’s Garden Revisited. www.francesippolito.com.

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Yi Izzy Yu

In 2011, Yi Izzy Yu left Northern China for the US. Since then, she has taught Chinese and English in high schools and colleges, given birth to the now eight-year-old visual artist Frankie Lu Branscum, and published work in magazines ranging from New England Review to Samovar and in the collections of translated Chinese weird fiction: The Shadow Book of Ji Yun and Zhiguai. Currently, she lives outside of Pittsburgh, where she teaches and translates Chinese and investigates shadows. What inspired you to start writing? I love language. Always have. At the end of my undergraduate studies in China, for example, I spent six months in the…

Jewish Heritage in Horror: An Interview with Josh Malerman

JOSH MALERMAN is the New York Times best selling author of Bird Box and Daphne. He’s also one of two singer/songwriters for the band The High Strung. He lives in Michigan with his fiancée, the artist and musician, Allison Laakko. What inspired you to start writing? It’s been there forever. The draw to writing. I tried a novel in fifth grade. Still bothers me I didn’t finish it. Yet, it still took me till age 29 to finish my first. Before then: quasi comic books, stabs at short stories, and wholly earnest attempts at novels, none of which I finished.…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Tori Eldridge

Tori Eldridge is the SCIBA national bestselling author and Anthony, Lefty, and Macavity Awards finalist of the Lily Wong mystery thriller series—THE NINJA DAUGHTER, THE NINJA’S BLADE, and THE NINJA BETRAYED. Her shorter works appear in the inaugural reboot of WEIRD TALES magazine and horror, dystopian, and other literary anthologies. Her horror screenplay THE GIFT—which inspired DANCE AMONG THE FLAMES—earned a semi-finalist spot for the Academy Nicholl Fellowship. Before writing, Tori performed as an actress, singer, dancer on Broadway, television, and film, and earned a 5th degree black belt in To-Shin Do ninja martial arts. She is of Hawaiian, Chinese,…

Jewish Heritage in Horror: An Interview with Becky Spratford

Becky Spratford [MLIS] is a Readers' Advisor in Illinois specializing in serving patrons ages 13 and up. She trains library staff all over the world on how to match books with readers through the local public library. She runs the critically acclaimed RA training blog RA for All. She is under contract to provide content for EBSCO’s NoveList database and writes reviews for Booklist and a horror review column for Library Journal. Known for her work with horror readers, Becky is the author of The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Horror, Third Edition [ALA Editions, 2021]. You can follow Becky on…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Priya Sharma

Priya Sharma’s fiction has appeared venues such as Interzone, Black Static, Nightmare, The Dark and Tor. “Fabulous Beasts” was a Shirley Jackson Award finalist and won a British Fantasy Award for Short Fiction. Priya is a Shirley Jackson Award and British Fantasy Award winner,  and Locus Award finalist,  for “All the Fabulous Beasts”, a collection of her some of her work, available from Undertow Publications. “Ormeshadow”, her first novella (available from Tor), won a Shirley Jackson Award and a British Fantasy Award. Her stories have been translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Czech, and Polish. She has a novella out later this year from PS Publishing called "Pomegranates". More…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Ai Jiang

Ai Jiang is a Chinese-Canadian writer, an immigrant from Fujian, and an active member of HWA. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in F&SF, The Dark, PseudoPod, Jellyfish Review, Hobart Pulp, The Masters Review—among others. Find her on Twitter (@AiJiang_) and online (http://aijiang.ca). What inspired you to start writing? When I was younger, I was drawn to the fantastical romances I could never live, and so I started writing what I had imagined love and relationships would be like during earlier years in high school and found myself on Wattpad. But I left writing aside when I discovered love wasn't…

Jewish Heritage in Horror: An Interview with Brenda S. Tolian

Brenda S. Tolian, MFA ~ is a Gothic/ Horror writer from Southern Colorado. She is a member of the Denver Horror Collective, Horror Writers Association, Horror Writers Guild, AWP, and the Angela Carter Society. She is a graduate of Adams State University, Regis University, and a Doctoral Student of English Pedagogy- Literature at Murray State University. She collaborates with Alchemy Writers Workshop and is an instructor at Ouroboros Screaming. Her work has appeared in Haunted Mtl.com, the anthology 101 Proof Horror, the Denver Horror Collective’s anthology Consumed Tales Inspired by The Wendigo, The Jewish Book Of Horror, Twisted Pulp Magazine…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Vanessa Fogg

