Horror Writers Association’s 2017 Specialty Press Award

The Horror Writers Association proudly announces Eraserhead Press and Independent Legions Press as the dual recipients of the 2017 Specialty Press Award. Each year the HWA recognizes the accomplishments of a noteworthy small press or presses. The Specialty Press Award brings recognition to an outstanding publisher of horror, dark fantasy, and weird fiction. This year’s Specialty Press Awards will be presented during StokerCon™ 2018 at the historic Biltmore Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island, March 1^st-4^th.

Founded in 1999, Eraserhead Press is an independent publisher of bizarro fiction and cutting-edge horror. Under the leadership of Rose O’Keefe, the press has developed an international cult following for its line of trade paperbacks and e-books. The press releases new books every month and has published over four hundred titles by 150 different authors, including Piers Anthony, Brian Keene, Michael Cisco, Molly Tanzer, Carlton Mellick III, Jeremy Robert Johnson, John Skipp, Edward Lee, J.F. Gonzalez, Laura Lee Bahr, and Wrath James White. The company also publishes under four imprints: Deadite Press, Fungasm Press, Lazy Fascist Press, and The New Bizarro Author Series.

Independent Legions Press, a publishing company specializing in horror fiction, located in Italy, was founded in 2015 by Bram Stoker Award® winning author Alessandro Manzetti. Since that time, the press has published, in English and Italian, more than 50 titles by the most revered and successful writers in the horror genre: Clive Barker, Richard Laymon, Ramsey Campbell, Poppy Z. Brite, David J. Schow, Robert McCammon, Jack Ketchum, Edward Lee, Peter Straub, Charlee Jacob, Dennis Etchison, Carlton Mellick III, Greg F. Gifune, Gene O’Neill, Lucy Taylor, Nicole Cushing, Shane McKenzie, Alyssa Wong, Usman Malik, and many others. So far, the press has published about 115 authors, among them more than 40 Bram Stoker Award® winning authors, and two volumes of its anthology series The Beauty of Death – The Gargantuan Book of Horror Tales. Each volume has contained about 40 stories by both contemporary masters of horror and newcomers, and both volumes were nominated for the Bram Stoker Award® for Superior Achievement in an Anthology.