Category: Poetry Collection

Saulson, Sumiko

AWARDS:

Richard Laymon President’s Service Award, 2021

NOMINATIONS:

Melancholia: A Book of Dark Poetry (Bludgeoned Girls Press), Poetry Collection, 2024

The Rat King: A Book of Dark Poetry (Dooky Zines), Poetry Collection, 2022

BIO: Sumiko Saulson (pronouns: they/them or ze/hir) is an award-winning author of Afrosurrealist and multicultural sci-fi and horror whose latest novel, the horror romance Somnalia: Metamorphoses of Flynn Keahi  (sequel to Happiness and Other Diseases is available on Bram Stoker Speciality Press Award®-winning Mocha Memoirs Press  Nominated for a Bram Stoker Award® in the Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection category for Melancholia: A Book of Dark Poetry (2024, Bludgeoned Girls Press) and The Rat King: A Book of Dark Poetry (2022, Dooky Zines), Sumiko was also nominated for an Elgin Poetry Award for both of these poetry collections, and won a third place Science Fiction Poetry Association Dwarf Stars Award for the 2022 poem “Surviving.”

Other works include the non-fiction title 160+ Black Women in Horror Fiction, novels Solitude, Warmth, and Moon Cried Blood. 

Their short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies, including A Crack in the Code: Cybertronic Stories of Rebellion, Weird Fiction Quarterly, Horror Zine’s Book of Monsters, Tales For The Campfire, Clockwork Wonderland, Tales From the Lake Vol 3, Beasts and Babes, Scierogenous 2,  Colors In Darkness: Forever Vacancy, Slay: Tales of the Vampire Noire, Blerdrotica 2: Couple’s Therapy, In Trouble, Manor of Frights, We’re Here: An Anthology of LGBT Horror, and The Green Hornet and Kato: Detriot Noir City. 

Their non-fiction has appeared in Fump Truck, It Came from the Closet, Fourth Wave Feminism in Science Fiction and Fantasy, and Horror Addicts Guide to Life 1 & 2.

Their poetry has appeared in Dark Spores: Stories We Tell After Midnight 4, Spacefunk!, Heart of Sleeves, Don’t Ask: Ghosts Tell, Infectious Hope, Siren’s Call Magazine, Of Horror and Hope: Mental Health Reflections by Members, edited by the HWA Wellness Committee, Horror Bites: Next Great Horror Writer Editor’s Picks, The Tenderloin Times, and HWA Poetry Showcase VII and VIII.  

They are the editor of the anthologies Black Magic Women (2018), Scry of Lust (2019), Wickedly Abled (2020) and Scry of Lust 2 (2021), and the collection Black Celebration. They are a comic zine maker and author/illustrator of the graphic novels/comic books Ghost Cat is Best Cat, the Drain Monster, and Other Tales of Terror (2024, Dooky Zines), The Complete Mauskaveli (2020, Dooky Zines), Dreamworlds (2016, Dooky Zines), and Agrippa (2013, Dooky Zines). They are the illustrator of Living a Lie (2015).

Winner of the Ladies of Horror Readers’ Choice Award for the collection Within Me Without Me (Dooky Zines), Afrosurrealist Writers Award (2018) for the short story “A Balm of Brackish Water”, Grand Prize 2017 BCC Voice “Reframing the Other” contest, four 2nd Place Carry The Light Sci-fi/Fantasy Awards (2015 through 2018), 2017 Mixy Award, 6th Place in the Next Great Horror Writers Contest (2017). They are the recipient of the 2002 STAND Grant for First Time Directors, 2016 HWA StokerCon “Scholarship from Hell”, 2018 Ara Joe Grant for Zinemakers, 2020 HWA Diversity Grant recipient, and 2021 Ladies in Horror Fiction grant.

Sumiko has an AA in English from Berkeley City College

McHugh, Jessica

NOMINATIONS:

The Quiet Ways I Destroy You (Apokrupha Press), Poetry Collection, 2023

Strange Nests (Apokrupha), Poetry Collection, 2021

A Complex Accident of Life (Apokrupha), Poetry Collection, 2020

BIO: Jessica McHugh is a 3x Bram Stoker Award-nominated poet, a multi-genre novelist, & an internationally-produced playwright who spends her days surrounded by artistic inspiration at a Maryland tattoo shop. She’s had thirty books published in fifteen years, including her Elgin Award-nominated blackout poetry collection, “A Complex Accident of Life,” her sci-fi bizarro romp, “The Green Kangaroos,” and her cross-generational horror series, “The Gardening Guidebooks Trilogy.” Explore the growing worlds of Jessica McHugh at McHughniverse.com.   

Flynn, Geneve

AWARDS:

Tortured Willows: Bent. Bowed. Unbroken. (Yuriko Publishing), Poetry Collection, 2021

Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women (Omnium Gatherum Media), Anthology, 2020

BIO: 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 features authors such as Neil Gaiman, Ken Liu, Robert Silverberg, James (SA) Corey, Lee Murray, Mark Lawrence, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Angela Slatter. The anthology is the legacy of Australian fantasy author Aiki Flinthart, and is in support of the Flinthart Writing Residency with the Queensland Writers Centre.

Geneve’s short stories have been published in various markets, including Flame Tree Publishing, Crystal Lake Publishing & Black Spot Books, and PseudoPod.

Her poetry features in Tortured Willows: Bent, Bowed, Unbroken, a collaboration with Angela Yuriko Smith, Lee Murray, and Christina Sng. Geneve has been nominated for the Rhysling and Pushcart awards.

Geneve loves tales that unsettle, all things writerly, and B-grade action movies. If that sounds like you, check out her website at www.geneveflynn.com.au.

Scalise, Michelle

NOMINATIONS:

Dragonfly and Other Songs of Mourning (LVP Publications), Poetry Collection, 2019

BIO: Since 1994 Michelle Scalise’s work has appeared in such anthologies as UNSPEAKABLE HORROR, DARKER SIDE, MORTIS OPERENDI, DARK ARTS, THE BIG BOOK OF EROTIC GHOST STORIES, BEST WOMEN’S EROTICA and such magazines as Cemetery Dance, Crimewave, Space And Time and Dark Discoveries. She was nominated for the 2010 Spectrum Award which honors outstanding works of fantasy and horror that include positive gay characters. Her poetry has been nominated for the Elgin Award and the Rhysling Award. Her fiction has received honorable mention in YEARS BEST FANTASY AND HORROR. Her latest poetry has been chosen by the Horror Writers Association for their anthology HORROR POETRY SHOWCASE:VOLUME I and II. Contributing Editor and Senior Reviewer for SFSite chose her first collection, INTERVALS OF HORRIBLE SANITY, as one of the top ten books of 2003. Her fiction collection , COLLECTIVE SUICIDE, was published by Crossroad Press in 2012. In 2014 Eldritch Press published a collection of her poetry, THE MANUFACTURER OF SORROW in paperback and ebook. It became a bestseller in the women writers category on Amazon. In May of 2019 her collection of poetry, DRAGONFLY AND OTHER SONGS OF MOURNING, was published by Lycan Valley Press. Michelle was raised in Kent, Ohio and is married to bestselling author Tom Piccirilli.