We’re pleased to announce that our first anthology, Dreams of Shadow and Smoke: Stories for J.S. Le Fanu, published on the bicentenary of Le Fanu’s birth, has won the inaugural Ghost Story Award for Best Ghost Story Book 2014.

Warm congratulations are also due to D.P. Watt, whose story “Shallabalah” (published in the Ghosts & Scholars Newsletter #26) won Best Short Story.

A big thank you to everyone who voted, and of course to all those who were involved in the project.

We’ve still got a few copies of the anthology left (and a handful signed by a number of the contributors) for anyone who is interested. Check out our website.

A Note from the Editors

We are both delighted to learn that Dreams of Shadow and Smoke: Stories for J.S. Le Fanu has won Best Ghost Story Book for 2014. More to the point, we are grateful that so many readers enjoyed the anthology. In some ways, this award could not have been given to a more appropriate book (bear with us here!): we say this not as editors, but because this book—much like the Ghost Story Awards—reflects a deep admiration for the ghostly tale, and serves as a celebration of our genre as a whole, both past and present. As is always the case with anthologies, the success of this book belongs wholly with the authors whose

works define the volume. And despite the debt owed to our nineteenth-century touchstone, we hope the stories in Dreams of Shadow and Smoke show that literature of the uncanny continues to evolve, and we expect that the Ghost Story Awards (surely its very existence reflects a healthy and vibrant genre) will only further promote tales of the supernatural, weird, unheimlich, odd, fantastic, and strange. Anyway, enough said!

Sincerely,
Jim Rockhill & Brian J. Showers