Four authors scored multiple nominations on the Final Ballot of the 2024 Bram Stoker Awards announced by the Horror Writers Association on February 23. Laird Barron, Lindy Ryan, Eden Royce, and Sofia Ajram each received two noms.
Barron earned his first nominations since 2016 as Not a Speck of Light made the cut for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection and “Versus Versus” for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction. “Versus Versus” is one of the stories in Long Division: Stories of Social Decay, Societal Collapse, and Bad Manners, an anthology edited by Doug Murano and Michael Bailey that was also nominated for a Bram Stoker Award.
Not a Speck of Light is Barron’s fifth fiction collection to receive Stoker recognition, including The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All and Other Stories which won the 2013 Bram Stoker Award. His fiction collections Swift to Chase (2016), Occultation (2010), and The Imago Sequence (2007) were nominated for Stokers, and his story “Hallucigenia” received a nom for Superior Achievement in Long Fiction at the 2006 Bram Stoker Awards.
Ryan’s debut novel Bless Your Heart is up for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. She’s also nominated for Superior Achievement in an Anthology as editor of Mother Knows Best: Tales of Homemade Horror. She was previously nominated as editor of the 2022 anthology Into the Forest: Tales of the Baba Yaga.
Royce garnered her first two Stoker nominations ever with Hollow Tongue competing for Superior Achievement in Long Fiction and The Creepening of Dogwood House for Superior Achievement in a Middle Grade Novel. Royce’s story “Room and Board Included, Demonology Extra” was a Short Fiction nominee for a 2020 Shirley Jackson Award.
Ajram is another first-time nominee. Ajram’s story Coup de Grâce is vying for Superior Achievement in Long Fiction. Ajram is also nominated for Superior Achievement in an Anthology as editor of Bury Your Gays: An Anthology of Tragic Queer Horror.
For the rest of the Final Ballot of the 2024 Bram Stoker Awards, click the link below for my article or visit the HWA or the Bram Stoker Awards.
LIONEL RAY GREEN 