Jones wins again for The Buffalo Hunter Hunter at 2025 Bram Stoker Awards

Stephen Graham Jones won Superior Achievement in a Novel for the third time in five years as the American Indian revenge story The Buffalo Hunter Hunter earned the top honor during the 2025 Bram Stoker Awards at StokerCon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on June 6, 2026.

Presented by the Horror Writers Association, the 2025 Bram Stoker Awards featured 67 works nominated in 13 categories. The nonprofit HWA has presented the awards since 1987 and remains the premier writers organization in the horror and dark fiction genre with more than 2,000 members.

The awards were live-streamed by HWA, and you can watch the nearly three-hour ceremony on YouTube.

With the win for The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Jones has now won five Stokers, including two for his novels My Heart Is a Chainsaw (2021) and The Only Good Indians (2020) and two for his long fiction titles Night of the Mannequins (2020) and Mapping the Interior (2017).

The most competitive category of the night was Superior Achievement in a First Novel, which featured seven nominees instead of the usual five. Michael Wehunt, a first-time nominee, won the award for The October Film Haunt. Billed as “Horror Movie meets the scope and emotion of Stephen King,” The October Film Haunt is about a woman pulled into a cult horror film that is determined to have a sequel.

Here are the winners for the other categories, according to BramStokerAwards.horror.org. Clicking on the winning titles will take you their links on Amazon.

Superior Achievement in an Anthology: Silk & Sinew: A Collection of Folk Horror from the Asian Diaspora edited by Kristy Park Kulski. This was Kulski’s first win. She was previously nominated in the 2023 Short Non-Fiction category for “100 Livers” from Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror.

Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection: Lost in The Dark and Other Excursions by John Langan. This was Langan’s second win. He previously won the Novel category in 2016 for The Fisherman.

Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel: Bowling with Corpses and Other Tales from Lands Unknown by Mike Mignola. This was Mignola’s first win. He was previously nominated in 2011 for Baltimore Volume I: The Plague Ship and in 1999 for Hellboy: Box Full of Evil.

Superior Achievement in Long Fiction (tie): Cathedral of the Drowned by Nathan Ballingrud and “Wolf Moon, Antler Moon” by A.C. Wise. A sequel to Crypt of the Moon Spider, Cathedral of the Drowned was Ballingrud’s first win. He was previously nominated in the 2013 Fiction Collection category for North American Lake Monsters: Stories. It was also Wise’s first win. She was previously nominated in the 2021 Fiction Collection category for The Ghost Sequences.

Superior Achievement in Long Non-Fiction: Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Fiction edited by Becky Siegel Spratford. A 2020 recipient of the Richard Laymon President’s Award, Spratford was a first-time Stoker nominee and winner.

Superior Achievement in a Middle Grade Novel: Ride or Die by Delilah S. Dawson. This was Dawson’s first win. She was previously nominated in the 2022 Middle Grade Novel category for Camp Scare.

Superior Achievement in Poetry: Everything Endless by Linda D. Addison and Jamal Hodge. A 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, Addison won her sixth Stoker in the Poetry Collection category. This was Hodge’s first win. He was previously nominated in the 2024 Poetry Collection category for The Dark Between the Twilight.

Superior Achievement in a Screenplay: Sinners by Ryan Coogler. This was Coogler’s first nomination and win.

Superior Achievement in Short Fiction: “Inheritance” by RJ Joseph, from Full Throttle: A Dark Dozen Anthology. This was Joseph’s first win. She was previously nominated in the 2022 Fiction Collection category for Hell Hath No Sorrow Like a Woman Haunted and in the 2020 Short Non-Fiction category for “The Beloved Haunting of Hill House: An Examination of Monstrous Motherhood.”

Superior Achievement in Short Non-Fiction “My Long Road to Horror” by Tananarive Due from Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Fiction. This was Due’s second win. She previously won the 2023 Novel category for The Reformatory.

Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel: Shiny Happy People by Clay McLeod Chapman. This was Chapman’s first win. He was previously nominated in the 2025 Fiction Collection category for Acquired Taste and in the 2024 Long Fiction category for Kill Your Darling.

Specialty Press Award: Bad Hand Books.

Richard Laymon President’s Award: Marc L Abbott.

Karen Lansdale Silver Hammer Award: Sarah Read.

Mentor of the Year Award: Eric Guignard.

Lifetime Achievement Award Winners: Lisa Morton and Jonathan Maberry.

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