The 2012 Bram Stoker Awards banquet was held Saturday, March 31, at the Radisson Hotel in downtown Salt Lake City, in conjunction with the Horror Writers Association, which was celebrating the 25th anniversary of its official incorporation.

Joe McKinney’s Flesh Eaters (Pinnacle) won for superior achievement in a novel, while Allyson Byrd’s Isis Unbound (Dark Regions Press) won for superior achievement in a first novel. In the long fiction category, Peter Straub took the prize for “The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine” (Conjunctions: 56); in short fiction, Stephen King’s “Herman Wouk Is Still Alive” (The Atlantic Magazine) was the winner.

The Lifetime Achievement Award went both to Rick Hautala, author of the bestselling Nightstone and nearly 30 other horror novels, and Joe R. Lansdale, the author most recently of Edge of Dark Water and more than 30 other novels in various genres.

To mark the centenary of Bram Stoker’s death, Dacre Stoker, Bram’s great-grandnephew, and Leslie Klinger, author of The New Annotated Dracula, presented the one-time only Vampire Novel of the Century Award to Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, first published in 1954 and most recently filmed in 2007 with Will Smith in the lead. The 86-year-old Matheson was unable to attend the ceremonies, but expressed his appreciation for the honor on video.