A HORROR-FICTION podcast which is beamed around the world every week from York has been recognised at an international awards ceremony in America.

For the past two years, freelance journalist and science-fiction editor Alasdair Stuart has presented Pseudopod from the bedroom of his South Bank home to 12,000 internet subscribers.

The show features unknown and published authors reading their own short horror stories and has become one of the leading internet broadcast of its kind, along with its sister fantasy and science-fiction shows.

Now Mr Stuart and his American editor are celebrating after the show picked up the best Best Speculative Fiction Magazine or Anthology podcast at the Parsec Awards in Atlanta. The awards were established four years to recognise the best in podcasting and portable media.

Mr Stuart, 32, said: “Unfortunately, I wasn’t there. We were going to record an acceptance video but, of course, if we had done that we wouldn’t have won.

“I first got involved with Pseudopod two years ago when I was a listener and heard that one of the original editors was leaving and I phoned them and rather cheekily said, ‘give me the job.’”

However it turned out that after becoming aware of Mr Stuart’s own science-fiction website, the editors of Pseudopod were intending to contact him anyway about the job.

Since then, the show has continued to go from strength to strength as it rises above cult status.

“It harks back to old-time radio,” he said of the show’s popularity. “And it’s an awful lot of fun. I get pretty much free rein and I get to talk to the whole internet every week.”

As the show’s audience grows, Mr Stuart said: “I have had an experience where I had been talking to an old friend I hadn’t seen for 18 months said he asked if I was the one who presented Pseudopod because he listened to it. He said he recognised my voice.”

For more details on Pseudopod and links to the podcast, visit pseudopod.org