S. T. Joshi

S. T. Joshi
Joshi in 2002
Born (1958-06-22) June 22, 1958 (age 68)
Pune, India
CitizenshipUnited States
EducationBrown University (BA, MA)
OccupationWriter
Writing career
SubjectWeird fiction
Websitestjoshi.org

Sunand Tryambak Joshi (born June 22, 1958) is an American literary critic whose work has largely focused on weird and fantastic fiction, especially the life and work of H. P. Lovecraft and associated writers.

Career

His literary criticism focuses upon the worldviews of authors. His The Weird Tale examines horror and fantasy writing by Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, M. R. James, Ambrose Bierce, and Lovecraft.

Personal life

S. T. Joshi was born on June 22, 1958, in Pune, India, to Marathi parents Tryambak M. Joshi and Padmini T. Joshi. When he was four, his family moved to the United States and settled in Indiana. He discovered the work of Lovecraft at age 13 in a public library in Muncie, Indiana. He also read L. Sprague de Camp's biography of Lovecraft, Lovecraft: A Biography, on publication in 1975, and began thereafter to devote himself to Lovecraft. This devotion led him to decline offers from Yale and Harvard so that he could attend Brown University, which is located in Providence, Rhode Island where Lovecraft had lived. He is an atheist.

He lives in Seattle, Washington. Joshi married Leslie Gary Boba on September 1, 2001. They divorced in December 2010.

In August 2014, Joshi opposed the decision to retire and replace Gahan Wilson's bust of Lovecraft as the World Fantasy Award statuette in light of a campaign highlighting Lovecraft's history of racism; Joshi returned his World Fantasy Awards in protest.

Notable publications

Books

Edited volumes

Awards

Literary awards

YearTitleAwardCategoryResultRef.
1990 The Weird TaleBram Stoker AwardNon-FictionNominated
1991 World Fantasy AwardSpecial Award – ProfessionalNominated
John Dickson Carr: A Critical StudyAnthony AwardsCritical WorkNominated
1996 H. P. Lovecraft: A LifeBram Stoker AwardNon-FictionWon
1997 British Fantasy AwardSmall PressWon
Lord DunsanyMythopoeic AwardsMyth and Fantasy StudiesShortlisted
1999 Sixty Years of Arkham HouseInternational Horror Guild AwardNon-FictionNominated
2000 Locus AwardNon-FictionWon
2006 Supernatural Literature of the WorldWorld Fantasy AwardSpecial Award – ProfessionalNominated
Icons of Horror and the SupernaturalInternational Horror Guild AwardNon-FictionWon
2007 American Supernatural TalesInternational Horror Guild AwardAnthologyNominated
Warnings to the CuriousInternational Horror Guild AwardNon-FictionNominated
2010 I Am ProvidenceBlack Quill AwardDark Genre Book of Non-FictionNominated
2011 Black Wings of CthulhuWorld Fantasy AwardAnthologyNominated
2012 Black Wings of Cthulhu 2Shirley Jackson AwardAnthologyNominated
2013 Unutterable Horror Vol 1 and 2World Fantasy AwardSpecial Award – NonprofessionalWon
World Fantasy AwardSpecial Award – NonprofessionalWon
2014 Lovecraft and a World in TransitionBram Stoker AwardNon-FictionNominated
2015 Black Wings of Cthulhu 4Shirley Jackson AwardAnthologyNominated
2016 World Fantasy AwardAnthologyNominated
2022 Ramsey Campbell: Master of Weird FictionLocus Recommended ReadingNon-FictionWon

Honors

References

  1. 1 2 3 "S.T. Joshi: An Autobiography". Archived from the original on April 3, 2019.
  2. 1 2 Setiya, Kieran (2020). "Correspondence; Revisiting H. P. Lovecraft". The Yale Review. 108 (3): 138. doi:10.1353/tyr.2020.0048. hdl:1721.1/130173. ISSN 0044-0124. S2CID 236895320.
  3. ↑ "Obituary for Tryambak M. Joshi (Aged 83)". Muncie Evening Press. February 26, 1994. p. 15. Archived from the original on August 23, 2021.
  4. 1 2 "Sunand Tryambak Joshi". Indianapolis: Federal Naturalization Records, 1892–1992. August 15, 1978. Archived from the original on August 23, 2021 – via Ancestry.com.
  5. ↑ "New Fans: H. P. Lovecraft Is As Good As Poe, They Say". The Ludington Daily News. July 8, 1977. p. 11. Archived from the original on February 28, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. 1 2 3 Oppenheimer, Mark (March 15, 2014). "Spreading the Word on the Power of Atheism". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. ProQuest 2213674612. Archived from the original on July 9, 2017.
  7. ↑ S. T. Joshi. "Blog". S. T. Joshi. Archived from the original on March 12, 2012.
  8. ↑ Flood, Alison (November 11, 2015). "HP Lovecraft biographer rages against ditching of author as fantasy prize emblem". The Guardian. eISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on May 12, 2021.
  9. ↑ Briefly reviewed in the May 2015 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction, pp.107–111