At WordSpace we are excited that Ben Fountain’s novel Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk has been nominated for the National Book Award. Ben is a past president of the WordSpace Board of Directors and a longtime friend of the organization. He read from Billy Lynn at a WordSpace Salon just as it was being published.

The National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the Hemmingway Foundation/Penn Award (which by the way Ben Fountain has also won) get a lot of national attention. But there are many awards out there, prestigious in their own fields, that most of us never hear about.

I thought a good ongoing feature for the WordSpace blog might be to periodically highlight one of these awards. And first up is The Shirley Jackson Award. 

Most people know Jackson as the author of the short story “The Lottery,” the story that causes the most discussion in whatever eighth-grade English class encounters it. But she was a distinguished American writer who has her own volume in the Library of America.  Since 2007, the award named in her honor acknowledges “…outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic”

Looking over the list of winners and nominees for the Jackson award points up how diverse the field of horror writing has become. One of this year’s nominees was Donald Ray Pollack’s The Devil All the Time. I read Pollack’s book shortly after it was published, and it never crossed my mind that I was reading a horror novel — although come to think about it something pretty horrible happened every dozen pages or so. Robert Jackson Bennett is a past winner of the award. He is an Austin author who will be reading for WordSpace in 2013.

This link to the official site will give you some  background on the award and the list of winners. There is even a video of the 2011 ceremony. You can also find out more about Jackson winners on Worlds Without End. They feature only winners and nominees in the novel category, but you get synopses, in some cases excerpts, and links to online reviews.

Check it out. There is still time to choose something spooky to read before Halloween. And the jurors for the Jackson Award are both picky and creative about what they consider.

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