Chabon has created a comprehensive bibliography for Van Zorn, along with an equally fictional literary scholar devoted to his oeuvre named Leon Chaim Bach. Bach's now-defunct website (which existed under the auspices of Chabon's) declared Van Zorn to be, "without question, the greatest unknown horror writer of the twentieth century," and mentioned that Bach had once edited a collection of short stories by Van Zorn titled "The Abominations of Plunkettsburg". (The name "Leon Chaim Bach" is an anagram of "Michael Chabon," as is "Malachi B. Cohen," the name of a fictional comics expert who wrote occasional essays about the Escapist for the character's Dark Horse Comic series.) In 2004, Chabon established the August Van Zorn Prize, "awarded to the short story that most faithfully and disturbingly embodies the tradition of the weird short story as practiced by Edgar Allan Poe and his literary descendants, among them August Van Zorn." The first recipient of the prize was Jason Roberts, whose winning story, "7C," was then included in "McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories", edited by Chabon.