Bland by Name but Not Repute

P.M. Raymond, a resident of Apex, North Carolina, has won the 2024 Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color award.

According to a press release from the Sisters in Crime (SinC) organization, which sponsors this annual prize, Raymond’s contest submission, “A Nasty Business,” “is set on a Louisiana farm where a family tradition forces the heirs to compete in a series of grueling tasks. Pops, the patriarch, oversees the competition between his sons, Galen and Jeff, as they vie for control of the estate, and discover the farm's dark history—and the heavy burden of their inheritance.”

Offering a bit of Raymond’s background, SinC says, “She was named to the 160 Black Women in Horror and is a 2024 Finalist in the Killer Shorts Screenplay Competition. Her work has appeared in publications such as Flash Fiction Magazine, Kings River Life Magazine, Dark Fire Fiction, Pyre Magazine and The Furious Gazelle and Dark Yonder.”

This year’s three Taylor Bland Award judges—Alex Segura, Carolyn Wilkins, and Nicole Prewitt—chose “A Nasty Business” over submissions from five other scribblers. Those runners-up were:

• Aftermath, by Carleasa A. Coates of Catlett, Virginia
• And Then It Clicked, by Renee P. Stone of Las Vegas, Nevada
• The Code, by Grace Wynter of Decatur, Georgia
• Gifted Grifter, by Fritz Mason of Columbia, South Carolina
• Man Eater, by Elena Scialtiel of Gibraltar

The prize was created in 2014 and named in honor of “pioneering African-American crime fiction author” Eleanor Taylor Bland, a Chicago-area author of police procedurals. Bland died in 2010. Past winners have included Nicole Prewitt (2023), Shizuka Otak (2022), Jessica Martinez (2019), and Mia Manansala (2018).