"Herman Wouk Is Still Alive" is a short story by American author Stephen King. It was originally published in the May 2011 issue of The Atlantic magazine. [1] The short story won the 2011 Best Short Fiction Bram Stoker Award. [2]
Old friends Brenda and Jasmine, along with their seven children between them, set off on a road trip in a rented Chevy Express after Brenda wins $2,700 on the Pick-3 lottery. They reflect back on their harsh childhoods and disappointing lives. Meanwhile, Phil and Pauline, two aging poets and former lovers, are on their way to a poetry festival at the University of Maine. They stop at a rest area to have lunch together. Soon, Brenda decides that their lives are no longer worth living and that the children are doomed to a pitiful future. Deliberately and with the consent and encouragement of Jasmine, she crashes the van into a tree near Phil and Pauline at high speed. Phil and Pauline hurry to the wreckage, but Brenda and Jasmine and all their children are dead. When a passerby asks Pauline what happened, she finally loses her well-cultured disposition and asks him "What the fuck does it look like?"
Dan Simmons is an American science fiction and horror writer. He is the author of the Hyperion Cantos and the Ilium/Olympos cycles, among other works which span the science fiction, horror, and fantasy genres, sometimes within a single novel. Simmons's genre-intermingling Song of Kali (1985) won the World Fantasy Award. He also writes mysteries and thrillers, some of which feature the continuing character Joe Kurtz.
Robert Rick McCammon is an American novelist from Birmingham, Alabama. One of the influential names in the late 1970s–early 1990s American horror literature boom, by 1991 McCammon had three New York Times bestsellers and around 5 million books in print.
Peter Francis Straub is an American novelist and poet. He has written numerous horror and supernatural fiction novels, including Julia and Ghost Story, as well as The Talisman, which he co-wrote with Stephen King. Straub has received such literary honors as the Bram Stoker Award, World Fantasy Award, and International Horror Guild Award.
The Bram Stoker Award for Best Long Fiction is an award presented by the Horror Writers Association (HWA) for "superior achievement" in horror writing for long fiction.
The Bram Stoker Award for Short Fiction is an award presented by the Horror Writers Association (HWA) for "superior achievement" in horror writing for short fiction.
The Bram Stoker Award for Best Fiction Collection is an award presented by the Horror Writers Association (HWA) for "superior achievement" in horror writing for best fiction collection.
The Bram Stoker Award for Best Non-Fiction is an award presented by the Horror Writers Association (HWA) for "superior achievement" in horror writing for non-fiction.
Thomas Ligotti is a contemporary American horror writer. His writings have been noted as being rooted in several literary genres – most prominently weird fiction – and have overall been described by many critics as works of philosophical horror, often formed into short stories and novellas in the tradition of gothic fiction. The worldview espoused by Ligotti in his fiction and non-fiction is pessimistic and nihilistic. The Washington Post called him "the best kept secret in contemporary horror fiction."
Cemetery Dance Publications is an American specialty press publisher of horror and dark suspense. Cemetery Dance was founded by Richard Chizmar, a horror author, while he was in college. It is associated with Cemetery Dance magazine, which was founded in 1988. They began to publish books in 1992. They later expanded to encompass a magazine and website featuring news, interviews, and reviews related to horror literature.
Lisey's Story is a novel by American writer Stephen King that combines the elements of psychological horror and romance. The novel was released on October 24, 2006. It won the 2006 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, and was nominated for the World Fantasy Award in 2007. An early excerpt from the novel, a short story titled "Lisey and the Madman", was published in McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories (2004), and was nominated for the 2004 Bram Stoker Award for Best Long Fiction. King stated that this is his favorite of the novels he has written.
Dark Visions is a horror fiction compilation, with three short stories by Stephen King, three by Dan Simmons and a novella by George R. R. Martin. It was published by Orion on August 10, 1989. The collection was first published, with the same seven stories, under the title Night Visions 5, by Dark Harvest on July 1, 1988. The book was also issued under the titles Dark Love and The Skin Trade.
Yvonne Navarro is an American author who has published over twenty books. Of those twenty, the titles AfterAge, deadrush, Final Impact, Red Shadows, DeadTimes, That's Not My Name and Mirror Me were solo novels, or fiction created solely by her. Her most recent works Highborn and Concrete Savior are also solo novels and are part of The Dark Redemption Series. She lives in Arizona and is married to author Weston Ochse.
Jonathan Maberry is an American suspense author, anthology editor, comic book writer, magazine feature writer, playwright, content creator and writing teacher/lecturer. He was named one of the Today’s Top Ten Horror Writers.
Joseph Hillström King, better known by the pen name Joe Hill, is an American writer. His work includes the novels Heart-Shaped Box (2007), Horns (2010), NOS4A2 (2013), and The Fireman (2016); the short story collections 20th Century Ghosts (2005) and Strange Weather (2017); and the comic book series Locke & Key (2008–2013). He has won awards including Bram Stoker Awards, British Fantasy Awards, and an Eisner Award.
Thomas Piccirilli was an American novelist and short story writer.
Stephen Jones is an English editor of horror anthologies, and the author of several book-length studies of horror and fantasy films as well as an account of H. P. Lovecraft's early British publications.
Lisa Morton is an American horror author and screenwriter.
Lucy A. Snyder is an American science fiction, fantasy, humor, horror, and nonfiction writer.
Linda D. Addison is an American poet and writer of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. Addison is the first African-American winner of the Bram Stoker Award, which she won five times. The first two awards were for her poetry collections Consumed, Reduced to Beautiful Grey Ashes (2001) and Being Full of Light, Insubstantial (2007). Her poetry and fiction collection How To Recognize A Demon Has Become Your Friend won the 2011 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection. She received a fourth HWA Bram Stoker for the collection The Four Elements, written with Marge Simon, Rain Graves, and Charlee Jacob. Her fifth HWA Bram Stoker was for the collection The Place of Broken Things, written with Alessandro Manzetti. Addison is a founding member of the CITH writing group.
Richard Thomas is an American author. His focus is on neo-noir and speculative fiction, typically including elements of violence, mental instability, breaks in reality, unreliable narrators, and tragedies. His work is rich in setting and sensory details—often called maximalism. His writing has also been called transgressive and grotesque. He was Editor-in-Chief at both Dark House Press (2012-2016) and Gamut Magazine (2017-2019).