2020 Stoker Awards Preliminary Ballot

Superior Achievement in Short Fiction

• “Am I Missing the Sunlight?”, Meghan Arcuri (Borderlands 7)
• “Street View”, R.A. Busby (Collective Realms 5/20)
• “FFUNS”, Johnny Compton (PseudoPod 3/20)
• “The Man Who Fell Beyond the Wall”, Paolo Di Orazio (self-published)
• “Introduction to the Horror Story, Day 1”, Kurt Fawver (Nightmare 11/20)
• “The Ecstasy of Gold”, Jill Girardi (25 Gates of Hell: A Horror Anthology)
• “The Wet Dream”, Jill Girardi (Places We Fear to Tread)
• “The Space Between”, Larry Hinkle (Deep Magic 3/20)
• “One Last Transformation”, Josh Malerman (Miscreations: Gods, Monstrosities & Other Horrors)
• “The Birds of Nagasaki”, Lucie McKnight Hardy (Uncertainties Volume IV)
• “The Thing I Found Along a Dirt Patch Road”, Cindy O’Quinn (Shotgun Honey Presents Volume 4: Recoil)
• “Should Fire Remember the Fuel?”, Kyla Lee Ward (Oz is Burning)

Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection

• Thin Places, Kay Chronister (Undertow)
• Velocities: Stories, Kathe Koja (Meerkat)
• Children of the Fang and Other Genealogies, John Langan (Word Horde)
• The Cuckoo Girls, Patricia Lillie (Trepidatio)
• Some Bruising May Occur, Gary McMahon (JournalStone)
• Grotesque: Monster Stories, Lee Murray (Things in the Well)
• The Language of Beasts, Jonathan Oliver (Black Shuck)
• Her Infernal Name & Other Nightmares, Robert P. Ottone (Spooky House)
• A Season of Loathsome Miracles, Max D. Stanton (Trepidatio)
• Bloody Britain, Anna Taborska (Shadow)

Superior Achievement in an Anthology

• Miscreations: Gods, Monstrosities & Other Horrors, Michael Bailey & Doug Murano, eds. (Written Backwards)
• The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories, Volume 1, Ryan Cagle & James D. Jenkins, eds. (Valancourt)
• Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women, Geneve Flynn & Lee Murray, eds. (Omnium Gatherum)
• Slay: Stories of the Vampire Noire, Nicole Givens Kurtz, ed. (Mocha Memoirs)
• Shadows & Tall Trees 8, Michael Kelly, ed. (Undertows)
• Worst Laid Plans: An Anthology of Vacation Horror, Samantha Kolesnik, ed. (Grindhouse)
• The Fiends in the Furrows II: More Tales of Folk Horror, David T. Neal & Christine M. Scott, eds. (Nosetouch)
• The Horror Zine’s Book of Ghost Stories, Jeani Rector & Dean H. Wild, eds. (HellBound)
• Not All Monsters: A Strangehouse Anthology by Women of Horror, Sara Tantlinger, ed. (Rooster Republic)
• Arterial Bloom, Mercedes M. Yardley, ed. (Crystal Lake)

Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction

• The Science of Women in Horror: The Special Effects, Stunts, and True Stories Behind Your Favorite Fright Films, Kelly Florence & Meg Hafdahl (Skyhorse)
• The Book of Horror: The Anatomy of Fear in Film, Matt Glasby (White Lion)
• 1000 Women in Horror, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas (BearManor)
• End of the Road, Brian Keene (Cemetery Dance)
• Creepy Cat’s Macabre Travels: Prowling Around Haunted Towers, Crumbling Castles, and Ghoulish Graveyards, Katherine Kerestman (WordCrafts)
• Women Make Horror: Filmmaking, Feminism, Genre, Alison Peirse, ed. (Rutgers University Press)
• Laura’s Ghost: Women Speak About Twin Peaks, Courtenay Stallings (Fayetteville Mafia)
• Writing in the Dark, Tim Waggoner (Guide Dog/Raw Dog Screaming)
• The Monster Theory Reader, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, ed. (University of Minnesota Press)
• The Streaming of Hill House: Essays on the Haunting Netflix Adaption, Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr., ed.  (McFarland)

