It is with great pleasure – and with thanks to the judges in all categories – that we announce the shortlists for the Australian Shadows Awards 2017.

Selected from 183 works submitted across 7 categories, these shortlists represent the very best in the field of horror and dark fiction (and non-fiction) by an Australasian author in 2017. Winners will be announced on Saturday 9 June, at the first live Australian Shadows Awards ceremony, kindly hosted by Continuum XIV: Conjugation.

And the shortlistees are…

The Rocky Wood Award for Non-Fiction and Criticism

• 101 Weird Writers #46 – Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Kat Clay. (Weird Fiction Review)
• Literary Serial Killer Fiction: The Evolution of a Genre, William Cook. (Victoria University, Wellington NZ)
• The Body Horror Book, Claire Fitzpatrick. (Oscillate Wildly Press)
• It Follows is the Millennial STD Parable of Our Time, Maria Lewis. (SBS)
• A Shared Ambition: Horror Writers in Horror Fiction, Kyla Lee Ward. (AHWA, Midnight Echo #12)

Best Written Work in a Comic/Graphic Novel

No Award.

Best Edited Work

• Midnight Echo #12, Shane Jiraiya Cummings & Anthony P Ferguson. (AHWA)
• Below the Stairs – Tales from the Cellar, Steven Dillon. (Things in the Well)
• Cthulhu Deep Down Under Volume 1, Steve Proposch, Christopher Sequeira & Bryce Stevens. (IFWG Publishing)

Best Collected Work

• Singing My Sister Down and Other Stories, Margo Lanagan. (Allen & Unwin)
• Perfect Little Stitches and Other Stories, Deborah Sheldon. (IFWG Publishing)

Short Fiction

• Outside a Drifter, Lisa L. Hannett. (Looming Low Vol.1, Dim Shores Press)
• The Hand Walker, Rue Karney. (Pacific Monsters, Fox Spirit Press)
• The Circle Line, Martin Livings. (Between the Tracks, Things in the Well)
• The Banksia Boys, Matthew J Morrison. (Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #66)
• The Little Mermaid, in Passing, Angela Slatter. (The Review of Australian Fiction, April 2017)
• The Big Reveal, David Stevens. (Kaleidotrope)

The Paul Haines Award for Long Fiction

• Ismail’s Expulsion, Brian Craddock. (Between the Tracks, Things in the Well)
• Hope and Walker, Andrew Cull. (Vermillion2One)
• This Impossible Gift, Matthew R Davis. (Midnight Echo #12, AHWA)
• No Good Deed, Angela Slatter. (New Fears, Titan Books)
• Furtherest, Kaaron Warren. (Dark Screams Vol.7, Cemetery Dance)
• Eden in the End, Ashlee Scheuerman. (Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing)

Best Novel

• Aletheia, J.S. Breukelaar. (Crystal Lake Publishing)
• Slithers, W.W. Mortensen. (Self Published)
• Soon, Lois Murphy. (Transit Lounge)
• Corpselight (Verity Fassbinder Book 2), Angela Slatter. (Jo Fletcher Books)
• Providence Place, Matthew Tait. (Dark Crib Publications)