The International Horror Guild awards are based on public recommendations, but the winners are determined by a panel of judges. This year, the award winners will be announced Friday evening, 31 October 2008, in an online presentation via the IHG’s web site.
Peter Straub has been named this year’s International Horror Guild Living Legend. Straub is the author of numerous short stories and novellas, as well as seventeen novels (including two co-authored with Stephen King), which have been translated into more than twenty foreign languages. The recipient of many awards and honors, he has achieved both critical acclaim and commercial success in a notable career in which he has continually reshaped and expanded the field of dark literature.
The rest of the nominees are:
Novel:
Grin of the Dark by Ramsey Campbell (PS Publishing)
Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand (Small Beer Press)
The Missing by Sarah Langan (HarperCollns)
Season of the Witch by Natasha Mostert (Dutton)
The Terror by Dan Simmons (Little, Brown)
Fiction Collection:
The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird Barron (Night Shade Books)
Plots and Misadventures by Stephen Gallagher (Subterranean Press)
Shadows Kith and Kin by Joe R. Lansdale (Subterranean Press)
Masques of Satan by Reggie Oliver (Ash Tree Press)
Dagger Key and Other Stories by Lucius Shepard (PS Publishing)
Long Fiction:
“Procession of the Black Sloth” by Laird Barron (The Imago Sequence)
The Man in the Picture: A Ghost Story by Susan Hill (Profile)
Softspoken by Lucius Shepard (Night Shade Books)
The Scalding Rooms by Conrad Williams (PS Publishing)
Mid-Length Fiction:
“The Janus Tree” by Glen Hirshberg (Inferno)
“Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed” by Steven Duffy (At Ease with the Dead)
“The Bone Man” by Fredric S. Durbin (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 2007)
“Closet Dreams” by Lisa Tuttle (Postscripts 10)
Short Fiction:
“Digging Deep” by Ramsey Campbell (Phobic)
“Honey in the Wound” by Nancy Etchemendy (The Restless Dead)
“The Tank” by Paul Finch (At Ease with the Dead)
“Splitfoot” by Paul Walther (New Genre 5, Spring 2007)
“The Great White Bed” by Don Webb (F&SF, May 2007)
Anthology:
Inferno edited by Ellen Datlow (Tor)
Summer Chills edited by Stephen Jones (Carroll & Graf)
American Supernatural Tales edited by S.T. Joshi (Penguin)
Strange Tales Volume II edited by Rosalie Parker (Tartarus Press)
At Ease with the Dead edited by Barbara and Christopher Roden (Ash Tree Press)
Non-Fiction:
Frankenstein: A Cultural History by Susan Tyler Hitchcock (W.W. Norton)
Mario Bava: All the Colors of Dark by Tim Lucas (Video Watchdog)
Warnings to the Curious: A Sheaf of Criticism on M.R. James edited by Rosemary Pardoe & S.T. Joshi (Hippocampus Press)
Sides by Peter Straub (CD Publications)
The Science of Stephen King by Bob Weinberg & Lois M. Gresh (John Wiley)
Periodical:
Black Static
Dead Reckonings
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
Postscripts
Weird Tales
Illustrated Narrative:
Scalped: Indian Country by Jason Aaron (writer) R.M. Guéra (artist) (Vertigo/DC Comics)
The Nightmare Factory by Thomas Ligotti (creator/writer), Joe Harris & Stuart Moore (writers), Ben Templesmith, Michael Gaydos, Colleen Doran & Ted McKeever (illustrators) (Fox Atomic/Harper Paperbacks)
The Blot by Tom Neely (I Will Destroy You)
The Arrival by Shaun Tan (Arthur A. Levine Books)
Wormwood Gentleman Corpse: Birds, Bees, Blood & Beer by Ben Templesmith (IDW)
Art:
Didier Cottier for Exhibit at Utopiales, Nantes, France, November 2007
David Ho for his body of work
Elizabeth McGrath for “The Incurable Disorder”, Billy Shire Fine Arts, December 2007
Chris Mars for “New Salem”, Jonathan Levine Gallery, October 2007
Mike Mignola for cover & illustrations: Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire (Bantam Spectra)
This year’s judges are Edward Bryant, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Ann Kennedy, and Hank Wagner, with award administrator Paula Guran.