The Horror Writers Association (HWA) has announced the Final Ballot for the 2024 Bram Stoker Awards, celebrating last year’s most impressive achievements in horror and dark fiction genre.
The 2024 Bram Stoker Awards will be announced on June 14, during the Annual Bram Stoker Awards Banquet held during StokerCon 2025 in Stamford, Connecticut.
Named in honor of the legendary Dracula author, the Bram Stoker Awards have been an institute of horror literature since 1987, when the first awards were held. The award itself, designed specifically for HWA by sculptor Steven Kirk, is an eight-inch replica of a fanciful haunted house which opens to reveal a brass plaque engraved with the name of the winning work and its author.
The thirteen Bram Stoker Award categories are: Novel, First Novel, Short Fiction, Long Fiction, Young Adult, Middle Grade (added in 2022), Fiction Collection, Poetry Collection, Anthology, Screenplay, Graphic Novel, Nonfiction, and Short Nonfiction, with past winners including Stephen King, Alan Moore, Joe Hill, Ellen Datlow, Clive Barker and many more huge names in horror lit.
Read on for the full list of nominees, per the official HWA Facebook page:
Superior Achievement in an Anthology
- Ajram, Sofia — Bury Your Gays: An Anthology of Tragic Queer Horror (Ghoulish Books)
- Costello, Rob — We Mostly Come Out at Night: 15 Queer Tales of Monsters, Angels & Other Creatures (Running Press)
- Gyzander, Carol and Taborska, Anna — Discontinue If Death Ensues: Tales from the Tipping Point (Flame Tree Publishing)
- Murano, Doug and Bailey, Michael — Long Division: Stories of Social Decay, Societal Collapse, and Bad Manners (Bad Hand Books)
- Ryan, Lindy — Mother Knows Best: Tales of Homemade Horror (A Women in Horror Anthology) (Black Spot Books)
Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection
- Barron, Laird — Not a Speck of Light (Bad Hand Books)
- Enriquez, Mariana — A Sunny Place for Shady People (Penguin)
- Sylvaine, Angela — The Dead Spot: Stories of Lost Girls (Dark Matter Ink)
- Waggoner, Tim — Old Monsters Never Die (Winding Road Stories)
- Yardley, Mercedes M. — Love is a Crematorium and Other Tales (Cemetery Dance)
Superior Achievement in a First Novel
- Coles, Donyae — Midnight Rooms (Amistad)
- Drake-Thomas, Jessica — Hollow Girls (Cemetery Dance Publications)
- Kiefer, Jenny — This Wretched Valley (Quirk Books)
- Kim, Monika — The Eyes Are the Best Part (Erewhon Books)
- Ryan, Lindy — Bless Your Heart (Minotaur Books)
Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel
- Ha, Robin (writer/artist) — The Fox Maidens (HarperCollins Children’s Books)
- Hetland, Beth (writer/artist) — Tender (Fantagraphics Books)
- Horvath, Patrick (writer/artist) — Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees (Penguin Random House)
- Tanabe, Gou (writer/artist) — H. P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu (Dark Horse Books)
- Umber, Maggie (writer/artist) — Chrysanthemum Under the Waves (Maggie Umber LLC)
Superior Achievement in Long Fiction
- Ajram, Sofia – Coup de Grâce (Titan Books)
- Cassidy, Nat – Rest Stop (Shortwave Publishing)
- Chapman, Clay McLeod – Kill Your Darling (Bad Hand Books)
- LaRocca, Eric – “All The Parts of You That Won’t Easily Burn” (This Skin Was Once Mine and Other Disturbances) (Titan Books)
- Royce, Eden – Hollow Tongue (Raw Dog Screaming Press)
Superior Achievement in Long Non-Fiction
- Bogutskaya, Anna — Feeding the Monster: Why Horror Has a Hold on Us (Faber & Faber)
- Dauber, Jeremy —American Scary: A History of Horror, from Salem to Stephen King and Beyond (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill)
- Honeycutt, Heidi — I Spit on Your Celluloid: The History of Women Directing Horror Movies (HeadPress)
