Posted on 6 July 2015
A title published by the University of Wales Press has been shortlisted for the 2015 Allan Lloyd Smith Memorial Prize - an international prize for gothic criticism.
The Twilight of the Gothic? Vampire Fiction and the Rise of the Paranormal Romance by Joseph Crawford has been shortlisted for the monograph category alongside three other titles.
One of 22 titles in the Press’ Gothic Literary Studies series, the book explores the history of the paranormal romance genre; from its origins in the revisionist horror fiction of the 1970s, via its emergence as a minor sub-genre of romantic fiction in the early 1990s, to its contemporary expansion in recent years into an often-controversial genre of mainstream fiction.
In doing so, it investigates the extent to which the post-Twilight paranormal romance really does represent a break from older traditions of Gothic fiction - and just what it is about the genre that has made it so extraordinarily divisive, captivating millions of readers whilst simultaneously infuriating and repelling so many others.
Established by the International Gothic Association (IGA) in 2011 as a memorial to Dr Allan Lloyd Smith (1945-2010), founding President of the IGA, the Allan Lloyd Smith memorial Prize is awarded for a scholarly publication considered to have advanced the field of Gothic studies.
For the 2015 incarnation of the award there will be two prizes - one for a standout monograph published on the Gothic over the last two years, and another for an edited collection published during the same period.
Awarded every two years, another title published by the University of Wales Press, Gothic Music: The Sounds of the Uncanny by Isabella Van Elferen, won the 2013 prize.
The winners will be announced at the International Gothic Association conference in Vancouver at the end of July.
/Ends
Vampire Fiction and the Rise of the Paranormal Romance
by Joseph Crawford (University of Wales Press, May 2014)
£85.00 • HB • 9781783160648 • 138mm x 216mm • 368pp