Cynthia Pelayo
Cynthia Pelayo is a Bram Stoker Award winning and International Latino Book Award winning author and poet.
Pelayo writes fairy tales that blend genre and explore concepts of grief, mourning, and cycles of violence. She is the author of Loteria, Santa Muerte, The Missing, Poems of My Night, Into the Forest and All the Way Through, Children of Chicago, Crime Scene, The Shoemaker’s Magician, as well as dozens of standalone short stories and poems.
Loteria, which was her MFA in Writing thesis at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, was re-released to praise with Esquire calling it one of the ‘Best Horror Books of 2023.’ Santa Muerte and The Missing, her young adult horror novels were each nominated for International Latino Book Awards. Poe
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Ally Wilkes
I write supernatural, cosmic, and weird horror, and I'm particularly fascinated by Polar stories and the exploration Gothic, despite suffering from seasickness and loathing the cold!
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My debut novel All the White Spaces, set in the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration, will be out in January 2022 (UK) / March 2022 (US).
My short fiction has been published in Nightmare Magazine, Three Crows Magazine, and I'm also the Book Reviews Editor for Horrified Magazine, the British horror website. I live in Greenwich, London, with an anatomical human skeleton and far too many books about Polar exploration... -
E.M. Roy
E. M. Roy (she/they) is a writer and lover of all things weird, horrific, and dark, especially when those things have a social justice bend and are rooted in a queer perspective. After obtaining a B.A. in English from Boston University, their work has appeared in a handful of small publications. She currently resides near Portland, Maine with her parents, sibling, and dog, Boo. Let the Woods Keep Our Bodies is their debut novel.
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Claire C. Holland
Hello! I'm Claire, an Elgin Award-nominated poet and writer from Philadelphia, currently living in Los Angeles. My book of poetry, I Am Not Your Final Girl, is available on Amazon, and my poems and essays have been featured in numerous outlets (see my author website for links to all my writing). I also write about sex, queerness, culture, and health at https://www.LAJayne.com, and I discuss romance novels and sexuality on the Sexy Books Podcast: https://sexybookspodcast.podbean.com/
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Marjorie M. Liu
New York Times bestselling and award-winning writer Marjorie Liu is best known for her fiction and comic books. She teaches comic book writing at MIT, and she leads a class on Popular Fiction at the Voices of Our Nation (VONA) workshop.
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Ms. Liu is a highly celebrated comic book writer. Her extensive work with Marvel includes the bestselling Dark Wolverine series, NYX: No Way Home, X-23, and Black Widow: The Name of the Rose. She received national media attention for Astonishing X-Men, which featured the gay wedding of X-Man Northstar and was subsequently nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for outstanding media images of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Ms. Liu also wrote the story for the animated film, Avengers Confiden -
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Gill Paul
Gill Paul is the international bestselling author of thirteen novels, many of them reevaluating extraordinary twentieth-century women whom she believes have been marginalized or misjudged. Her novels have reached the top of the USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Toronto Globe & Mail charts, and have been translated into twenty-three languages.
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Her latest novel, Scandalous Women (2024), is about trailblazing authors Jackie Collins and Jacqueline Susann battling their way to the top in the misogynous boys' club of 1960s publishing. A Beautiful Rival (2023) is about the infamous feud between beauty tycoons Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein. Jackie and Maria (2020) was longlisted for the Historical Writers’ Association Gold Crown. The Coll -
Lucy A. Snyder
Lucy A. Snyder is a five-time Bram Stoker Award-winning writer and the author of the forthcoming Tor Nightfire novel Sister, Maiden, Monster. She also wrote the novels Spellbent, Shotgun Sorceress, and Switchblade Goddess, the nonfiction book Shooting Yourself in the Head For Fun and Profit: A Writer's Survival Guide, the poetry collections Exposed Nerves and Chimeric Machines and the story collections Halloween Season, Garden of Eldritch Delights, While the Black Stars Burn, Soft Apocalypses, Orchid Carousals, Sparks and Shadows, and Installing Linux on a Dead Badger.
