The winners of the 2025 Bram Stoker Awards. The Horror Writers Association announced the winners on June 6th, 2026 at StokerCon in Pittsburgh.

Nominees and winners: Superior Achievement in an Anthology Day, Julie C.; Bissett, Carina; and Gidney, Craig Laurance, eds. — Storyteller: A Tanith Lee Tribute Anthology (Essential Dreams Press) Golden, Christopher and Keene, Brian, eds. — The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King's The Stand (Gallery Books) WINNER: Kulski, Kristy Park, ed. — Silk & Sinew: A Collection of Folk Horror from the Asian Diaspora (Bad Hand Books) Murray, Lee and Jeffery, Dave, eds. — This Way Lies Madness: Stories from the Edge of Darkness (Flame Tree Publishing) Ryan, Lindy and Wytovich, Stephanie M., eds. — HOWL: An Anthology of Werewolves from Women-in-Horror (Black Spot Books) Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection Chapman, Clay McLeod — Acquired Taste (Titan Books) Files, Gemma — Little Horn: Stories (Shortwave) WINNER: Langan, John — Lost in The Dark and Other Excursions (Word Horde) Piper, Hailey — Teenage Girls Can Be Demons (Titan Books) Tantlinger, Sara — Cyanide Constellations (Dark Matter INK) Superior Achievement in a First Novel Daly, Grace — The Scald-Crow (Creature Publishing) Karella, Bitter — Moonflow (Run For It) Pell, Tanya — Her Wicked Roots (Gallery Books) Steel, Hester — The Faceless Thing We Adore (Page Street Horror) Tennison, Kathryn — Molting (Uncomfortably Dark Horror) Viel, Neena — Listen to Your Sister (St. Martin's Griffin / Titan Books) WINNER: Wehunt, Michael — The October Film Haunt (St. Martin's Press) Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel Bunn, Cullen (writer) and Luckert, Danny (artist) – Jumpscare (Dark Horse Comics) King, Sandy (editor) – John Carpenter's Tales for a HalloweeNight, Volume 11 (Storm King Comics) Kraus, Daniel (writer) and Dani (artist) – Athanasia (VAULT Comics) WINNER: Mignola, Mike – Bowling With Corpses and Other Tales from Lands Unknown (Dark Horse Comics) Tynion IV, James (writer), Foxe, Steve (writer), and Kowalski, Piotr (artist) – Let This One Be a Devil – (Dark Horse Comics & Tiny Onion Studios) Superior Achievement in Long Fiction (tie) WINNER: Ballingrud, Nathan — Cathedral of the Drowned (Tor Nightfire / Titan Books) Ha, Thomas — "Uncertain Sons" (Uncertain Sons and Other Stories, Undertow Publications) Langan, Sarah — "Squid Teeth"(Reactor) Langan, Sarah — Pam Kowolski is a Monster! (Raw Dog Screaming Press) WINNER: Wise, A.C. — "Wolf Moon, Antler Moon" (Reactor) Superior Achievement in Long Non-Fiction Borwein, Naomi Simone, ed. — Global Indigenous Horror (University Press of Mississippi) Grafius, Brandon R. and Morehead, John W., eds. — The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Monsters (Oxford University Press) Hieber, Leanna Renee and Janes, Andrea — America's Most Gothic (Kensington Publishing) Scrivner, Coltan — Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can't Look Away (Penguin Random House) WINNER: Spratford, Becky Siegel, ed. — Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Fiction (Saga Press) Superior Achievement in a Middle Grade Novel WINNER: Dawson, Delilah S. — Ride or Die (Delacorte Press) Kuyatt, Meg Eden — The Girl in the Walls (Scholastic Press) Malinenko, Ally — Broken Dolls (HarperCollins Children's Books) Oh, Ellen — The