Category: Short Fiction

Arcuri, Meghan

AWARDS:

Richard Laymon President’s Award, 2022

NOMINATIONS:

“Am I Missing the Sunlight?” (Borderlands 7, Borderlands Press), Short Fiction, 2020

BIO: Meghan Arcuri writes fiction. Her short stories can be found in various anthologies, including Borderlands 7 (Borderlands Press), Madhouse (Dark Regions Press), Chiral Mad, and Chiral Mad 3 (Written Backwards). She is currently the Vice President of the Horror Writers Association. She lives with her family in New York’s Hudson Valley. Please visit her at meghanarcuri.com, facebook.com/meg.arcuri, or on Twitter (@MeghanArcuri).

Fawver, Kurt

NOMINATIONS:

“Introduction to the Horror Story, Day 1” (Nightmare Magazine Nov. 2020 (Issue 98)), Short Fiction, 2020

BIO: Kurt Fawver is a Shirley Jackson Award-winning writer of horror, weird fiction, and literature that oozes through the cracks of genre. His stories have been previously published in venues such as Nightmare, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Weird Tales, Vastarien, Best New Horror, and Year’s Best Weird Fiction. His short story collections include Forever, in Pieces, The Dissolution of Small Worlds, and the forthcoming We are Happy, We are Doomed. He lives in northeast Ohio and teaches college courses in writing.

O’Quinn, Cindy

Awards:

“Quondam” (The Nightmare Never Ends, Exploding Head Fiction), Short Fiction, 2023

Nominations:

“One and Done” (Were Tales: A Shapeshifter Anthology) (Brigids Gate Press), Short Fiction, 2021

“A Gathering at the Mountain” (The Bad Book) (Bleeding Edge Books), Short Non-Fiction, 2021

“The Thing I Found Along a Dirt Patch Road” (Shotgun Honey Presents Volume 4: Recoil, Down and Out Books), Short Fiction, 2020

“Lydia” (The Twisted Book of Shadows) (Twisted Publishing) , Short Fiction, 2019

BIO: Cindy O’Quinn is an Appalachian writer from the beautiful mountains of West Virginia. She was steeped in folklore from an early age. She now lives on the old Tessier Homestead in the woods of northern Maine with her family. Cindy is a horror loving, photo taking, herb gathering homesteader.

Works published or forthcoming in Weirdbook Magazine, Shotgun Honey Presents Vol 4: RECOIL, HWA Poetry Showcase Vol V, Sanitarium Magazine, Space & Time Magazine, Star*Line, Nothing’s Sacred, Chiral Mad 5, and The Shirley Jackson Award winning anthology-The Twisted Book of Shadows, which contained Cindy’s HWA Bram Stoker nominated short fiction, “Lydia”.

Cindy’s poetry has been nominated for Dwarf Star and Rhysling Awards. 

Follow for updates on:

Facebook @CindyOQuinnWriter, Instagram cindy.oquinn, and Twitter @COQuinnWrites. 

Taborska, Anna

NOMINATIONS:

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

“A Song for Barnaby Jones” (Zagava), Short Fiction, 2022

“The Star” (Great British Horror 7: Major Arcana) (Black Shuck Books), Short Fiction, 2022

“Two Shakes Of A Dead Lamb’s Tail”(Terror Tales of the Scottish Lowlands) (Telos Publishing), Short Fiction, 2021

Bloody Britain (Shadow Publishing), Fiction Collection, 2020

The Cat Sitter (Shadowcats) (Black Shuck Books), Long Fiction, 2019

BIO: Anna Taborska is a British filmmaker and horror writer. She has written and directed two short fiction films, two documentaries and an award-winning TV drama. She has also worked on twenty other films, and was involved in the making of two major BBC television series: Auschwitz: the Nazis and the Final Solution and World War Two Behind Closed Doors – Stalin, the Nazis and the West. Anna’s short stories have appeared in over thirty anthologies, and her debut short story collection, For Those who Dream Monsters, published by Mortbury Press in 2013, won the Dracula Society’s Children of the Night Award and was nominated for a British Fantasy Award. Anna is also the author of Shadowcats – a feline-themed micro-collection from Black Shuck Books, and her Stoker Award-nominated collection of novelettes and short stories, Bloody Britain, came out in October 2020 from Shadow Publishing. 