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Her writing has been translated into French, Italian, Russian, Czech and Japanese editions and has appeared in publications such as Apex Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, Pseudop -
Todd Keisling
TODD KEISLING is the two-time Bram Stoker Award®-nominated author of Devil’s Creek, Scanlines, Cold, Black & Infinite, and most recently, The Sundowner’s Dance, among several others. A pair of his earlier works were recipients of the University of Kentucky’s Oswald Research & Creativity Prize for Creative Writing (2002 and 2005), and his second novel, The Liminal Man, was an Indie Book Award finalist in Horror & Suspense (2013). He lives in Pennsylvania with his family.
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Nat Cassidy
NAT CASSIDY is a national bestselling and Bram Stoker Award-nominated author whose acclaimed works include Mary ("One of the Best Horror Novels of All Time" - Audible), Nestlings, and Rest Stop. Esquire described him as one "of the best horror writers of this generation" and among the writers "shaping horror's next golden age." His award-winning plays have been produced across the country, including Off-Broadway and the Kennedy Center. You've also maybe seen Nat guest-starring on shows such as Law & Order: SVU, Blue Bloods, Bull, Quantico, FBI, and many others ... but that's a topic for a different bio. His newest novel, When the Wolf Comes Home, hit shelves in April 2025 and was called "a classic" by Stephen King. He lives in New York City
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Katrina Monroe
Katrina Monroe is the author of They Drown Our Daughters; Graveyard of Lost Children; and Through the Midnight Door. A private investigator by day, she lives in Minnesota with her wife, two children, and Eddie, the ghost who haunts their bedroom closets.
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Lori Roy
Lori Roy’s debut novel, Bent Road, was awarded the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel by an American Author. Her work has been twice named a New York Times Notable Crime Book and has been included on various “best of” and summer reading lists. Until She Comes Home was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a finalist for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel.
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Let Me Die in His Footsteps was included among the top fiction of 2015 by Books-A-Million and named one of the best fifteen mystery novels of 2015 by Oline Cogdill. The novel also received the 2016 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel, making Lori the first woman to receive an Edgar Award for both Best First Novel and Best Novel—and only the third person ever to have done so. G -
Nick Medina
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Nick Medina has degrees in organizational and multicultural communication, and has worked as a college communnications instructor. He has had short stories published in various fiction outlets since 2009. An enthusiast of local and Native lore, his debut novel, Sisters of the Lost Nation, features several supernatural myths and legends. He became interested in the problem of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls after reading an article in the Chicago Tribune about Ashley Loring Heavyrunner, who went missing from the Blackfoot reservation in 2017. He enjoys exploring the strange and unusual, haunted cemeteries, and other spooky places, playing guitar, blues-based music and classic rock, physical fitness,
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Delilah S. Dawson
Delilah S. Dawson is the New York Times-bestselling author of Star Wars: Phasma, Black Spire: Galaxy's Edge, and The Perfect Weapon. With Kevin Hearne, she writes the Tales of Pell. As Lila Bowen, she writes the Shadow series, beginning with Wake of Vultures. Her other books include the Blud series, the Hit series, and Servants of the Storm.
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She's written comics in the worlds of Marvel Action: Spider-Man, Lore's Wellington, Star Wars Adventures, Star Wars Forces of Destiny, The X-Files Case Files, Adventure Time, Rick and Morty, and her creator-owned comics include Star Pig, Ladycastle, and Sparrowhawk.
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Lindy Ryan
Lindy Ryan is an award-winning author, anthologist, and short-film director whose books and anthologies have received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist and Library Journal. Several of her projects have been adapted for screen. Ryan is the current author-in-residence at Rue Morgue. Declared a “champion for women’s voices in horror” by Shelf Awareness, Ryan was named a Publishers Weekly Star Watch Honoree in 2020, and in 2022, was named one of horror's most masterful anthology curators. Born and raised in Southeast Texas, Ryan currently resides on the East Coast. She is a professor at Rutgers University.
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Eric LaRocca
Eric LaRocca (he/they) is a 3x Bram Stoker Award® finalist, a Shirley Jackson Award nominee, and a 2x Splatterpunk Award winner. He was named by Esquire as one of the “Writers Shaping Horror’s Next Golden Age” and praised by Locus as “one of the strongest and most unique voices in contemporary horror fiction.” LaRocca’s notable works include Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, Everything the Darkness Eats, and At Dark, I Become Loathsome. He currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts, with his partner.
