Congratulations to Spec Chic Contributor Stephanie M. Wytovich!

Everyone here at Speculative Chic would love to congratulate fellow contributor Stephanie M. Wytovich on her first Stoker Award for her poetry collection, Brothel!

The Bram Stoker Award is awarded annually at StokerCon, hosted by the Horror Writers Association. In 2017, the winners were announced at a ceremony held aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California. Wytovich was nominated in two categories: Superior Achievement in a First Novel for The Eighth (Dark Regions Press) and Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection for Brothel (Raw Dog Screaming Press). She has been nominated in previous years for her poetry collections An Exorcism of Angels, Mourning Jewelry, and Hysteria: A Collection of Madness (all from Raw Dog Screaming Press).

About Brothel:

Wytovich plays madam in a collection of erotic horror that challenges the philosophical connection between death and orgasm. There’s a striptease that happens in Brothel that is neither fact nor fiction, fantasy nor memory. It is a dance of eroticism, of death and decay. The human body becomes a service station for pain, for pleasure, for the lonely, the confused. Sexuality is hung on the door, and the act of love is far from anything that’s decent. Her women spread their legs to violence then smoke a cigarette and get on all fours. They use their bodies as weapons and learn to find themselves in the climax of the boundaries they cross in order to define their humanity…or lack thereof.

Wytovich shows us that the definition of the feminine is not associated with the word victim. Her characters resurrect themselves over and over again, fighting stereotypes, killing expectations. She shows us that sex isn’t about love; it’s about control. And when the control is disproportionate to the fantasy, she shows us the true meaning of femme fatale.

Congratulations again, Stephanie, and to all of this year’s winners!