We are incredibly pleased to announce our jury for The Salam Award for English Imaginative Fiction 2026.
Karen Joy Fowler is the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels and three short story collections. Her 2004 novel, The Jane Austen Book Club, spent thirteen weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list and was a New York Times Notable Book. Fowler’s previous novel, Sister Noon, was a finalist for the 2001 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. Her debut novel, Sarah Canary, won the Commonwealth medal for best first novel by a Californian, was listed for the Irish Times International Fiction Prize as well as the Bay Area Book Reviewers Prize, and was a New York Times Notable Book.
Fowler’s short story collection Black Glass won the World Fantasy Award in 1999, and her collection What I Didn’t See won the World Fantasy Award in 2011. Her most recent novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, won the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction and was short-listed for the 2014 Man Booker Prize. Her new novel Booth published in March 2022 and was long-listed for the 2022 Booker Prize. She is the co-founder of the Otherwise Award and the current president of the Clarion Foundation (also known as Clarion San Diego).
Christopher Golden is the New York Times bestselling author of such novels as Road of Bones, All Hallows, The Night Birds, and The House of Last Resort. With Mike Mignola, he is the co-creator of the Outerverse comic book universe, including such series as Baltimore and Joe Golem: Occult Detective. He has also written for film, television, video games, and animation, and he co-wrote and co-directed the Audible original series Slayers: A Buffyverse Story. Golden has been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award eleven times in eight different categories, and won twice. He has also won the Shirley Jackson Award and the Audie Award, and his work has been nominated for the British Fantasy Award and the Eisner Award, among others. Golden lives in Massachusetts.
Robert V.S. Redick’s most recent epic fantasy, Sidewinders, has been called “a brilliant fever dream of a novel that is bound to impress” by Grimdark Magazine and “a breathtaking work” by two-time World Fantasy Award winner C.S.E. Cooney. Of his previous novel, Master Assassins, Patrick Rothfuss wrote, “So good I wish I could have written it, but deep down I know I couldn’t have written it so well.” Robert is the winner of the New Millennium Writings Award and a finalist for the Locus Award, the SFX Novel Award, and the The AWP/Thomas Dunne Award for Best Novel. His short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Puerto del Sol, and various anthologies, most recently Dreams For a Broken World.