Shirley Jackson Award

The Shirley Jackson Awards are literary awards named after Shirley Jackson in recognition of her legacy in writing. These awards for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror and dark fantasy are presented at Readercon, an annual conference on imaginative literature.^[1]

Writing in Salon in 2010, Laura Miller noted, "The awards...have already proved a fitting tribute to a writer who roamed freely over similar ground and has never quite gotten the respect she deserves."^[2]

The first annual Shirley Jackson Awards were presented on July 20, 2007, at the Readercon Conference on Imaginative Literature in Burlington, Massachusetts. The jurors were John Langan, Sarah Langan, Paul G. Tremblay and F. Brett Cox, who now form the board of directors along with JoAnn Cox.

Categories

Award winners are selected by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics and academics, with input from a board of advisors. The awards are given for the best work published in the preceding calendar year.^[3]

Category	Description
Best Novel	Fictional work of 40,000 words or more
Best Novella	Fictional work of between 17,500 and 39,999 words
Best Novelette	Fictional work of between 7,500 and 17,499 words
Best Short Story	Fictional work of less than 7,500 words
Best Collection	At least 40,000 words, consisting of at least 3 fictional works by a single author. At least half of the collection’s contents must be fiction.
Best Anthology	At least 40,000 words, consisting of at least 3 stories by 3 or more authors. At least half of the included works must have been previously unpublished.

