The Shirley Jackson Awards Get Even Better...They Have Added Me to the Advisory Board

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Yes, you read that right, I am now a part of the organization that administers my favorite literary award as I have joined the Shirley Jackson Awards as a member of their Advisory Board. This is not the jury which changes every year. From the website:

ADVISORY BOARD

The Board of Advisors is one of the most valuable assets of the Shirley Jackson Awards. Members of the Board offer advice regarding general matters connected with the awards and, most crucially, recommend works for SJA consideration. In so doing, they provide vital support to the mission of the jurors: to read as deeply and widely as possible within the ever-widening borders of dark fiction. However, advisors may only recommend works to the jurors. Advisors do not nominate, vote on, tabulate, or otherwise administer the awards. Accordingly, works by members of the Board of Advisors are eligible for consideration for the awards.

The Advisory Board is an awesome group of humans, some who I know personally, and others who I have admired from afar.  They include:

• Ellen Datlow
• Liz Hand
• John Langan
• Sarah Langan
• Stewart O'Nan
• Faye Ringle
• Me
• Paul Tremblay
• Ann VanderMeer
• Kaaron Warren

You should also click through to see this year's jurors and the Board of Directors and everyone's bios. We are an interesting and diverse bunch, which is key to these awards because the awards themselves look at literature with a very wide lens, much like Jackson herself. Again from the website:

In recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson’s writing, and with permission of the author’s estate, the Shirley Jackson Awards have been established for outstanding achievement in the literature of horror, the dark fantastic, and psychological suspense.

These are not awards bound by any genre, rather they seek to find the best books that are darkly speculative and/or intensely psychological; books that defy conventions but are great.  

Being on the Advisory Board means I have two major responsibilities. The first is to recommend titles for the jury to consider. I have done that part of my duty. I sent in a slew of recommendations. 

The other responsibility is to promote the awards. And that I am already great at; I have been doing it for years. For example, here is an excerpt from my post last year when the nominations came out:

I am on record, multiple times, saying that  this is my favorite award. If I had to pick only 1 award for fiction, this would be it. And that is saying a lot because I have been on the juries for multiple awards and not this one.

But why this one? A few reasons,

First, the Shirley Jackson Awards are an excellent RA tool not only for the normal reasons I outline with the links to start this post, but also because they are an award that is NOT bound by genre. The entire point of the books that are nominated for and win this award is that they represent the legacy of Jackson, herself. Books that are darkly speculative and/or are intensely psychological; books that defy conventions but are great.  Each and every year titles are honored that are amazing reads but are almost always overlooked by genre awards, not because they aren't great [because they are], but because when push comes to shove, they do not fit as easily into the genre box as the other options.

Second, because books that win the Shirley Jackson Award already live on the fringes, the jurors and the titles they choose are more diverse than your average award.

And third, this award can be used as a "readalike" list on its own. Why? Because the main thing these nominated titles all share is a connection to Jackson and her brand of storytelling; thus, they all have an appeal connection that other awards can not promise in the same way. 

Which reminds me, the Shirley Jackson Awards not only have annual jurors who rotate every year but they also have a board of directors and an advisory board. You can access all of those people and their bios on this one page. Every single one of those authors is also readlaike option. 

And of course, the super easy backlist access of nominees and winners going back to 2007, all avaiable with 1 easy click. 

You want a display of weird, unsettling, and compelling titles, look no further than these tales, all of which are singled out for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic. Those nominated for this year and all past years. There are so many options you will never run out of a suggestion for your patrons searching out this type of read.

Please make sure you are aware of the Shirley Jackson Awards and are looking here at the nominees from the last few years both to use as suggestions and to round our your collections. 

I will be posting about it even more than I already do now, and going forward because this appointment has not expiration date.