Just in case you haven’t had your fill of awards this season, dear readers, we are delighted to bring you this year’s Stoker Award Nominees, celebrating the best in English-language horror writing!

Each year, the Horror Writer’s Association presents the Bram Stoker Awards for Superior Achievement, named in honor of Bram Stoker, author of the horror novel to beat all horror novels (and Free For All favorite), Dracula. The Bram Stoker Awards were instituted immediately after the organization’s incorporation in 1987.  The first awards were presented in 1988 (for works published in 1987), and they have been presented every year since. The award itself, designed by sculptor Steven Kirk, is a stunning haunted house, with a door that opens to reveal a brass plaque engraved with the name of the winning work and its author.

The Stoker Awards specifically avoid the word “best”, because it recognizes that horror itself is a genre that is constantly moving, changing, and pushing its own boundaries (and can often be very specific to a place, or a generation).  Instead, it uses the words “Superior Achievement”.  The categories of award have changed over the years, as well, as the genre has evolved, but since 2011, the eleven Bram Stoker Award categories are: Novel, First Novel, Short Fiction, Long Fiction, Young Adult, Fiction Collection, Poetry Collection, Anthology, Screenplay, Graphic Novel and Non-Fiction.

And can I just say, that the HWA also hosts an academic conference on horror alongside its annual conference, known as the Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference, after the pioneer of the Gothic novel, and a lady author to boot?  I think that is the coolest thing ever, not only because the HWA remains so devoted to celebrating and studying horror as a genre in the past and the future, but it also creates a wonderfully inclusive atmosphere where all kinds of readers are accepted.

So here, without further ado, are the 2016 nominees for the Stoker Awards.  There are a few titles here that we’ve covered previously at the Free For All, which is proof that we know how to pick ’em, and many that I will be added to my To Be Read list promptly!   The final announcement will be made at StokerCon, the annual conference of the HWA.

Superior Achievement in a Novel

• Hard Light, Elizabeth Hand
• Mongrels, Stephen Graham Jones
• The Fisherman, John Langan
• Stranded, Bracken MacLeod
• Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, Paul Tremblay

Superior Achievement in a First Novel

• The Apothecary’s Curse, Barbara Barnett
• Hollow House, Greg Chapman
• Haven, Tom Deady
• Mayan Blue, Michelle Garza & Melissa Lason
• The Eighth, Stephanie M. Wytovich

Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel

• Snowed, Maria Alexander
• Last Days of Salton Academy, Jennifer Brozek
• Holding Smoke, Elle Cosimano
• When They Fade, Jeyn Roberts
• The Telling, Alexandra Sirowy

Superior Achievement in Long Fiction

• The Sadist’s Bible, Nicole Cushing
• “That Perilous Stuff”, Scott Edelman
• The Ballad of Black Tom, Victor LaValle
• “The Jupiter Drop”, Josh Malerman in You, Human
• The Winter Box, Tim Waggoner

Superior Achievement in Short Fiction

• “Time is a Face on the Water”, Michael Bailey in  Borderlands 6
• “A Rift in Reflection”, Hal Bodner in Chiral Mad 3
• “The Bad Hour”, Christopher Golden in What the #@&% Is That?
• “Arbeit Macht Frei”, Lisa Mannetti in Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories
• “The Crawl Space”, Joyce Carol Oates in Ellery Queen (9-10/16)

Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection

• Swift to Chase, Laird Barron
• A Long December, Richard Chizmar
• The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror, Joyce Carol Oates
• Lethal Birds, Gene O’Neill
• American Nocturne, Hank Schwaeble

Superior Achievement in an Anthology

• Chiral Mad 3, Michael Bailey, ed.
• The Beauty of Death, Alessandro Manzetti, ed.
• Borderlands 6, Oliva F. Monteleone & Thomas F. Monteleone, eds.
• Fright Mare – Women Write Horror, Billie Sue Mosiman, ed.
• Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories, Doug Murano & D. Alexander Ward, eds.

Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction

• Haunted, Leo Braudy
• Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, Ruth Franklin
• Guillermo del Toro’s “The Devil’s Backbone” and “Pan’s Labyrinth”, Danel P. Olson
• In the Mountains of Madness, W. Scott Poole
• Something in the Blood, David J. Skal
• The Gothic Worlds of Peter Straub, John Tibbetts

Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection

• Sacrificial Nights, Bruce Boston & Alessandro Manzetti (Kipple Officina Libraria)
• Corona Obscura, Michael R. Collings
• Field Guide to the End of the World, Jeannine Hall Gailey
• Small Spirits, Marge Simon
• Brothel, Stephanie M. Wytovich (Raw Dog Screaming)

Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel

• Blood Feud, Cullen Bunn
• Kolchak the Night Stalker: The Forgotten Lore of Edgar Allan Poe, James Chambers
• No Mercy: Volume 2, Alex de Campi
• Outcast: Volume 3: This Little Light, Robert Kirkman
• The Steam Man, Mark Alan Miller & Joe R. Lansdale
• Providence: Act 1, Alan Moore

Superior Achievement in a Screenplay

• Penny Dreadful: “A Blade of Grass”
• Stranger Things: “The Upside Down”
• Stranger Things: “The Vanishing of Will Byers”
• 10 Cloverfield Lane
• The Witch