World Fantasy Award Winners for Best Short Fiction

If there was ever any doubt that the World Fantasy Award carved a path separate from the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the roster of winning short fiction authors should dispel it. While there is a tiny bit of overlap, by and large the winners on this list are absent from the rolls of the other awards. The other observation one can draw from this list is that the fantasy honored by the World Fantasy Awards is decidedly darker in tone than the fiction honored by the other major genre awards, and tends to include a healthy dose of horror.

This category was also the locus of some controversy in 1991, when Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess won for their installment of the Sandman series titled A Midsummer Night's Dream. Some voters were disgruntled that a mere comic could win this award, and so following Gaiman and Vess' win, the eligibility rules were altered. While it is still possible for a graphic story to win a World Fantasy Award, a graphic story is no longer eligible to win in this category.

1975: Pages from a Young Girl's Journal by Robert Aickman
1976: Belsen Express by Fritz Leiber
1977: There's a Long, Long Trail A-Winding by Russell Kirk
1978: The Chimney by Ramsey Campbell
1979: Naples by Avram Davidson
1980: (tie) The Woman Who Loved the Moon by Elizabeth A. Lynn
          (tie) Mackintosh Willy by Ramsey Campbell
1981: The Ugly Chickens by Howard Waldrop
1982: (tie) The Dark Country by Dennis Etchison
          (tie) Do the Dead Sing? (aka The Reach) by Stephen King
1983: The Gorgon by Tanith Lee
1984: Elle Est Trois, (La Mort) by Tanith Lee
1985: (tie) The Bones Wizard by Alan Ryan
          (tie) Still Life with Scorpion by Scott Baker
1986: Paper Dragons by James P. Blaylock
1987: Red Light by David J. Schow
1988: Friend's Best Man by Jonathan Carroll
1989: Winter Solstice, Camelot Station by John M. Ford
1990: The Illusionist by Steven Millhauser

1991: A Midsummer Night's Dream by by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess (reviewed in The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country)

1992: The Somewhere Doors by Fred Chappell
1993: (tie) This Year's Class Picture by Dan Simmons
          (tie) Graves by Joe Haldeman
1994: The Lodger by Fred Chappell
1995: The Man in the Black Suit by Stephen King
1996: The Grass Princess by Gwyneth Jones
1997: Thirteen Phantasms by James P. Blaylock
1998: Dust Motes by P.D. Cacek
1999: The Specialist's Hat by Kelly Link
2000: The Chop Girl by Ian R. MacLeod
2001: The Pottawatomie Giant by Andy Duncan
2002: Queen for a Day by Albert E. Cowdrey
2003: Creation by Jeffrey Ford
2004: Don Ysidro by Bruce Holland Rogers
2005: Singing My Sister Down by Margo Lanagan
2006: CommComm by George Saunders
2007: Journey Into the Kingdom by M. Rickert
2008: Singing of Mount Abora by Theodora Goss
2009: 26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss by Kij Johnson
2010: The Pelican Bar by Karen Joy Fowler
2011: Fossil-Figures by Joyce Carol Oates
2012: The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu
2013: The Telling by Gregory Norman Bossert
2014: The Prayer of Ninety Cats by Caitlín R. Kiernan
2015: Do You Like to Look at Monsters? by Scott Nicolay
2016: Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers by Alyssa Wong

2017: Das Steingeschöpf by G.V. Anderson

2018: The Birding: A Fairy Tale by Natalia Theodoridou
2019: (tie) Like a River Loves the Sky by Emma Törzs
          (tie) Ten Deals with the Indigo Snake by Mel Kassel

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