- Hughes, Emily C. — Horror for Weenies: Everything You Need to Know About the Films You’re Too Scared to Watch (Quirk Books)
- Sachar, Cassandra O’Sullivan, ed. — No More Haunted Dolls: Horror Fiction that Transcends the Tropes (Vernon Press)
Superior Achievement in a Middle Grade Novel
- Averling, Mary – The Curse of Eelgrass Bog (Razorbill)
- Collings, Michaelbrent – The Witch in the Woods (Shadow Mountain Publishing)
- Cuevas, Adrianna – The No-Brainer’s Guide to Decomposition (HarperCollins Children’s Books)
- Ottone, Robert P. – There’s Something Sinister in Center Field (Cemetery Gates Media)
- Royce, Eden – The Creepening of Dogwood House (Walden Pond Press, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers)
Superior Achievement in a Novel
- Iglesias, Gabino — House of Bone and Rain (Mulholland Books in US; Titan Books in UK)
- Jones, Stephen Graham — I Was a Teenage Slasher (S&S/Saga Press in US; Titan Books in UK)
- Kiste, Gwendolyn — The Haunting of Velkwood (S&S/Saga Press)
- Malerman, Josh — Incidents Around the House (Del Rey)
- Tremblay, Paul — Horror Movie (William Morrow in US; Titan Books in UK)
Superior Achievement in Poetry
- Hodge, Jamal – The Dark Between the Twilight (Crystal Lake Publishing)
- Iniguez, Pedro – Mexicans on the Moon: Speculative Poetry from a Possible Future (Space Cowboy Books)
- Murray, Lee – Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud (The Cuba Press)
- Saulson, Sumiko – Melancholia: A Book of Dark Poetry (Bludgeoned Girls Press)
- Wood, L. Marie – Imitation of Life (Falstaff Books)
Superior Achievement in a Screenplay
- Beck, Scott and Woods, Bryan — Heretic (A24, Shiny Penny, Beck/Woods)
- Eggers, Robert; Galeen, Henrik; and Stoker, Bram — Nosferatu (Focus Features, Maiden Voyage Pictures, Studio
- Fargeat, Coralie — The Substance (Working Title Film, Good Story, Blacksmith)
- Perkins, Osgood — Longlegs (C2 Motion Picture Group, Cweature Features, Oddfellow Entertainment)
- Schoenbrun, Jane — I Saw the TV Glow (A24, Fruit Tree, Smudge Films)
Superior Achievement in Short Fiction
- Barron, Laird — “Versus Versus” (Long Division: Stories of Social Decay, Societal Collapse, and Bad Manners) (Bad Hand Books)
- Bolton, Rachel — “And She Had Been So Reasonable” (Apex Magazine Issue 147) (Apex Book Company)
- Brown, Sasha — “To the Wolves” (Weird Horror #9) (Undertow Publications)
- Busby, R. A. — “Ten Thousand Crawling Children” (Nightmare Magazine January 2024) (Adamant Press)
- Jakubowski, Raven — “She Sheds Her Skin” (Nightmare Magazine November 2024) (Adamant Press)
Superior Achievement in Short Non-Fiction
- Arnzen, Michael — “Screamin’ in the Rain: The Orchestration of Catharsis in William Castle’s The Tingler” (What Sleeps Beneath)
- Liaguno, Vince — “The Horror of Donna Berzatto and Her Feast of the Seven Fishes” (You’re Not Alone in the Dark) (Cemetery Dance Publications)
- Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew — “Hidden Histories: The Many Ghosts of Disney’s Haunted Mansion” (Disney Gothic: Dark Shadows in the House of Mouse) (Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.)
- Wetmore, Kevin J., Jr. — “Jackson and Haunting of the Stage” (Journal of Shirley Jackson Studies Vol. 2 No. 1) (Shirley Jackson Society)
- Wood, Lisa — “Blacks in Film and Cultivated Bias” (No More Haunted Dolls: Horror Fiction that Transcends the Tropes) (Vernon Press)
Superior Achievement in a YA Novel
- Cesare, Adam — Clown in a Cornfield 3: The Church of Frendo (HarperCollins Children’s Books)
- Fraistat, Ann — A Place for Vanishing (Delacorte Press)
- Parker, Natalie C. — Come Out, Come Out (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
- Senf, Lora — The Losting Fountain (Union Square & Co.)
- Wellington, Joelle — The Blonde Dies First (Simon & Schuster)