House Next Door (HarperCollins Children's Books) Russell, Ally — Mystery James Digs Her Own Grave (Delacorte Press) Superior Achievement in a Novel Hendrix, Grady — Witchcraft for Wayward Girls (Berkley) Hill, Joe — King Sorrow (William Morrow) WINNER: Jones, Stephen Graham — The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (Saga Press / Titan Books) Moreno-Garcia, Silvia — The Bewitching (Del Rey) Wagner, Wendy N. — Girl in the Creek (Tor Nightfire) Superior Achievement in Poetry (Collection and Long Form) WINNER: Addison, Linda D. and Hodge, Jamal — Everything Endless (Raw Dog Screaming Press) Gold, Maxwell I. — Songs of Enough: An Inferno All My Own (Hippocampus Press) Kearns, Shannon — The Uterus is an Impossible Forest (Raw Dog Screaming Press) Peebles, Cate — The Haunting (Tupelo Press) Raguso, MarieAnn C, PhD — Allegories of Beauty & Violence: a collection of Gothic Romance Poems (Analyze This) Superior Achievement in a Screenplay WINNER: Coogler, Ryan — Sinners (Warner Bros. / Domain / Proximity) Cregger, Zach — Weapons (New Line Cinema / Domain / Subconscious) Garland, Alex — 28 Years Later (Sony / Columbia Pictures / TSG Entertainment) Hancock, Drew — Companion (New Line Cinema / BoulderLight Pictures / Vertigo Entertainment) Philippou, Danny and Hinzman, Bill — Bring Her Back (Causeway Films / Salmira Productions / The South Australian Film Corporation) Superior Achievement in Short Fiction Daniels, L.E. — "Stomata" (Darkness Most Fowl, The Godmother of Horror Press) WINNER: Joseph, RJ – "Inheritance" (Full Throttle: A Dark Dozen Anthology, Uncomfortably Dark Publishing) Szczepaniak-Gillece, Jocelyn — "Saint Dymphna's School for Borderland Girls" (Weird Horror #10, Undertow Publications) Taborska, Anna — "[Ir]reversible" (Witches and Witchcraft: An Anthology of Stories, Poems, and Essays, Hippocampus Press) Wongsatayanont, Champ – "Autogas Ferryman" (Nightmare Magazine #156, Adamant Press) Superior Achievement in Short Non-Fiction Barb, Patrick — "Deathwish Wolf Man: The Tragic Hero at the Heart of the Universal Monster" (Interstellar Flight Magazine) (Interstellar Flight Press) WINNER: Due, Tananarive — "My Long Road to Horror" (Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Fiction, Saga Press) Jones, Stephen Graham — "Why Horror" (Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Fiction, Saga Press) Moshaty, Mo — "Haunted Thresholds: Liminal Horror and the Psychological Disintegration of Women from Post-Partum, Grief, Trauma and Religious Fanaticism" (Darkest Margins: 24 Essays on Liminality and Liminal Spaces in the Horror Genre) (1428 Publishing Ltd) Pelayo, Cynthia — "My Mother Was Margaret White" (Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Fiction, Saga Press) Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel WINNER: Chapman, Clay McLeod – Shiny Happy People (Delacorte Press) Cheng, Linda —Beautiful Brutal Bodies (Roaring Brook Press) Chupeco, Rin — We're Not Safe Here (Sourcebooks) Rodriguez Wallach, Diana — The Silenced (Delacorte Press) Roux, Madeleine — A Girl Walks Into The Forest (Quill Tree Books) SPECIALTY AWARDS Specialty Press Award: Bad Hand Books Richard Laymon President's Award: Marc L. Abbott Karen Lansdale Silver Hammer Award: Sarah Read Mentor of the Year Award: Eric Guignard Lifetime Achievement Award Winners: Lisa Morton, Jonathan Maberry