Winners

Shirley Jackson Award winners

Year	Category	Author	Title	Publisher	Ref.
2007	Anthology	Ellen Datlow	Inferno		[4]
	Collection	Laird Barron	The Imago Sequence and Other Stories
	Novelette	Glen Hirshberg	The Janus Tree
	Short Story	Nathan Ballingrud	"The Monsters of Heaven"		[4]
2008	Anthology	Sarah Eyre and Ra Page	The New Uncanny		[5]
	Collection	Yōko Ogawa	The Diving Pool
	Novelette	John Kessel	Pride and Prometheus
	Short Story	Michael Bishop	"The Pile"
2009	Anthology	Ellen Datlow	Poe: 19 New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe		[6]
	Collection	Robert Shearman	Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical
		Kevin Wilson	Tunneling to the Center of the Earth
	Novelette	Stephen King	Morality
	Short Story	Karen Joy Fowler	"The Pelican Bar"
2010	Anthology	Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio	Stories: All New Tales		[7]
	Collection	Laird Barron	Occultation
	Novelette	Neil Gaiman	Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains
	Short Story	Peter Watts	"The Things"
2011	Edited Anthology	Jack Dann and Nick Gevers (ed.)	Ghosts by Gaslight	Harper Voyager	[8]
	Novelette	Kelly Link	The Summer People	Tin House 49/Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories, Candlewick Press
	Short Fiction	M. Rickert	"The Corpse Painter’s Masterpiece"	The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Sept/Oct, 2011
	Single-Author Collection	Maureen F. McHugh	After the Apocalypse: Stories	Small Beer Press
2012	Edited Anthology	Danel Olson	Exotic Gothic 4: Postscripts #28/29	PS Publishing	[9]
	Novelette	Karen Russell	Reeling for the Empire	Tin House, Winter 2012
	Short Fiction	Jeffrey Ford	"A Natural History of Autumn"	The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July/August 2012
	Single Author Collection	Jeffrey Ford	Crackpot Palace	William Morrow & Co.
2013	Edited Anthology	Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.	The Grimscribe’s Puppets	Miskatonic River Press	[10]
	Novelette	Greer Gilman	Cry Murder! In a Small Voice	Small Beer Press
	Short Fiction	Sam J. Miller	"57 Reasons for the Slate Quarry Suicides"	Nightmare Magazine, December 2013
	Single Author Collection	Nathan Ballingrud	North American Lake Monsters	Small Beer Press	[11]
		Christopher Barzak	Before and Afterlives	Lethe Press
2014	Edited Anthology	Ellen Datlow	Fearful Symmetries	ChiZine Publications	[12]
	Novelette	Dale Bailey	The End of the End of Everything	Tor.com, April 2014	[13]
	Short Fiction	Alison Littlewood	"The Dogs Home"	The Spectral Book of Horror Stories, Spectral Press
	Single Author Collection	Helen Marshall	Gifts for the One who Comes After	ChiZine Publications
2015	Edited Anthology	Simon Strantzas	Aickman's Heirs	Undertow Publications	[14]
	Novelette	Steve Duffy	Even Clean Hands Can Do Damage	Supernatural Tales #30
	Short Fiction	Lynda E. Rucker	"The Dying Season"	Aickman's Heirs
	Single Author Collection	Stephen King	The Bazaar of Bad Dreams	Scribner
2016	Board of Directors Award	Ruth Franklin	Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life		[15]
	Edited Anthology	Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe (ed.)	The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales	Saga Press
	Novelette	Camilla Grudova	"Waxy"	Granta
	Short Fiction	Carrie Laben	"Postcards from Natalie"	The Dark
	Single-Author Collection	Jeffrey Ford	A Natural History of Hell	Small Beer Press
2017	Edited Anthology	Michael Kelly	Shadows and Tall Trees Volume 7	Undertow Publications	[16]
	Novelette	Chavisa Woods	Take the Way Home That Leads Back to Sullivan Street	Things to Do When You’re Goth in the Country
	Short Fiction	Kurt Fawver	"The Convexity of Our Youth"	Looming Low
	Single-Author Collection	Carmen Maria Machado	Her Body and Other Parties	Graywolf Press	[17]
2018	Edited Anthology	Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe (ed.)	Robots vs Fairies	Saga	[18]
	Novelette	Tom Cox	Help the Witch	Unbound
	Short Fiction	Christina Wood Martinez	"The Astronaut"	Granta, Winter '18
	Single-Author Collection	Priya Sharma	All the Fabulous Beasts	Undertow
2019	Edited Anthology	Christopher Golden and James A. Moore (ed.)	The Twisted Book of Shadows	Twisted Publishing	[19]
	Novelette	Brooke Warra	Luminous Body	Dim Shores
	Short Fiction	Indrapramit Das	"Kali_Na"	The Mythic Dream
	Single-Author Collection	Brian Evenson	Song for the Unraveling of the World	Coffee House Press
2020	Edited Anthology	Lee Murray and Geneve Flynn (ed.)	Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women	Omnium Gatherum	[20]
	Novelette	J. Ashley-Smith	The Attic Tragedy	Meerkat
	Short Fiction	R. A. Busby	Not the Man I Married	Black Petals
	Single-Author Collection	Kathe Koja	Velocities	Meerkat
2021	Edited Anthology	Eric J. Guignard	Professor Charlatan Bardot’s Travel Anthology to the Most (Fictional) Haunted Buildings in the Weird, Wild World	Dark Moon Books	[21]
		dave ring	Unfettered Hexes: Queer Tales of Insatiable Darkness	Neon Hemlock
	Novelette	E. A. Petricone	We, the Girls Who Did Not Make It	Nightmare
	Short Fiction	Isabel J. Kim	You’ll Understand When You're a Mom Someday	Khoréo
	Single-Author Collection	Keith Rosson	Folk Songs for Trauma Surgeons	Meerkat
2022	Edited Anthology	Doug Murano	The Hideous Book of Hidden Horrors	Bad Hand	[22]
	Novelette	Nghi Vo	What the Dead Know	Amazon Original Stories
	Short Fiction	Kim Fu	Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867	Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century
	Single-Author Collection	Paula D. Ashe	We Are Here to Hurt Each Other	Nictitating
2023	Edited Anthology	Jolie Toomajan	Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic	Cosmic Horror Monthly	[23]
	Novelette	Eugenia Triantafyllou	Six Versions of My Brother Found Under the Bridge	Uncanny Magazine
	Short Fiction	Laura Blackwell	The First Mrs. Edward Rochester Would Like a Word	Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic
	Single-Author Collection	Gabriela Damián Miravete	They Will Dream in the Garden	Rosarium
2024	Edited Anthology	Julia Rios and Nadia Bulkin	Why Didn’t You Just Leave	Cursed Morsels Press	[24]
	Novelette	Kurt Fawver	The Thirteen Ways We Turned Darryl Datson into a Monster	Dim Shores
	Short Fiction	Arkady Martine	Three Faces of a Beheading	Uncanny Magazine
	Single-Author Collection	Scott Thomas	Midwestern Gothic	Inkshares