The 2020 Shirley Jackson Awards winners were announced August 15 at Readercon 31. The online ceremony began with convention GoH Jeffrey Ford reading his letter to Shirley Jackson inspired by the recently published collection of her letters.
The Shirley Jackson Awards are given for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic. They are voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics.
NOVEL
- The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones (Saga Press, Gallery Books)
NOVELLA
- Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones (Tordotcom Publishing)
NOVELETTE
- The Attic Tragedy by J. Ashley-Smith Meerkat Press)
SHORT FICTION
- “Not the Man I Married” by R. A. Busby (Black Petals Issue #93 Autumn, 2020)
SINGLE-AUTHOR COLLECTION
- Velocities: Stories by Kathe Koja (Meerkat Press)
EDITED ANTHOLOGY
- Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women, edited by Lee Murray & Geneve Flynn (Omnium Gatherum)
Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) wrote such classic novels as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as well as one of the most famous short stories in the English language, “The Lottery.” Her work continues to be a major influence on writers of every kind of fiction.
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A dead heat of excellent fiction in all categories. Congratulations to both the nominees and the winners!
Wow, I think The Only Good Indians has won just about everything there is to win. Congratulations.
Bonnie McDaniel says Wow, I think The Only Good Indians has won just about everything there is to win. Congratulations.
Actually according to ISFDB, the only other Award that it’s won is a Stoker. It’s been nominated for a lot of Awards including a BFA and a World Fantasy.
The BFA will be given out in September and The World Fantasy Award will be given out early November-so it might win both of them, too.
Glad to hear about the publication of Shirley’s letters. I wonder if any of our (brief) correspondence made it in.
I have to say that I wish I could write something to win that handsome award. When I read “The Sundial” I got to the last page and thought there where pages missing, and I had to know ‘what comes next?’ I called around and discovered that my brother had a copy of the book, only nobody was at home. He told me to go around the back of his house, climb up on the garage, go in through the second story back window, go downstairs, and I would find it on a bookshelf in the living room. All that I did, opened the book with intense excitement… And discovered that there were no missing pages. That was how the novel ended
I trust everybody has seen the really excellent film version of “We Have Always Lived in the Castle,” which has always been my favorite of her books. It has her family’s stamp of approval, and even had her family’s participation.