OPINION The US government is reportedly weighing whether to take a financial stake in AI companies, which looks a bit like negotiating for a seat on the Titanic. Neither OpenAI nor Anthropic, the marquee brands in US AI, are profitable yet. While Anthropic may be nearer to that point if its accounting survives scrutiny, OpenAI's $1.4 trillion in financial commitments over the next eight years have been interpreted as a red flag for investors. This raises (at least) two questions: Should the US government be picking winners? And should the US government be picking losers? The first question appears already to have been decided. As noted by the US Council on Foreign Relations, since January 2025, the feds have invested $20.9 billion in sixteen deals that involve direct ownership. This represents a change from more hands-off financial arrangements involving grants, loans, and tax incentives. The Department of Commerce, for example, has taken a 10 percent stake in Intel, once a symbol of American technical prowess and now a national security backstop. The Development Finance Corporation had invested in minerals, energy, and infrastructure. And the Department of Defense has undertaken at least seven similar deals. Neoliberal US notions about competition and the separation of church, state, and private industry have succumbed to the new world disorder. When economists from Harvard and Yale looked at the issue in a 2021 paper titled "The Dance Between Government and Private Investors: Public Entrepreneurial Finance around the Globe," they were cautiously optimistic. Authors Jessica Bai (Harvard), Shai Bernstein (Harvard), Abhishek Dev (Yale) and Josh Lerner (Harvard) looked at 755 entrepreneurial finance policies in 66 countries during the period from 1995 to 2019. They concluded that "government funding programs are associated with subsequent increases in innovation," as measured by "top patents." They offered some caveats, such as the observation that "government programs frequently rely on private capital markets through capital matching requirements, where private capital groups are often allowed to invest in more preferential terms than the public funds." And they also noted that economists have long recommended government investment in response to market failures – areas where private funding has chosen not to invest, presumably due to the uncertainty of returns. A recent example of that would be the US Commerce Department's decision to invest $2 billion in quantum computing in exchange for a minority controlling stake in nine technology companies. Pure-play quantum computing companies like D-Wave, Quantinuum, IonQ, and Rigetti Computing are not making a profit. But concern that quantum computing might some day do meaningful computing not possible with classical computers is enough to keep the funds flowing for now. The US government's reported interest in AI companies might be interpreted in a similar light, as a bailout for companies that have committed to spend heavily on data centers before demand has been demonstrated and pricing has stabilized. With OpenAI and Anthropic preparing to go public, the White House would do better to wait before placing its bet. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is said to have pushed for federal investment last year but publicly repudiated the idea after CFO Sarah Friar suggested federal loan guarantees. If the feds were to buy into OpenAI, the deal might take the form of a public wealth fund – so the public would receive revenue from intellectual property that AI firms have captured and are reselling. US Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) last week said he planned to introduce a bill called the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act. Funded by a one-time 50 percent tax paid in AI company stock, it would give the public a say in how AI is used and a portion of the revenue generated by AI companies (which, again, follows from the largely uncompensated capture of public content). Meanwhile, the White House last week issued an executive order directing "the national security enterprise to accelerate AI adoption to meet surging demand, adapt the best commercial and open-source technologies for mission use, assure that fielded systems are robust, steerable, controllable, and preserve clear lines of accountability under the Constitutional chain of command." And the order promises "new partnerships with willing private-sector companies to secure America’s cutting-edge AI against global threats." Buying into these companies doesn't make a lot of sense if they can deliver on their promises at a viable price. The market would ensure plenty of good options for federal procurement. But if leading AI models are priced like Claude Mythos, reported to run $25 per million input tokens and $125 per million output tokens, or about 5x Opus 4.8, there may be some concern that leading edge AI will be too costly for much of the market. Uber's $1,500 monthly token spending cap per employee AI tool suggests companies won't reward the AI industry for over-investing. If cutting-edge AI is going to be priced out of reach for most industries and if it really can accomplish things that lesser models cannot, the case for federal involvement gets stronger. It would be a shame if the feds rewarded OpenAI and its peers with taxpayer money because that would reward fiscal irresponsibility and hinder startups hoping to innovate. Worse still, it would commit funds prematurely and unnecessarily for some notional national security edge that's razor thin and is being dulled by evolving open weight models and foreign model providers. The jury is still out – there are at least 115 lawsuits against AI companies – on whether there's a broad, sustainable market for AI services outside of software development and perhaps a few other knowledge work markets. The government should wait for the courts, the public, and the market to weigh in before riding to the rescue. ®

