Category: Non-fiction

Sachar, Cassandra O’Sullivan

Nominations:

No More Haunted Dolls: Horror Fiction that Transcends the Tropes (Vernon Press), Non-fiction, 2024

BIO: Cassandra O’Sullivan Sachar is a writer and associate English professor in Pennsylvania who teaches creative writing, composition, and composition theory courses. A former secondary English teacher in Delaware public schools, she received her Doctorate of Education with a Literacy Specialization from the University of Delaware and her MFA in Creative Writing with a focus on horror fiction from Wilkes University. She has curated and edited the multi-author volume on horror scholarship No More Haunted Dolls: Horror Fiction that Transcends the Tropes (Vernon Press, 2024) and the horror anthology Wicked Universe: A Wicked House Publishing Anthology (Wicked House Publishing, 2024). She has served as the fiction editor for River & South Review and is taking over as co-editor-in-chief and creative prose editor of Pennsylvania English.

Sachar has authored the Regal Summit Book Award-winning dark suspense novel Darkness There but Something More (Wicked House Publishing, 2024), the short horror story collection Keeper of Corpses and Other Dark Tales (Velox Books, 2024), the middle-grade mystery The Hidden Diary (Baynam Books Press, 2024), the horror novella Close the Door (Baynam Books Press, 2025), and the young adult thriller Lake of Secrets (Horrorsmith Publishing, 2025). A member of the Horror Writers Association, she has written dozens of short horror stories and essays that have appeared in publications including The Horror Zine, Wyldblood Magazine, HorrorAddicts.net, The Angry Gable, The Chamber Magazine, and Tales from the Moonlit Path. Read her work at https://cassandraosullivansachar.com/.

Hughes, Emily C.

Nominations:

Horror for Weenies: Everything You Need to Know About the Films You’re Too Scared to Watch (Quirk Books), Non-fiction, 2024

BIO: Emily C. Hughes (she/her) wants to scare you. Formerly the editor of Unbound Worlds and TorNightfire.com, she writes about horror and curates a list of the year’s new scary books at her website, readjumpscares.com. Her first book, the Bram Stoker Award®-nominated Horror For Weenies: Everything You Need to Know About the Films You’re Too Scared to Watch, is out now from Quirk Books. You can find her writing elsewhere in the New York Times, Vulture, Reactor Magazine, Electric Literature, Nightmare Magazine, Thrillist, and more. Emily lives in crunchy western Massachusetts with her husband and four idiot cats.

Honeycutt, Heidi

Nominations:

I Spit on Your Celluloid: The History of Women Directing Horror Movies (HeadPress), Non-fiction, 2024

BIO: Heidi Honeycutt is a journalist, film historian, and film festival programmer who has been writing about, and researching, horror movies for the past 20 years. She is the world’s foremost expert on women horror film directors and is the co-founder of the Etheria Film Festival, which shows the world’s best new short horror, science fiction, and fantasy films directed by women annually on AMC+/Shudder. When she isn’t writing something, she’s reading something written by someone else or playing with her handsome cat Kitty Pie, the handsomest cat man and the smartest and best cat in the world, who is her forever love. She’s also married to a human and they hang out too.

Dauber, Jeremy

Nominations:

American Scary: A History of Horror, from Salem to Stephen King and Beyond (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill), Non-fiction, 2024

BIO: Jeremy Dauber is a professor of Jewish literature and American studies at Columbia University. His books include Jewish Comedy and The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem, both finalists for the National Jewish Book Award. More recently he is the author of Mel Brooks: Disobedient Jew and American Comics: A History. He lives in New York City.

Fitzpatrick, Claire

Nominations:

A Vindication of Monsters: Essays on Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley (IFWG Publishing International), Non-fiction, 2023

BIO: Claire Fitzpatrick is an award-winning author of speculative fiction and non-fiction. She won the 2018 Rocky Wood Award for Non-Fiction and Criticism, was the 2020 recipient of the Rocky Wood Memorial scholarship fund, was nominated for the 2022 William Atheling Jr. Award for Criticism or Review, and is a 2023 Bram Stoker Award Nominee. She lives somewhere in Queensland, Australia, with her 12 animals and two eldritch offspring. Her husband was the sci-fi artist Matthew Schuler (1988-2024). Visit her at www.clairefitzpatrick.com.au

Awards:

The Body Horror Book (Self-published), non-fiction anthology. 2017 winner of the Australasian Horror Writers Association Rocky Wood Award for Non-Fiction and Criticism. 

Nominations:

A Vindication of Monsters: Essays on Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley (IFWG Publishing International), non-fiction anthology. 2023. HWA Stoker Award. Long non-fiction. Recipient of the Rocky Wood Memorial scholarship. 

How Mary Shelley Continues To Influence Science Fiction (Aurealis #145) 2021. William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review.