UNM Creative Writing alumnus and northern New Mexico poet, Victoriano Cárdenas, was recently announced as the winner of the inaugural Stephen Graham Jones Horror Novella Competition.
Presented by Subito Press from the University of Colorado – Boulder, the competition called for novella manuscripts from 15,000-40,000 words, and announced finalists in late 2025. Stephen Graham Jones, Ivena Baldwin Professor of English and best-selling author of “The Buffalo Hunter Hunter,” read the finalists and selected “Casa de Sueños” as the winner, calling it a “very cool, creepy novella.” Cárdenas was announced as the winner of the competition on New Year’s Eve 2025.
Cardenas’ manuscript, “Casa de Sueños,” which is set near and on UNM campus and inspired by both historical and personal events, is a twist on the haunted-house tale, detailing the effects of colonization, buried history, and many iterations of violence upon a particularly cursed plot of land and its many tenants. “Casa de Sueños” was also selected by Fatimah Asghar as the runner-up for the 2025 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize from Texas Review Press. “Casa de Sueños” is forthcoming from Subito Press and will be published as a perfect-bound text in 2026.
Cárdenas is also the author of “Portraits as Animal: Poems” (2023), and writes for Meow Wolf in Santa Fe, NM. He will furthermore be attending the Ragdale Residency in February-March of this year.