A renowned academic, Wood was hit by a car as he was crossing a supermarket’s parking lot and later died of the injuries

Gordon S Wood, a Pulitzer prize-winning author and historian, was killed on Sunday when he was struck by a car in a supermarket parking lot in Rhode Island.

Wood, 92, won the Pulitzer in 1993 in the history category for The Radicalism of the American Revolution, a landmark tome that advanced the theory of the break with Britain being at least as much of an internal social and political transformation as a desire to be rid of colonial masters.

This story was amended on 8 June 2026 to correct the Pulitzer prize-winning book’s title to The Radicalism of the American Revolution.

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Group seeks emergency injunction to halt UFC Freedom 250 event at the White House before a single punch is thrown – key US politics stories from Monday 8 June

Donald Trump is throwing himself quite the 80th birthday party at the White House on Sunday. All he needs now is for a federal judge, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and a passing thunderstorm not to ruin it.

The watchdog group Public Integrity Project filed a lawsuit on Saturday in DC federal court, seeking an emergency injunction to halt the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Freedom 250 event before a single punch is thrown on 14 June – which is both Flag Day and the president’s birthday.

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Two new rape complaints have been filed against the 67-year-old singer and actor, who denies the claims

French singer and actor Patrick Bruel, facing sexual assault allegations from multiple women, was taken into police custody on Monday, as two new rape complaints were filed against him.

The 67-year-old, a major figure in French pop culture with multiple top-selling albums and more than 40 film appearances, is being questioned about 13 victims, the prosecutor’s office in the western Paris suburb of Nanterre said in a statement.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

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Ukrainian forces continue strikes on oil facilities in occupied Crimea and Russia proper; French jet downs drone in Latvian airspace. What we know on day 1,567

A surge in airstrikes on Russian energy and fuel sites has disrupted supplies in several southern regions, state-run Tass news agency reported on Monday, citing the energy ministry. Asked whether the Kremlin is worried about the fuel crisis in Russian-occupied Crimea, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “There are indeed certain problems at the moment. Measures are being taken.” Peskov sought to blame unfounded panic-buying. Ukraine struck the Semykolodezkaya oil plant in the Crimean Peninsula on Sunday night, sparking a fire. The base is used to store fuel reserves supplying the Russian military, according to Ukraine’s military. Ukraine also struck an oil depot near Feodosia in Crimea, Kyiv’s general staff said.

Ukraine’s military said it also hit the Grushovaya oil transshipment base near Novorossiysk in Russia’s Krasnodar Krai region. The complex is one of the largest such hubs in southern Russia for oil and petroleum products. Russian regional authorities confirmed a Ukrainian drone sparked a fire and up to 130 emergency workers had to be brought in.

A French military Rafale fighter jet shot down a drone that entered Nato member Latvia’s airspace from Russia on Monday. The Latvian army said it entered as a result of Russian electromagnetic warfare that was detected before the drone crossed the border. The Latvian prime minister, Andris Kulbergs, hailed the “swift decision-making and professional action” taken in response. The French army confirmed the downing while a Nato official said: “It shows once again Nato’s determination and ability to deter and defend.”

A drone crossed into Moldova early on Monday and apparently exploded as Russia attacked neighbouring Ukraine, the Moldovan defence ministry said. The fragments, found amid signs of an explosion, were being examined to establish its origin and the circumstances. “What happened underscores the risks and consequences that the Russian Federation’s war of aggression against Ukraine poses to regional security and neighbouring states,” Moldova’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

Russian strikes killed three people and wounded half a dozen in Ukraine’s north-eastern Kharkiv region, local authorities said early on Tuesday. “The enemy has hit the city of Chuguiv,” said Oleg Synegubov, the regional governor. “Three people have been killed as a result of the enemy attack.” Separately, the Kharkiv mayor, Igor Terekhov, reported six people wounded in his city.

Two people were killed and at least 18 injured, including four children aged five, 10, 13 and 12, by a Russian drone attack in the central Zaporizhzhia region that damaged residential buildings and vehicles and destroyed market kiosks, said the regional military administration head, Ivan Fedorov. In Nikopol, a Russian attack killed a 49-year-old woman and injured four other people, according to the state emergency service, which added that four people were injured in the Dnipropetrovsk region when strikes hit residential buildings.

In the north-east region of Sumy, governor Oleg Grigorov reported a Russian attack with mortars and drones on the Seredyna-Buda district. “As a result of the enemy attack, a 71-year-old local resident who was riding a bicycle was killed,” he said. In Odesa, three people were wounded after a Russian drone struck a public transport stop. At least seven people were wounded in strikes at Sloviansk in the Donetsk region, local authorities said.

A Ukrainian drone struck a passenger train travelling from Moscow to Simferopol in occupied Crimea, injuring the driver and killing the driver’s assistant, Kremlin-installed regional leader Sergei Aksyonov reported early on Monday. All passenger train traffic in Crimea was halted after the attack, with passengers evacuated and replacement buses provided, Russian operator Grand Service Express said. Ukraine denies targeting civilians.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said a new proposed round of EU sanctions against Russia includes 80 listings targeting Russia’s “military industrial complex, human rights violators and propagandists”. Kallas said after a meeting of EU defence ministers on Monday that western sanctions had already cost Moscow an estimated $1.2tn to $1.5tn.

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Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo: