The Reformatory by Tananarive Due followed up its June win for best novel at the Bram Stoker Awards by winning the Novel category at the 2023 Shirley Jackson Awards on July 13.
Billed as “a haunting work of historical fiction,” The Reformatory is a novel that pieced together the life of a relative that Due’s family never spoke of, “bringing his tragedy and those of so many others at the infamous Dozier School for Boys to the light.” Due has said the book took seven years to write and “almost broke” her.
Another big winner at the awards was Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic edited by Jolie Toomajan. Subtitled An Anthology of Hysteria Fiction, the 242-page collection published by Cosmic Horror Monthly won the Edited Anthology category and one of its short stories, “The First Mrs. Edward Rochester Would Like a Word” by Laura Blackwell, won the Short Fiction category.
The Shirley Jackson Awards also presented a Special Award to Elizabeth Hand for her 2023 novel A Haunting on the Hill, a work authorized by the Jackson Estate set in the world created by Shirley Jackson in The Haunting of Hill House.
Presented at Readercon 33 in Quincy, Massachusetts, the 2023 Shirley Jackson Awards recognized outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic published in 2023.
Visit ShirleyJacksonAwards.org for the official press release about the awards ceremony.
Here’s the complete list of 2023 Shirley Jackson Awards winners:
NOVEL: The Reformatory by Tananarive Due.
NOVELLA: To the Woman in the Pink Hat by LaToya Jordan.
NOVELETTE: “Six Versions of My Brother Found Under the Bridge” by Eugenia Triantafyllou.
SHORT FICTION: “The First Mrs. Edward Rochester Would Like a Word” by Laura Blackwell from the anthology Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic.
SINGLE-AUTHOR COLLECTION: They Will Dream in the Garden by Gabriela Damián Miravete and translated by Adrian Demopulos.
EDITED ANTHOLOGY: Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic edited by Jolie Toomajan.
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