The World Fantasy award trophy will no longer be modelled on HP Lovecraft, it has been announced, following a campaign last year that called the author out as an “avowed racist” with “hideous opinions”.

The change was revealed at the World Fantasy Convention on Sunday, where David Mitchell took the top award, the best novel prize, for The Bone Clocks. It beat titles by authors including Jeff VanderMeer, Robert Jackson Bennett, Jo Walton and Katherine Addison to the best novel prize, with other winners at the Saratoga Springs convention including Ramsey Campbell and Sheri S Tepper, who took life achievement awards.

But organisers also used the ceremony to announce that this would be the last year that winners would receive a statuette modelled on the face of Lovecraft, Locus magazine reported. No reason was given for the change, and no details have yet been announced about what will replace Lovecraft, but authors including Daniel José Older have expressed delight at the news. “THEY JUST ANNOUNCED THE WORLD FANTASY AWARD WILL NO LONGER BE HP LOVECRAFT. WE DID IT. YOU DID IT. IT’S DONE. YESSSSSSSS,” tweeted Older.

The writer, who was nominated for best of editor of an anthology for Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History, later told the Guardian by email: “If fantasy as a genre truly wants to embrace all of its fans, and I believe it does, we can’t keep lionising a man who used literature as a weapon against entire races. Writers of colour have always had to struggle with the question of how to love a genre that seems so intent on proving it doesn’t love us back. We raised our voices collectively, en masse, and the World Fantasy folks heard us. Today, fantasy is a better, more inclusive, and stronger genre because of it.”

“I’m glad Lovecraft won’t be the symbol of the World Fantasy award anymore (and did in fact lobby the board directly). It’s a no-brainer,” tweeted VanderMeer, who had been shortlisted for this year’s best novel prize for Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy.

Last year, Older launched a petition asking for the change. Signed by more than 2,500 people, the petition asked organisers to make the acclaimed African American science fiction writer Octavia Butler the model for the trophy, rather than Lovecraft, because while the creator of the Cthulhu mythos “did leave a lasting mark on speculative fiction, he was also an avowed racist and a terrible wordsmith”, and “many writers have spoken out about their discomfort with winning an award that lauds someone with such hideous opinion”.

One of those writers was the World Fantasy award winner Nnedi Okorafor, who discovered Lovecraft’s racist 1912 poem On the Creation of Niggers following her win, and blogged about how “conflicted” it made her feel. “A statuette of this racist man’s head is in my home. A statuette of this racist man’s head is one of my greatest honours as a writer,” she wrote.

Last year’s winner, Sofia Samatar, who took the best novel prize in 2014 for A Stranger in Olondria, raised the issue in her acceptance speech, saying that “I can’t sit down without addressing the elephant in the room, which is the controversy surrounding the image that represents this award”. She told her audience that it was “awkward to accept the award as a writer of colour”, and thanked the board for taking the issue seriously.

“I just wanted them to know that here I was in a terribly awkward position, unable to be 100% thrilled, as I should be, by winning this award, and that many other people would feel the same, and so they were right to think about changing it,” she later blogged, adding that she believed the statue should not represent one person.

“I am not telling anybody not to read Lovecraft. I teach Lovecraft! I actually insist that people read him and write about him! For grades! This is not about reading an author but about using that person’s image to represent an international award honouring the work of the imagination,” wrote Samatar last year.

Yesterday, the novelist tweeted: “I see the award statue is going to be changed. Hope everyone can take this as a sign of expansion: the healthy broadening of a world honour.”