While we’re talking awards news, the winners of the Australian Shadows Award have been announced, and I was very pleased to see Kaaron Warren win Best Long Fiction for Slights, which I still think was the best novel of the year despite being a deeply unpleasant reading experience (in, you know, a good way). Deborah Biancotti also took out Best Short Fiction for “Six Suicides” from A Book of Endings (Twelfth Planet Press), which is exciting – while the reader feedback for this book as a whole was very positive, the individual stories didn’t receive much attention in the early days so it’s lovely to see a bit of happy awardness going to it now.

Grants Pass edited by Jennifer Brozek & Amanda Pillar (Morrigan Books) took the third Shadows Award for Best Edited Publication which means 100% female recipients this year.

The words “no women in horror my arse” come to mind, somehow.

Congratulations to all the winners. I’d add my hope that the winner statues this year are less offensively sexist than in previous years, but I suspect this won’t be the case. I suppose someone could always knit a few sensible jumpers for the poor lasses, though trenchcoats might be more appropriate, somehow.

Tags: australian shadows award, awards, deborah biancotti, feminism, horror, kaaron warren, women in horror