'Witches on the Road Tonight' wins Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel

The winners of the 2011 Shirley Jackson Awards were announced on July 15 in Burlington, Mass. and “Witches on the Road Tonight” by Sheri Holman received top honors for Best Novel. The awards were presented during Readercon 23: Conference on Imaginative Literature.

For those of you unfamiliar with the relatively new Shirley Jackson Awards, they are given each year to recognize “outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror and the dark fantastic” from works published in the preceding calendar year. The winners are chosen by a panel of award advisors, critics, editors, scholars and writers. Awards are given in six categories – Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Single-Author Collection and Edited Anthology.

The Shirley Jackson Awards are named after the late Shirley Jackson, who died at the age of 48 in 1965. An influential author and novelist, Jackson is best remembered for her short story, “The Lottery,” and her 1959 horror novel, “The Haunting of Hill House.” Her other novels include “The Road Through the Wall” (1948), “Hangsaman” (1951), “The Bird’s Nest” (1954), “The Sundial” (1958) and “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” (1962).

The complete list of this year’s winners in the three “book categories” are as follows:

NOVEL:

Winner – “Witches on the Road Tonight” by Sheri Holman

Finalists:
- “The Devil All the Time” by Donald Ray Pollock
- “The Dracula Papers” by Reggie Oliver
- “The Great Lover” by Michael Cisco
- “Knock Knock” by S. P. Miskowski
- “The Last Werewolf” by Glen Duncan

SINGLE-AUTHOR COLLECTION:

Winner – “After the Apocalypse: Stories” by Maureen F. McHugh

Finalists:
- “The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares” by Joyce Carol Oates
- “Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & Other Horrors” by Livia Llewellyn
- “The Janus Tree” by Glen Hirshberg
- “Red Gloves” by Christopher Fowler
- “What Wolves Know” by Kit Reed

EDITED ANTHOLOGY:

Winner – “Ghosts by Gaslight,” edited by Jack Dann and Nick Gevers

Finalists:
- “Blood and Other Cravings,” edited by Ellen Datlow
- “A Book of Horrors,” edited by Stephen Jones
- “Supernatural Noir,” edited by Ellen Datlow
- “Teeth,” edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
- “The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities,” edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

The first Shirley Jackson Awards were presented in July 2007. The Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel is arguably the most prestigious of all the Shirley Jackson Awards and a number of outstanding novels have received this award over the years. What follows is a complete list of the all-time winners in that category.

2007 – “Generation Loss” by Elizabeth Hand
2008 – “The Shadow Year” by Jeffrey Ford
2009 – “Big Machine” by Victor LaValle
2010 – “Mr. Shivers” by Robert Jackson Bennett
2011 – “Witches on the Road Tonight” by Sheri Holman

For more information about the Shirley Jackson Awards, including information on the winners in the other categories this year, visit http://www.shirleyjacksonawards.org/.

In the end, how many of the books mentioned above have you had the chance to read? Which did you like or dislike? Why? Which would you recommend and why? Let us know in the comments section below.