Before the Bram Stoker Awards presentation. Photo by Seth Scranton.

HWA Announces 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award Winners Carol J. Clover, Jewelle Gomez, and Marge Simon

HWA’s Lifetime Achievement Award Committee has chosen three extraordinary recipients for 2020:

CAROL J. CLOVER is a Professor Emerita of Medieval Studies (Early Northern Europe) and American Film at the University of California, Berkeley. While much of her scholarship has concerned medieval Icelandic culture, her 1992 book Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film was a seminal work in the serious study of contemporary horror cinema and especially “slasher” films. Clover argued against film critics who saw the films as victimizing women, instead focusing on the victim/hero – the young woman who defeats the killer. Clover coined the term “final girl,” and articulated a structural and gendered approach to understanding films such as Friday the 13th, Halloween, and similar horror cinema that has exhibited a profound effect not only on how scholars understand the genre, but also has entered the popular vocabulary and understanding of how to read these films. The volume reissued as a “Princeton Classic” in 2015 and her influence in the genre can be seen in such recent horror narratives as Final Girl, The Final Girls, Scream Queens, and every rebooted slasher film of the last twenty years.

JEWELLE GOMEZ is a writer, novelist, playwright, activist, critic, poet, and television writer, among many other identities and activities. She is the author of seven books including the double Lambda Literary Award-winning vampire novel The Gilda Stories, currently celebrating its 30th year in print. She also authored the stage adaptation of that novel under the title Bones and Ash: A Gilda Story, which began touring in 1996 and was performed in thirteen American cities by the Urban Bush Women company. Her work centers on women’s stories, in particular women of color, and LGBTQ+ rights and culture. Gomez calls herself “the possible foremother of Afrofuturism.” Her poems and short stories appear in over one hundred anthologies. She has also worked as a critic for The Village Voice. Her work bringing horror and speculative fiction from a lesbian feminist perspective is found not only in her own writing, but in her activism, her teaching, her lectures, and her mentoring. Her impact on the field is substantial, and her work has expanded the margins of horror in an inclusive and genre-reshaping fashion.

MARGE SIMON‘s poems, short fiction, and illustrations have appeared in hundreds of publications, including Amazing Stories, ChiZine, Daily Science Fiction, Dream & Nightmares, Niteblade, The Pedestal Magazine, Strange Horizons, Vestal Review, and many, many more. She has published over a dozen books of poetry and short fiction and won three Bram Stoker Awards for Best Poetry Collection for Vectors: A Week in the Death of a Planet (2007, co-written with Charlee Jacob), Vampires, Zombies & Wanton Souls (2012, illustrated by Sandy DeLuca) and Four Elements (2013, co-written with Rain Graves, Charlee Jacob and Linda Addison). Simon’s service to the profession is incalculable, including mentoring numerous poets and writers, serving as the president of both the Small Press Writers and Artists Organization and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, as well as serving as Chair for the HWA Board of Trustees. She has also illustrated five Bram Stoker Award-winning collections and has worked collaboratively with a number of different authors. Simon is the second woman to be acknowledged by the SF&F Poetry Association with a Grand Master Award.