Vanessa Fogg is an American writer of Thai and Chinese descent, born and raised in the American Midwest. After years as a research scientist in molecular cell biology, she now works as a freelance scientific/medical writer and editor. She writes fantasy and science fiction as well as horror, and stories that bleed across genres. Her short fiction has appeared in Lightspeed, Daily Science Fiction, GigaNotoSaurus, The Future Fire, Translunar Travelers Lounge, and The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 4. Her fantasy novelette, The Lilies of Dawn, is available in print and ebook from Annorlunda Books. For a complete…

Jewish Heritage in Horror: An Interview with Aden Polydoros

Aden Polydoros is an author of YA dark fantasy and gothic horror novels, and has a bachelor's degree in English from Northern Arizona University. His most recent novel, The City Beautiful, was declared a Best YA Book of 2021 by New York Public Library, BookPage, Buzzfeed, and Tor.com, and was the winner of the 2022 Sydney Taylor Book Award for Young Adult fiction. His forthcoming gothic fantasy novel, Bone Weaver, comes out in September 2022 from Inkyard Press/HarperCollins. What inspired you to start writing? I’ve always been interested in writing and reading, but it wasn't until ninth grade or so…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Geneve Flynn

Geneve Flynn is an award-winning speculative fiction editor and author. She co-edited Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women with celebrated New Zealand author and editor Lee Murray. The anthology won the 2020 Bram Stoker Award® and 2020 Shirley Jackson Award. It also shortlisted for the British Fantasy, Aurealis, and Australian Shadows awards. Black Cranes is listed on Tor Nightfire’s Works of Feminist Horror and Locus magazine’s 2020 Recommended Reading List. Geneve was assistant editor for Relics, Wrecks, and Ruins, a speculative fiction anthology which is the legacy of Australian fantasy author Aiki Flinthart, and is in support of the Flinthart…

Jewish Heritage in Horror: An Interview with Maxwell Bauman

Maxwell Bauman is owner/ Editor-In-Chief of Door Is A Jar Literary Magazine. Maxwell Bauman earned his BA in English with a focus in Creative Writing from the University of Hartford (2011), and his MA in Fiction and MFA in Publishing from Wilkes University (2014/2015). Maxwell is a contributor to Chicken Soup for the Soul. He has written several horror books including The Anarchist Kosher Cookbook (Clash Books, 2017), The Mummy of Canaan (Clash Books, 2019), and House of Blood and Teeth (Nictitating Books, 2021). His Jewish sci-fi/ fantasy novella, The Giant Robots of Babel (Aggadah Try It Books) and YA…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Yvette Tan

Yvette Tan is one of the Philippines’ most celebrated horror writers. She’s written two collections, one in English and one in Tagalog, a feature film, and a ballet libretto, among others. Waking the Dead, her English collection, has just been reissued with a new cover and an extra story. Her story “The Last Moon” was part of the Philippine pavilion’s design in the 2021 Frankfurt Book Fair. She is currently a creative consultant to a game that highlights Filipino mythological creatures. Her works have been translated into Spanish, Czech, and Hungarian. What inspired you to start writing? I love reading,…

Jewish Heritage in Horror: An Interview with John Baltisberger

The author of War of Dictates, Abhorrent Faith, and Stabberger, John Baltisberger is a Splatterpunk nominee who writes speculative and genre fiction that often focuses on Jewish elements. Through his writing, he has explored themes of mysticism, faith, sin, and personal responsibility. He lives in Austin, TX with his wife and his daughter. Though mostly known for his bizarre blend of Jewish mysticism and splatter, John defies being labeled under any one genre. His work has spanned extreme horror, urban fantasy, science fiction, cosmic horror, epic verse, and he has even written a guide for mindful meditation. You can see…