Category: Short Fiction

Jones, Rachael K.

Nominations:

“The Sound of Children Screaming” (Nightmare Magazine), Short Fiction, 2023

BIO: Rachael K. Jones grew up in various cities across Europe and North America, picked up (and mostly forgot) six languages, and acquired several degrees in the arts and sciences. Now she writes speculative fiction in Portland, Oregon. Contrary to the rumors, she is probably not a secret android. Rachael is a Bram Stoker Award nominee, World Fantasy Award nominee, and Otherwise Award honoree. Her fiction has appeared in dozens of venues worldwide, including Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, and all four Escape Artists podcasts. Follow her on Bluesky @RachaelKJones.bsky.social, or find her at www.RachaelKJones.com.

Daniels, L. E.

Nominations:

“Silk” (Hush, Don’t Wake the Monster: Stories Inspired by Stephen King, Twisted Wing Productions), Short Fiction, 2023

BIO: L. E. Daniels is an American author, poet, and editor living in Australia. Her novel, Serpent’s Wake: A Tale for the Bittenis a Notable Work with the HWA’s Mental Health Initiative. Lauren co-edited Aiki Flinthart’s Relics, Wrecks and Ruins (CAT) with Geneve Flynn, winning the 2021 Aurealis Award and co-edited We are Providence (Weird House)with Christa Carmen, a2022 Aurealis finalist.Recent publications include “Silk” in Hush, Don’t Wake the Monster (Twisted Wing), a 2023 Bram Stoker Awards® Nominee and “Hangman’s Coming” in Where the Silent Ones Watch (Hippocampus). Lauren’s personal essays appear in Holistic Horror,Quick Bites, and 34 Orchard and her poetry in The Cozy Cosmic (Underland), Under Her Eye, and Mother Knows Best (Black Spot Books), with “Night Terrors” (HWA) a finalist for the 2022 Australian Shadows Award.

Gwilym, Douglas

Nominations:

“Poppy’s Poppy” (Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine, Vol. V, No. 6), Short Fiction, 2022

BIO: Douglas Gwilym has been known to compose a weird-fiction rock opera or two. His short story “Year Six” is on Ellen Datlow’s recommended reading list for Best Horror 14. He edited Triangulation for four years and now co-edits The Midnight Zone—forthcoming edition, Novus Monstrum, a collection of never-before-seen monsters, featuring original stories by greats, and new voices, in strange, dark fiction. He reads classics of the proto-Weird on YouTube and has been guest staff at Alpha Young Writers workshop. His short fiction appears in LampLight, Lucent Dreaming, Novel Noctule, Shelter of Daylight, Tales from the Moonlit Path, Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine, and Tales to Terrify.

Dries, Aaron

Nominations:

“Nona Doesn’t Dance” (Cut to Care: A Collection of Little Hurts) (IFWG Australia, IFWG International), Short Fiction, 2022

BIO: Author, artist, and filmmaker, Aaron Dries was born and raised in New South Wales, Australia. His novels include the award-winning HOUSE OF SIGHS, THE FALLEN BOYS, A PLACE FOR SINNERS, WHERE THE DEAD GO TO DIE (with Mark Allan Gunnells), plus the novellas THE SOUND OF HIS BONES BREAKING, and the Australian Shadows Award, Ditmar, Shirley Jackson Award nominated DIRTY HEADS. CUT TO CARE: A COLLECTION OF LITTLE HURTS, released in 2022, is his first collection of short stories and was described by author Paul Tremblay as “heartbreaking, frightening, and all too real”. Aaron Dries is one host of the popular podcast, LET THE CAT IN, and also co-founded Elsewhere Here Productions. His fiction, art, and films have been celebrated domestically and abroad. He is currently working on a new novel and a number of screenplays. Drop him a line at aarondries.com, on Twitter @AaronDries or TikTok @aarondries_writer.

McCarthy, J.A.W.

Nominations:

Sleep Alone (Off Limits Press LLC), Long Fiction, 2023

“The Only Thing Different Will Be the Body” (A Woman Built by Man)(Cemetery Gates Media), Short Fiction, 2022

BIO: J.A.W. McCarthy is the Bram Stoker Award and Shirley Jackson Award nominated author of Sometimes We’re Cruel and Other Stories (Cemetery Gates Media, 2021) and Sleep Alone (Off Limits Press, 2023). Her short fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including Vastarien, PseudoPod, 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.

Gyzander, Carol

Nominations:

Discontinue If Death Ensues: Tales from the Tipping Point (Flame Tree Publishing), Anthology, 2024

“The Yellow Crown” (Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign) (Hippocampus Press), Short Fiction, 2021

BIO: Carol Gyzander was a prolific reader of classic science fiction and Agatha Christie mysteries in her early days. Now that her kids have flown the coop, she writes and edits horror, weird fiction, suspense, and science fiction—with strong women in twisted tales that touch your heart. Her short stories appear in magazines such as Weird Tales 367 and Weird House Magazine, and over two dozen anthologies. Carol has edited eight anthologies and a number of novels and collections.

She received a 2021 Bram Stoker Award® nomination for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction for her short story “The Yellow Crown” in Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign (Hippocampus Press, 2021). Her piece offers a female-centered perspective on Robert W. Chambers’s classic work of weird fiction, The King in Yellow (1895). This was the first year that all the nominees in a category were women!

She co-edited and contributed to Discontinue If Death Ensues: Tales From the Tipping Point (Flame Tree Collections, 2024), nominated for the 2024 Bram Stoker Award®. It contains interlaced stories and poems from five women authors in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand—her fellow nominees for the aforementioned 2021 HWA Bram Stoker Award®: Lee Murray, Cindy O’Quinn, Kyla Lee Ward, Anna Taborska, and Carol Gyzander. Her “Bobblehead” poem in the anthology was nominated for the 2025 SFPA Rhysling Award.

Some recent anthologies she’s co-edited from Crone Girls Press include the fungus horror Dark Spores: Stories We Tell After Midnight Volume 4 (2024) and feminist horror A Woman Unbecoming (2022), which was produced in only two months after the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Even in the Grave (NeoParadoxa, 2022) features ghost stories.

Carol lives with her husband in the northern New Jersey suburbs of New York City. She is quite busy with the Horror Writers Association as one of the Chapter Program Managers for the past four years, Co-Coordinator of the NY Chapter, and co-host of Galactic Terrors, the HWA NY monthly online reading series every second Thursday. See HWANY.org for more info!

See what else Carol is working on at http://www.CarolGyzander.com, or follow her on Instagram @carolgyzander or Bluesky @carolgyzander.bsky.social