2021 Shirley Jackson Awards Nominees

Novel

• My Heart Is a Chainsaw, Stephen Graham Jones (Saga)
• Nothing But Blackened Teeth, Cassandra Khaw (Nightfire)
• All the Murmuring Bones, A.G. Slatter (Titan)
• No Gods, No Monsters, Cadwell Turnbull (Blackstone)
• Hummingbird Salamander, Jeff VanderMeer (MCD)

Novella

• A Rose / Arose, Michael Bailey (Written Backwards)
• Dirty Heads, Aaron Dries (Black T-Shirt)
• Flowers for the Sea, Zin E. Rocklyn (Tordotcom)
• Comfort Me with Apples, Catherynne M. Valente (Tordotcom)
• The Route of Ice and Salt, José Luis Zárate, translated by David Bowles (Innsmouth Free)

Novelette

• “The Women”, Margaret Jameson (F(r)iction Spring 2021)
• “We, the Girls Who Did Not Make It”, E. A. Petricone (Nightmare 2/21)
• “The Night Belongs to Us”, Jess Landry (The Mother Wound)
• House of Crows, Lisa Unger (Amazon Original)
• “The Nag Bride”, A.C. Wise (The Ghost Sequences)

Short Fiction

• “You’ll Understand When You’re a Mom Someday”, Isabel J. Kim (khōréō 8/21)
• “Dizzy in the Weeds”, L.D. Lewis (Unfettered Hexes: Queer Tales of Insatiable Darkness)
• “Human Reason”, Nicasio Andres Reed (Unfettered Hexes: Queer Tales of Insatiable Darkness)
• “Forward, Victoria”, Carlie St. George (The Dark 4/21)
• “Gordon B. White is Creating Haunting Weird Horror”, Gordon B. White (Nightmare 7/21)

Single-Author Collection

• People from My Neighborhood, Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Ted Goossen (Soft Skull)
• We are Happy, We are Doomed, Kurt Kawver (Grimscribe)
• Where All is Night, and Starless, John Linwood Grant (Trepidatio)
• Sometimes We’re Cruel, J.A.W. McCarthy (Cemetery Gates)
• Folk Songs for Trauma Surgeons: Stories, Keith Rosson (Meerkat)

Edited Anthology

• Giving The Devil His Due: A Charity Anthology, Rebecca Brewer, ed. (Running Wild)
• Professor Charlatan Bardot’s Travel Anthology to the Most (Fictional) Haunted Buildings in the Weird, Wild World, Eric J. Guignard, ed. (Dark Moon)
• There Is No Death, There Are No Dead, Jess Landry & Aaron J. French, eds. (Crystal Lake)
• Stitched Lips: An Anthology of Horror from Silenced Voices, Ken ManGregor, ed. (Dragon’s Roost)
• Unfettered Hexes: Queer Tales of Insatiable Darkness, dave ring, ed. (Neon Hemlock)

SPECIAL AWARD

The Shirley Jackson Awards, Inc., also is committed to promoting the legacy of Shirley Jackson and, as part of this mission, will present a Special Award to Ellen Datlow in recognition of the anthology When Things Get Dark: Stories inspired by Shirley Jackson (Titan).

Datlow was a nominee for the Shirley Jackson Award for Edited Anthology for the years 2011, 2013 (with Terri Windling), 2015, 2017, and 2019, and won the award in this category for the years 2007, 2009, and 2014.

Previous recipients of a Special Award from the Shirley Jackson Awards are Joyce Carol Oates as editor of the Library of America edition of Shirley Jackson:  Novels & Stories (Library of America, 2010) and Ruth Franklin in recognition of her biography Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (Liveright/W.W. Norton, 2016).

Winners will be announced in-person on October 29, 2022 as part of the Boston Book Festival. For more information, see the award website.

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