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Jarod K. Anderson
Jarod K. Anderson is a strange mix of fantasy nerd, nature writer, podcaster, poet, and erstwhile academic. He once accidentally picked up a rattlesnake and has slept in the branches of a maple tree more than most writers. He created and voices The CryptoNaturalist podcast, a show about real love for imaginary nature, and he regularly shares his poems and prose on social media. He has published three books of poetry as well as the memoir Something in the Woods Loves You, about his lifelong struggle with depression and the healing power of the natural world. His new contemporary fantasy novel Strange Animals will be published in February 2026 by Ballantine Books. He has an MA in early modern English literature and insists he’s more fun than
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Gwendolyn Kiste
Gwendolyn Kiste is the three-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens, Reluctant Immortals, Boneset & Feathers, and Pretty Marys All in a Row, among others. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in outlets including Lit Hub, Nightmare, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Vastarien, Tor Nightfire, Titan Books, and The Dark. She's a Lambda Literary Award winner, and her fiction has also received the This Is Horror award for Novel of the Year as well as nominations for the Premios Kelvin and Ignotus awards.
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Originally from Ohio, she now resides on an abandoned horse farm outside of Pittsburgh with her husband, their excitable calico cat, and not nearly enough ghosts. Find her online at gwendolynkiste.com -
Chad Lutzke
Chad has written for Famous Monsters of Filmland, Rue Morgue, Cemetery Dance, and Scream magazine. He's had dozens of short stories published, and some of his books include: OF FOSTER HOMES & FLIES, STIRRING THE SHEETS, SKULLFACE BOY, THE SAME DEEP WATER AS YOU, THE PALE WHITE, THE NEON OWL and OUT BEHIND THE BARN co-written with John Boden. Lutzke's work has been praised by authors Jack Ketchum, Richard Chizmar, Joe R. Lansdale, Stephen Graham Jones, Tim Waggoner and his own mother.
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He can be found lurking the internet at www.chadlutzke.com -
Christa Carmen
Christa Carmen is the Bram Stoker Award-winning and two-time Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of The Daughters of Block Island, Beneath the Poet's House, and the forthcoming How to Fake a Haunting, as well as the Indie Horror Book Award-winning Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked, the Bram Stoker Award-nominated "Through the Looking Glass and Straight into Hell" (Orphans of Bliss: Tales of Addiction Horror), and co-editor of the Aurealis Award-nominated We Are Providence and the Australiasian Shadow Award-nominated Monsters in the Mills. She lives in Rhode Island, and has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA from Boston College, and an MFA from the University of Southern Maine.
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When she’s not writing, she keeps chick -
Deena Mohamed
Deena Mohamed (Arabic: دينا محمد, born ca. 1995) is an Egyptian graphic designer, graphic novelist, and illustrator, who was born and raised in Egypt.
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She made her debut at the age of 18 with her webcomic Qahera, combining both Islamic and feminist values. Mohamed has collaborated with various advocacy groups, such as Harassmap and Centre for Applied Human Rights, to create informational comics.
In a cartoon for the online literary magazine ArabLit.org, she described her experience of creating her work in English, addressing international readers, as opposed to using Arabic for an Egyptian and Arab public. Even though she considers both of these forms of expression as part of her personality, she sometimes uses different issues, like feminis -
Claire C. Holland
Hello! I'm Claire, an Elgin Award-nominated poet and writer from Philadelphia, currently living in Los Angeles. My book of poetry, I Am Not Your Final Girl, is available on Amazon, and my poems and essays have been featured in numerous outlets (see my author website for links to all my writing). I also write about sex, queerness, culture, and health at https://www.LAJayne.com, and I discuss romance novels and sexuality on the Sexy Books Podcast: https://sexybookspodcast.podbean.com/
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Kosoko Jackson
Born and raised in the DC Metro Area, Kosoko Jackson has worked in non-profit communications for the past four years. His debut, YESTERDAY IS HISTORY, comes out 2021 by SourcebooksFire.
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Laurel Hightower
Laurel Hightower is a bourbon loving native of Lexington, Kentucky. She is the Bram Stoker-nominated author of WHISPERS IN THE DARK, CROSSROADS, BELOW, EVERY WOMAN KNOWS THIS, SILENT KEY, SPIRIT COVEN, and THE DAY OF THE DOOR, and has more than a dozen short fiction stories in print.
