Linda D. Addison (born September 8, 1952) is an American poet and writer of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. Addison is the first African-American winner of the Bram Stoker Award, which she won five times. The first two awards were for her poetry collectionsConsumed, Reduced to Beautiful Grey Ashes (2001)[1] and Being Full of Light, Insubstantial (2007).[2] Her poetry and fiction collection How To Recognize A Demon Has Become Your Friend won the 2011 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection.[3] She received a fourth HWA Bram Stoker for the collection The Four Elements, written with Marge Simon, Rain Graves, and Charlee Jacob. Her fifth HWA Bram Stoker was for the collection The Place of Broken Things, written with Alessandro Manzetti. Addison is a founding member of the CITH (Circles in the Hair) writing group.[4]
She moved to New York City in 1975 with fiancé Ken Addison, and started working in the Foreign Royalty Accounting Department at RCA Records. The couple married in 1975 and their son Brian was born in 1982.
During her time at Carnegie Mellon, Addison became a fan of science-fiction author Isaac Asimov and began regularly submitting short stories for publication to Asimov's Science Fiction magazine. Science fiction author and editor Frederik Pohl advised that in order to get published in science fiction "everyone has to write a how the dinosaurs died story." Addison took the advice and from a short story drafted a poem entitled "Why the Dinosaurs Died"; it was published in Asimov's Science Fiction in 1997. She went on to be published four times in Asimov's magazine between 1997 and 1999.
In 1997, she published her first science fiction, fantasy and horror collection of short stories, journal entries and poetry entitled Animated Objects, which features an introduction by science fiction and fantasy writer Barry N. Malzberg.
Addison created the Bram Stoker Award-winning poetry collection Consumed, Reduced to Beautiful Grey Ashes. Addison was the first African American to win this award. The first book signing for this collection was held on September 11, 2001, at the Barnes & Noble at Rockefeller Center.
In 2007, her third book of poetry and second Bram Stoker Award-winning collection was released: Being Full of Light, Insubstantial. It was inspired by her mother's Alzheimer's disease diagnosis. She describes the experience "as something she had never felt before, it was as if a voice came to her in meditation and gently whispered... 100 poems." The collection was an amalgamation of reprints and new poetry. Addison completed her "100th poem" on March 14, 2007.
Her writing has been featured in Essence Magazine, and she is currently poetry editor for Space and Time Magazine.
In March 2012, Addison won her third Bram Stoker Award for How To Recognize A Demon Has Become Your Friend, a collection of reprints, new poems and short stories. In 2013, she won her fourth HWA Bram Stoker for The Four Elements, a collection of poetry inspired by the four elements released in 2012, and published by Bad Moon Books. The book was inspired by a discussion between Addison and Houarner about female Bram Stoker Award-winners. Addison contacted three Bram Stoker Award-winning female authors and asked them to choose their "element." Marge Simon (Earth), Rain Graves (Water), Charlee Jacob (Fire) and Addison (Air).
In 2020, she won her fifth HWA Bram Stoker for The Place of Broken Things, a collection of poetry written with Alessandro Manzetti released in 2019, and published by Crystal Lake Publishing. Her story, Shadow Dreams, was published March 2021 by Titan Books in the anthology Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda.[5]
Personal life
Addison separated from Ken Addison in 1992, and her divorce was finalized in 1995. Addison started a relationship with horror fiction writer Gerard Houarner in 1995; they married in 2004 but separated in 2010 and legally divorced in 2015. She currently resides in the Tucson, Arizona, area.