Ward, Kyla Lee

Nominations

“A Whisper in the Death Pit” (Weirdbook #44) (Wildside Press), Short Fiction, 2021

“Should Fire Remember the Fuel?” (Oz is Burning, B Cubed Press), Short Fiction, 2020

“And in Her Eyes the City Drowned” (Weirdbook #39) (Wildside Press), Short Fiction, 2018

BIO: Kyla Lee Ward is a Sydney-based creative who works in many modes. August 2018 sees publication of her second poetry collection, The Macabre Moderne and Other Morbidities by P’rea Press, following 2011’s The Land of Bad Dreams. Her novel Prismatic (co-authored as Edwina Grey) won an Aurealis Award for Best Horror. Her short fiction has appeared in the likes of Weirdbook, Ticonderoga Online and Gothic.net and in the anthologies Gods, Memes and Monsters: a 21st century Bestiary and Hear Me Roar: stories of real women and unreal worlds among others. Her work on RPGs including Demon: the Fallen saw her as guest at the inaugural Gencon Australia. Her short film, ‘Bad Reception’, screened at the Third International Vampire Film Festival and she was a member of the Theatre of Blood repertory company, which also produced her work. A practicing occultist, she likes raptors, swordplay and the Hellfire Club.

Murray, Lee

Awards:

“I Don’t Read Horror (& Other Weird Tales)” (Interstellar Flight Magazine) (Interstellar Flight Press), Short Non-Fiction, 2022

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

“Permanent Damage” (Attack From the ’80s) (Raw Dog Screaming Press), Short Fiction, 2021

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

Grotesque: Monster Stories (Things in the Well), Fiction Collection, 2020

Mentor of the Year Award, 2019

Nominations:

Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud (The Cuba Press), Poetry Collection, 2024

“Displaced Spirits” (Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror, Black Spot Books), Short Non-fiction, 2023

Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror (Black Spot Books), Non-fiction, 2023

Despatches (PS Publishing), Long Fiction, 2023

Into the Ashes (Severed Press), Novel, 2019

“Dead End Town” (Cthulhu Deep Down Under Volume 2) (IFWG Publishing International), Short Fiction, 2018

Hellhole: An Anthology of Subterranean Terror (Adrenaline Press), Anthology, 2018

BIO: Lee Murray is a writer, editor, poet, essayist, and screenwriter from Aotearoa, and a New Zealand Prime Minister’s Award winner for Literary Achievement in Fiction. A USA Today bestselling author and multiple award-winner (including Sir Julius Vogel, Australian Shadows, Shirley Jackson, and Bram Stoker awards), Lee’s works include the Taine McKenna military thrillers, supernatural crime-noir series The Path of Ra (with Dan Rabarts), fiction collection Grotesque: Monster Stories, as well as several books for children. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, including prestigious venues such as Weird Tales, Space and Time, and Grimdark Magazine. She is proud to have edited more than two dozen anthologies, among them award-winning titles Baby Teeth: Bite Sized Tales of Terror and At the Edge (with Dan Rabarts), Te Kōrero Ahi Kā (with Grace Bridges and Aaron Compton), Hellhole: An Anthology of Subterranean Terror, Midnight Echo #14, Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women (with Geneve Flynn), and Under Her Eye (with Lindy Ryan). A Rhysling- and Pushcart-nominated poet, Lee’s poetry collection, Tortured Willows: Bent, Bowed, Unbroken, is a collaboration with poets Christina Sng, Geneve Flynn, and Angela Yuriko Smith. Her first solo poetry collection, Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud (2024), won her a Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowship and the NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize for ‘unique and innovative vision’. Lee is a life member of Tauranga Writers, New Zealand’s longest standing writing group, and of SpecFicNZ, and she’s an Honorary Literary Fellow of the New Zealand Society of Authors. Lee lives over the hill from Hobbiton in New Zealand’s sunny Bay of Plenty where she dreams up stories from her office overlooking a cow paddock. Read more at www.leemurray.info.