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Here are the winners of the 2025 Bram Stoker Awards

The best writing in horror from 2025

Here are the winners of the 2025 Bram Stoker Awards
Image: Andrew Liptak

Stephen Graham Jones had a good night over the weekend: not only did he earn the Nebula Award for Best Novel for his novel The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, he earned the "Superior Achievement in a Novel" for the same.

I don't read as much horror as I'd like, but the field is really brimming over with excellence, and to that end, the Horror Writers Association awarded its annual Bram Stoker Awards® over the weekend.

Here are the finalists and winners (winners marked in bold). I've added links where I can find the online publication:

Superior Achievement in an Anthology

  • Storyteller: A Tanith Lee Tribute Anthology edited by Julie C. Day, Carina Bissett, and Craig Laurance Gidney
  • The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand edited by Christopher Golden and Brian Keene
  • Silk & Sinew: A Collection of Folk Horror from the Asian Diaspora edited by Kristy Park Kulski
  • This Way Lies Madness: Stories from the Edge of Darkness edited by Lee Murray and Dave Jeffery
  • HOWL: An Anthology of Werewolves from Women-in-Horror edited by Lindy Ryan and Stephanie M. Wytovich

Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection

  • Acquired Taste by Clay McLeod Chapman
  • Little Horn: Stories by Gemma Files
  • Lost in the Dark and Other Excursions by John Langan
  • Teenage Girls Can Be Demons by Hailey Piper
  • Cyanide Constellations by Sara Tantlinger

Superior Achievement in a First Novel

  • The Scald-Crow by Grace Daly
  • Moonflow by Bitter Karella
  • Her Wicked Roots by Tanya Pell
  • The Faceless Thing We Adore by Hester Steel
  • Molting by Kathryn Tennison
  • Listen to Your Sister by Neena Viel
  • The October Film Haunt by Michael Wehunt

Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel

  • Jumpscare by Cullen Bunn (writer) and Danny Luckert (artist)
  • John Carpenter’s Tales for a HalloweeNight, Volume 11 edited by Sandy King
  • Athanasia by Daniel Kraus (writer) and Dani (artist)
  • Bowling With Corpses and Other Tales from Lands Unknown by Mike Mignola
  • Let This One Be a Devil by James Tynion IV (writer), Steve Foxe (writer), and Piotr Kowalski (artist)

Superior Achievement in Long Fiction

Superior Achievement in Long Non-Fiction

  • Global Indigenous Horror edited by Naomi Simone Borwein
  • The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Monsters edited by Brandon R. Grafius and John W. Morehead
  • America’s Most Gothic by Leanna Renee Hieber and Andrea Janes
  • Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can’t Look Away by Coltan Scrivner
  • Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Fiction edited by Becky Siegel Spratford

Superior Achievement in a Middle Grade Novel

  • Ride or Die by Delilah S. Dawson
  • The Girl in the Walls by Meg Eden Kuyatt
  • Broken Dolls by Ally Malinenko
  • The House Next Door by Ellen Oh
  • Mystery James Digs Her Own Grave by Ally Russell

Superior Achievement in a Novel

  • Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
  • King Sorrow by Joe Hill
  • The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
  • The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
  • Girl in the Creek by Wendy N. Wagner

Superior Achievement in Poetry (Collection and Long Form)

  • Everything Endless by Linda D. Addison and Jamal Hodge
  • Songs of Enough: An Inferno All My Own by Maxwell I. Gold
  • The Uterus Is an Impossible Forest by Shannon Kearns
  • The Haunting by Cate Peebles
  • Allegories of Beauty & Violence: A collection of Gothic Romance Poems by MarieAnn C. Raguso, PhD

Superior Achievement in a Screenplay

  • Sinners by Ryan Coogler
  • Weapons by Zach Cregger
  • 28 Years Later by Alex Garland
  • Companion by Drew Hancock
  • Bring Her Back by Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman

Superior Achievement in Short Fiction

  • "Stomata" by L.E. Daniels (Darkness Most Fowl)
  • "Inheritance" by RJ Joseph (Full Throttle: A Dark Dozen Anthology)
  • "Saint Dymphna’s School for Borderland Girls" by Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece (Weird Horror #10)
  • "[Ir]reversible" by Anna Taborska  (Witches and Witchcraft: An Anthology of Stories, Poems, and Essays)
  • "Autogas Ferryman" by Champ Wongsatayanont (Nightmare Magazine #156)

Superior Achievement in Short Non-Fiction

  • "Deathwish Wolf Man: The Tragic Hero at the Heart of the Universal Monster" by Patrick Barb (Interstellar Flight Magazine)
  • "My Long Road to Horror" by Tananarive Due (Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Fiction)
  • "Why Horror" by Stephen Graham Jones (Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Fiction)
  • "Haunted Thresholds: Liminal Horror and the Psychological Disintegration of Women from Post-Partum, Grief, Trauma and Religious Fanaticism" by Mo Moshaty (Darkest Margins: 24 Essays on Liminality and Liminal Spaces in the Horror Genre)
  • "My Mother Was Margaret White" by Cynthia Pelayo (Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Fiction)

Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel

  • Shiny Happy People by Clay McLeod Chapman
  • Beautiful Brutal Bodies by Linda Cheng
  • We’re Not Safe Here by Rin Chupeco
  • The Silenced by Diana Rodriguez Wallach
  • A Girl Walks Into the Forest by Madeleine Roux

Specialty Awards

  • The Karen Lansdale Silver Hammer Award: Sarah Read
  • The Richard Laymon President’s Award: Marc L Abbott
  • Mentor of the Year Award: Eric Guignard
  • Specialty Press Award: Bad Hand Books

Thanks for reading: what did you like from this list?