Ward, Catriona
Nominations:
Sundial (Tor Nightfire), Novel, 2022
BIO: CATRIONA WARD was born in Washington, DC and grew up in the United States, Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen, and Morocco. She read English at the University of Oxford and is a graduate of the Creative Writing MFA at the University of East Anglia.
Her fourth novel, the gothic thriller Sundial (2022 – Viper, Tor Nightfire) was a Bram Stoker Award nominee, Observer Thriller of the Month and a USA Today, CNN and Apple Books selection for best new fiction. Stephen King called Sundial ‘Authentically terrifying…. Do not miss this book.’
Ward’s third breakout novel The Last House on Needless Street (2021 – Viper, Tor Nightfire)wonthe August Derleth Prize and has been shortlisted for the Kitschies, the British Book Awards, the South Bank Award, and the World Fantasy Award. Esquire magazine listed it as one of the top 25 best horror novels of all time. Rights have been sold in twenty-nine territories, it was a Richard and Judy Book Club selection, a Times Book of the Month, Observer Book of the Month, March Editor’s Pick on Radio 4’s Open Book, a Between the Covers BBC2 book club selection and a Sunday Times bestseller. The Last House on Needless Street is being developed for film by Andy Serkis and Jonathan Cavendish’s production company, The Imaginarium. Stephen King said of The Last House on Needless Street, ‘I was blown away. It’s a true nerve-shredder that keeps its mind-blowing secrets to the very end. Haven’t read anything this exciting since Gone Girl.’
Ward’s second novel Little Eve (2018 – W&N, 2022 Tor Nightfire) won the 2019 Shirley Jackson Award and the August Derleth Prize at the British Fantasy Awards. It was a Barnes and Noble best Horror Book of 2022 and a Guardian best book of 2018. Nightfire published Little Eve for the first time in the US in 2022.
Ward’s debut The Girl from Rawblood (2015 – W&N, Sourcebooks) was reissued in March 2023. It also won the 2016 August Derleth, making Ward the only woman to have won the prize three times.
Catriona Ward’s fifth novel, Looking Glass Sound, will be published in the UK by Viper in April 2023, and by Tor Nightfire in the US in August 2023.
Her short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and have been shortlisted for various prizes. She lives in London and Devon.