It’s time for the FOURTH Annual Literary Nasties Awards!
Presented by Filthy Loot and Rebecca Rowland, the Literary Nasties exist to honor groundbreaking “misfit,” “cult,” and generally “didn’t play with the other kids during recess” kind of fiction. The kind of books that don’t sit politely on the shelf.
It’s time to vote for your favorite work that came out in 2025!
What We Are Looking to Celebrate: body horror, existentialist fiction, transgressive literature, grotesque fiction, weird fiction, splatterpunk, dark realism, trauma fiction, emotionally dark indie lit, existential horror, nihilist fiction, downward-mobility fiction, toxic relationship fiction, dissociation realism, burnout literature, workplace dread fiction, domestic meltdown fiction, alt-lit (yeah, I hate that term too), grief literature, generational trauma fiction, late-capitalist malaise fiction, urban despair fiction, rural despair fiction, grotesque humanism, bodily anxiety fiction, cruelty literature, humiliation literature, discomfort fiction, anti-cozy fiction, dark coming-of-age, autofiction with teeth, unstable narrator fiction, and other children’s books categories.
There are no preliminary nominations. The winners of the awards are the works with the most write-in votes.
REMEMBER: one vote per category, per person. Any chicanery will result in the entire work being disqualified! Don’t be that person. And while you’re at it, consider voting in more than one category; otherwise… I’ve got nothing: it’s your vote to waste.
Nominations open: December 15, 2025
Nominations close: January 15, 2026
Winners announced: Late January
2022
• Best Collection: The God in the Hills and Other Horrors – Jon Steffens
• Best Long Story: Little Lugosi – Douglas Ford
• Best Short Story: A Manner of Taste – T.N. Shaw
2023
• Best Collection: VoidHaus – Void Collective
• Best Long Story: Chaindevils – Matthew Mitchell
• Best Short Story: The Japanese Box – Jennifer Anne Gordon
2024
• Best Collection: The Off-Season – ed. Marissa Van Uden
• Best Long Story: Pornageddon – Matt Micheli
• Best Short Story: The Amassing Man – David Corse