Superior Achievement in Short Non-Fiction

• “Why the World Is a Better Place with Stephen King in It: An Evolutionary Perspective”, Mathias Clasen (Evolutionary Perspectives on Imaginative Culture)
• “Pandemic Practice: Horror Fans and Morbidly Curious Individuals Are More Psychologically Resilient during the Covid-19 Pandemic”, Mathias Clasen, John Johnson, Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen & Coltan Scrivner (Personality and Individual Differences)
• “The Beloved Haunting of Hill House: An Examination of Monstrous Motherhood”, Rhonda Jackson Joseph (The Streaming of Hill House: Essays on the Haunting Netflix Adaptation)
• “I Need to Believe”, Cynthia Pelayo (Southwest Review 105.3)
• “Degeneration through Violence: Stephen King’s Rage”, Karen J. Renner (Children and Childhood in the Works of Stephen King)
• “Hell is Other Mushroom People: Societal Decay in Matango”, Kelly Robinson (Scary Monsters #117)
• “Lost, Found, and Finally Unbound: The Strange History of the 1910 Edison Frankenstein”, Kelly Robinson (Rue Morgue 6/20)
• “Final Girl: A Life in Horror”, Christina Sng (Interstellar Flight 10/20)
• “Speaking of Horror”, Tim Waggoner (The Writer 11/20)
• “What is IT? Ambient Dead and Modern Paranoia in It (2017), It Follows (2014), and It Comes at Night (2017)”, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (Horror Studies 10/20)

Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection

• Carpe Noctem, Robert Borski (Weird House)
• Many Restless Concerns, Gayle Brandeis (Black Lawrence)
• Sacred Summer, Cassandra Rose Clarke (Aqueduct)
• The Day You Learned To Swim, Amanda Crum (self-published)
• Whitechapel Rhapsody: Dark Poems, Alessandro Manzetti (Independent Legions)
• A Complex Accident of Life, Jessica McHugh (Apokrupha)
• Cries to Kill the Corpse Flower, Ronald J. Murray (Bizarro Pulp)
• Into the Forest and All the Way Through, Cynthia Pelayo (Burial Day)
• A Collection of Dreamscapes, Christina Sng (Raw Dog Screaming)
• Cradleland of Parasites, Sara Tantlinger (Rooster Republic)

Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel

• The Masque of the Red Death, Steven Archer (Raw Dog Screaming)
• Spectre Deep 6, Jennifer Brody & Jules Rivera (Turner)
• Scream Vol. 1: Curse of Carnage, Clay McLeod, Garry Brown & Chris Mooneyham (Marvel)
• The Plot, Tim Daniel, Michael Moreci & Joshua Hixson (Vault)
• Road of Bones, Rich Douek & Alex Cormack (IDW)
• Mary Shelley Presents, Nancy Holder, Chiara Di Francia & Amelia Woo (Kymera)
• Her Life Matters: (Or Brooklyn Frankenstein), Alessandro Manzetti & Stefano Cardoselli (Independent Legions)
• Black Stars Above, Lonnie Nadler & Jenna Cha (Vault)
• Lonesome Days, Savage Nights, Steve Niles, Salvatore Simeone & Szymon Kudranski (TKO Studios)
• Redfork, Alex Paknadel, Giulia Brusco & Nil Vendrell (TKO Studios)

Superior Achievement in a Screenplay

• Color Out of Space
• The Haunting of Bly Manor, “The Altar of the Dead”
• His House
• The Invisible Man
• Lovecraft Country, “Jig-a-Bobo”
• Lovecraft Country, “Sundown”
• The Platform
• Relic
• Underwater
• Vivarium