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The following press release from the Horror Writers Association (HWA) is about something I think is pretty cool. In fact, I’m tempted to call it the coolest thing the HWA has done in a long time. If I had one suggestion, though, I’d recommend opening the scholarship up to promising female writers outside the HWA, too. Then, if the winner turns out to not be a member of the HWA already, they could be awarded the scholarship as well as one year’s free membership.

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Starting from 2014 the Horror Writers Association (HWA) has instituted the Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Scholarship, open to female writers who are members of the HWA. The Scholarship is designed to address the unseen, but real, barriers limiting the amount of horror fiction being published by women.

The first Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Scholarship has been awarded to Erinn Kemper, a Canadian writer who resides in Costa Rica. Erinn Kemper (E. L. Kemper) grew up in an isolated mill town in coastal British Columbia, Canada. From there she moved to the city to study Philosophy at the University of Victoria. Over the years she’s worked as an eye glasses repair person, a fish farmer, a cabinet maker, a parks department laborer, a book store clerk, a home nurse, a teacher—and lived in a camper, in Japan and on a forty foot wooden sailboat. She now lives in a small town in Costa Rica on the Caribbean Sea where she plans to write her first novel from her hammock.

Erinn has sold stories to Cemetery Dance Magazine and [Nameless] Digest and appears in various anthologies including A Darke Phantastique and Chiral Mad 2. Visit her website at erinnkemper.com for updates and sloth sightings.

Erinn said, “I am honored and thrilled to be chosen to receive The Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Scholarship. I appreciate the opportunity to take some writing courses for the first time and to challenge myself to dig deeper and darker. It’s a wonderful thing that the HWA supports writers and invests in the future of the genre through mentoring and now with these scholarships! When it’s my turn I can’t wait to give back by offering my support as a mentor.”

HWA President Rocky Wood said, “We are proud to be the first genre writers’ organisation to present a scholarship specifically targeted to support the development of female authors.”

About the HWA

The Horror Writers Association is a worldwide organization promoting dark literature and its creators. It has over 1200 members who write, edit and publish professionally in fiction, nonfiction, videogames, films, comics, and other media. For more information about the HWA visit www.horror.org. Media inquiries to president@horror.org.