StokerCon Pittsburgh

June 14-17 • Pittsburgh, PA

This year’s StokerCon was the largest yet and probably the busiest for RDSP as well. We were lucky to attend the reception hosted by the Horror Studies Program at The University of Pittsburgh where they had many inspiring horror artifacts on display. HWA President John Edward Lawson acknowledged The Horror Studies Program as sponsors of the HWA and pledged to continue working with The Horror Studies Program moving forward. One of the highlights for RDSP was seeing papers from authors we’ve published who are now part of the archives such as a handwritten first draft of Writing in the Dark by Tim Waggoner and some boyhood works from Daniel Kraus.

Raw Dog Screaming Press celebrated its 20 year anniversary with a party at StokerCon where we had a chance to introduce people to our new novella line editor, R.J. Joseph along with a few of the authors of the novellas, including Kate Maruyama, L. Marie Wood and Sonora Taylor. It was great to have so many RDSP authors on hand to celebrate with us! This was the first time the Maryland chapter of the HWA attended StokerCon so it was great to have them on hand to help out at the con. Many of the photos in our gallery were taken by J.L. Sparrow, the official MD chapter photographer.

Since this was John’s first StokerCon as HWA President things were extra busy. He spoke at the opening ceremonies, participated in the panel on Horror and Fatherhood, presented The President’s Award to Vice President Meghan Arcuri during the Stoker Award Ceremony and offered comments at the annual public meeting of the board as well as doing the closing address. Thankfully we had J.L. Gribble on hand to run the RDSP table and editors R.J. Joseph and Stephanie Wytovich handling pitches.

It was exciting to see two of our authors receive Stoker awards for books we published. Cynthia Pelayo became the first Puerto Rican to receive a Bram Stoker Award and it was for her poetry collection Crime Scene. Tim Waggoner also received another Stoker for non-fiction for Writing in the Dark: The Workbook.