In 2011, as a memorial to its founding President Dr Allan Lloyd Smith (1945-2010), the International Gothic Association established the Allan Lloyd Smith Memorial Prize, to be awarded for a scholarly publication considered to have significantly advanced the field of Gothic studies.

In 2024, the International Gothic Association inaugurated a new prize to honour the memory of Justin D. Edwards (1970-2023), past co-president of the IGA and beloved colleague and friend. The Justin D. Edwards Memorial Prize is to be awarded for an edited collection considered to have significantly advanced the field of Gothic studies.

For the current round of nominations, monographs and edited collections published between January 1st 2024 to December 31st 2025 are eligible.

We are delighted to announce that there will be £100 awarded for each prize.

We are now accepting nominations, and each IGA member is entitled to nominate for either or both prizes. Anyone wishing to nominate a book who is not yet an IGA member may join the Association here.

Nominations for the prizes need to be received no later than 23:59 (GMT) on Monday 2nd March 2026.

Nominations for either award should be submitted online here. Please note that self-nominations will not be accepted. Any queries regarding eligibility should be sent to the Chair at j.crawford@exeter.ac.uk.

The Chair for the 2026 prize panel is Professor Joseph Crawford (University of Exeter). A panel of past Presidents and winners will assess the nominations before drawing up a shortlist that will be published on the IGA website. The panel reserves the right not to make an award should no nominated work satisfy the criteria of the Prize.

Nominations may be submitted only by individual members of the IGA, though nominated works do not have to have been published by a member of the Association. Short articles, individual chapters in longer volumes, original fiction and poetry are not eligible, though scholarly (i.e., introduced, annotated and resourced) editions of Gothic texts may be considered.

The panel will advise the serving Co-Presidents of their decision on the winner prior to the IGA conference, which, this year, is hosted at the University of Hull, July 28-31.

The prizes will be presented (or, if a winning author is not present, announced) during the conference.