British Fantasy Awards 2025 presented in Brighton

The British Fantasy Society presented its 2025 awards on 1 November at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton, in a ceremony hosted by Joanne Harris. The Robert Holdstock Award for best fantasy novel went to Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi, and the best horror novel award to My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna Van Veen.

Lorraine Wilson won best novella for The Last to Drown, from Luna Press, and Eugenia Triantafyllou won best short story for "Loneliness Universe", published in Uncanny Magazine. Cecile Cristofari's Elephants in Bloom (NewCon Press) was named best collection, and Bury Your Gays: An Anthology of Tragic Queer Horror, edited by Sofia Ajram, best anthology. Frances White received the Sydney J. Bounds Award for best newcomer for Voyage of the Damned.

Flame Tree Press was named best independent press, and Sacha Coward's Queer as Folklore, published by Unbound, won best non-fiction. The Karl Edward Wagner Award went to Rosemary Pardoe, one of the society's founders.

The British Fantasy Awards give more space to small presses than most genre prizes, with dedicated categories for independent publishers, magazines and audio. For writers of novellas and collections, forms that large publishers often find hard to sell, that attention matters. Several of this year's winners came from presses of a size where a prize can make a real difference to a book's reach.

Source: British Fantasy Society: British Fantasy Awards 2025 winners.