The British Fantasy Society is delighted to announce that the 2012 British Fantasy Awards will be decided by a jury of five volunteers, a first in BFS history. The jury consists of:

James Barclay: James is the author of the two Raven trilogies: Chronicles of The Raven and Legends of The Raven, and the epic fantasy duology, The Ascendants of Estorea. He has written two novellas, Light Stealer and Vault of Deeds, and his latest book Elves: Once Walked With Gods is out now.

Hal Duncan: Hal’s debut Vellum was published in 2005, garnering nominations for the Crawford, Locus, BFS and World Fantasy Award, and winning the Gaylactic Spectrum, Kurd Lasswitz and Tähtivaeltaja. He’s since published the sequel Ink, the novella Escape from Hell!, various short stories, and a poetry collection.

Maura McHugh: Maura is a writer, freelance web designer and IT consultant. She’s currently writing two comic book series (Rķisín Dubh and Jennifer Wilde) for Atomic Diner in Ireland, and she also works for the Irish Playwrights and Screenwriters Guild as their webmaster, blogger and newsletter editor.

Esther Sherman: Esther is a medical underwriter, burlesque performer, voracious reader, computer games addict and geek culture fan. She is co-editor of Nasty Snips 2, a horror anthology from Pendragon Press due in Autumn 2012.

Damien G. Walter: Damien is a writer of weird and speculative fiction. In 2005 he was shortlisted for the Douglas Coupland short fiction contest, and more recently won a grant from Arts Council England to work on his first novel. He writes and reviews for The Guardian and IO9 among others.

The jury will deliberate on a shortlist of four nominations as determined by the members of the BFS. The jury shall also have powers to add nominations where it identifies an egregious omission.

The British Fantasy Awards 2012 will be presented during FantasyCon, to be held in Brighton in September.