The Horror Writers Association (HWA) is breaking from tradition, and announcing this year’s Lifetime Achievement and Specialty Press Award winners even before announcing this year’s preliminary Bram Stoker Award ballot. All three awards, in addition to the Stokers, will be presented at a special banquet (open to the public) on 27 March, during this year’s World Horror Convention in Brighton, England.
The Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement “is presented periodically to an individual whose work has substantially influenced the horror genre. While this award is often presented to a writer, it may also be given for influential accomplishments in other creative fields. Winners must have exhibited a profound, positive impact on the fields of horror and dark fantasy, and be at least sixty years of age or have been published for a minimum of thirty-five years.” This year’s Lifetime Achievement Award honorees are Brian Lumley and William F. Nolan.
The HWA Specialty Press Award “is presented periodically to a specialty publisher whose work has contributed substantially to the horror genre, whose publications display general excellence, and whose dealings with writers have been fair and exemplary.” The award “recognizes a publisher outside the mainstream New York City publishing community that specializes in dark-themed fiction. Winners are typically small presses specializing in limited editions, small print runs, or the work of new and relatively unknown authors. The winner of the award is determined by a majority vote of the HWA Board of Trustees.” This year’s honoree is Tartarus Press, of North Yorkshire, England.
The HWA provided the following citations for these awards”
Brian Lumley’s first short story collection, The Caller of the Black, was published by Arkham House in 1971. Lumley went on to garner followers around the world for his series of Necroscope novels, which began in 1986. He has published dozens of short stories, including many in the Cthulhu Mythos begun by H.P. Lovecraft, and he is also the author of the popular “Titus Crow” and “Psychomech” stories. His books have been published in both mass market and small press limited editions, and his early titles command high prices in the collector’s market. He is the subject of 2002’s The Brian Lumley Companion (co-written with Stanley Wiater), and his most recent release is Harry and the Pirates: And Other Tales from the Lost Years (Tor, 2009). Lumley is a former President of the Horror Writers Association.
William F. Nolan is a true Renaissance man of literature, having written science fiction (including the immensely popular Logan’s Run series, the first volume of which was co-written with George Clayton Johnson), mysteries, screenplays, and non-fiction, but some of his most outstanding work as an editor and short fiction author has been in the horror genre. His 1984 collection Things Beyond Midnight was first published by Scream/Press (and since been reprinted by Babbage Press), and in 2003 Leisure Books published Dark Universe. As a screenwriter, Nolan co-wrote the legendary television film Trilogy of Terror, a highly-regarded adaptation of The Turn of the Screw (ABC, 1974), and 1976’s Burnt Offerings. In 2002, he was voted a “Living Legend in Dark Fantasy” by the International Horror Guild, and in 2006 he was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. Nolan most recently served as editor on the anthology The Bleeding Edge.
Ray Russell and Rosalie Parker’s Tartarus Press specializes in weird, ghostly, and gothic fiction ranging from reprints of obscure but notable novellas and novels to single-author collections of classics and brand new collections by contemporary writers. Tartarus has reprinted collections by Arthur Machen, F. Marion Crawford, Sarban, Robert Aickman, Edith Wharton, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, plus published new collections by Rhys Hughes, Mark Valentine, Peter Cannon, and Simon Strantzas, among others. Their first original anthology, Tales from Tartarus, was edited by R.B. Russell and Rosalie Parker and published in 1995. Since then, Strange Tales volumes 1-3 have come out, and the first volume won the World Fantasy Award in 2004.
Tartarus has been in existence for twenty years. Initially, the publications were inexpensive yet attractive stapled booklets of stories or articles limited to 25-50 copies. The press quickly graduated to publishing 100-250 copies of its more popular chapbooks, and by 1992 it was producing attractive hardbound books such as the collection Ritual and Other Stories by Arthur Machen. Now, in 2010, most of their print runs are 300-500 copies. In addition, the press published a price guide to first editions, and the journal Wormwood.