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C.J. Leede
CJ LEEDE is a horror writer, hiker, and Trekkie. She is the author of Maeve Fly and American Rapture. Her debut novel Maeve Fly won the Golden Poppy Octavia E. Butler Award and Splatterpunk Award, and earned a Bram Stoker Award nomination. When she is not driving around the country, CJ can be found in LA with her boyfriend and rescue dogs.
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Monika Kim
Monika is a second-generation Korean American living in Los Angeles’s Koreatown. She learned about eating fish eyes and other Korean superstitions from her mother, who immigrated to California from Seoul in 1985.
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Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro
Carolina Flórez Cerchiaro is a Colombian author of genre bending speculative fiction. Bochica is her first novel.
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Rae Wilde
Rae Wilde (she/her) is a queer woman and author of dark fiction who has published numerous works under the pen name Rae Knowles. Her available long works include The Stradivarius and Merciless Waters among others.
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Rae has published 20+ shorter works in magazines and anthologies such Dark Matter Ink, Nightmare, & Ghoulish Tales. Rae is represented by Laura Williams at Greene & Heaton. -
Rosália Rodrigo
Rosália (she/her) has been in the “immersive story” space for over 8 years, producing visitor experiences for museums and theme parks internationally. She now champions diversity, inclusion, equity and accessibility in this space as a DEIA consultant and educator, with the goal of creating work environments and visitor experiences that are inclusive to all—a passion she also extends to her writing. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Rosália now lives in Central Florida with her partner and mischievous cat, Moonbeam.
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Falencia Jean-Francois
Falencia Jean-Francois is an author and educator living in the Pittsburgh area with her wife, two cats, and dog. She has wanted to be a published author since she started writing NSYNC fan fiction in her notebook when she was twelve years old! She is looking forward to the release of her debut novel, Devil of the Deep, on August 1, 2023.
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Daniel B. Smith
Daniel Smith is the author of "Muses, Madmen, and Prophets" and a contributor to numerous publications, including The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, and Slate.
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Jarod K. Anderson
Jarod K. Anderson is a strange mix of fantasy nerd, nature writer, podcaster, poet, and erstwhile academic. He once accidentally picked up a rattlesnake and has slept in the branches of a maple tree more than most writers. He created and voices The CryptoNaturalist podcast, a show about real love for imaginary nature, and he regularly shares his poems and prose on social media. He has published three books of poetry as well as the memoir Something in the Woods Loves You, about his lifelong struggle with depression and the healing power of the natural world. His new contemporary fantasy novel Strange Animals will be published in February 2026 by Ballantine Books. He has an MA in early modern English literature and insists he’s more fun than
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Glenn Fleishman
I started writing as a child and never stopped. I’ve always been interested in what makes things tick and how to explain that. That led to a career as a technology journalist and how-to article and book author. I’ve written dozens of books over my career in some combination of the two.
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In the 2010s, I started publish a series of book that combined printing and type history and technology in a variety of ways. These titles include Not To Put Too Fine a Point on It, a collection of essays and reporting; London Kerning, a look at two magnificent London printing collections and the city’s typographical history; Six Centuries of Type & Printing; and How Comics Were Made, a heavily visual history of the production and reproduction of newspaper com -
Mario Alberto Zambrano
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M.C. Aquila
M. C. Aquila graduated from Winthrop University with a degree in English. She grew up in Pittsburgh, PA but currently resides in South Carolina. When she is not co-writing the Winter's Blight series, she tutors both native and ESL students in English, giving her a renewed love for the strange wonderfulness of the language. She also enjoys drawing daily, baking recklessly, hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains, searching for the best red wine in existence, and reading any story with a villain she loves to hate.
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Alex Woodroe
Alex Woodroe is a Romanian writer and editor of dark speculative fiction. She’s the editor-in-chief of Tenebrous Press. Her folk horror/fantasy book, WHISPERWOOD, is coming July 2023 from Flame Tree Press, and she has short stories and non-fiction published across venues like The Horror Library, The NoSleep Podcast, and Nightmare Magazine. She’s passionate about infusing her country’s culture, food, and folklore into her work, and loves talking shop at @AlexWoodroe.
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Corwin Michaels
Corwin was raised in foster care in rural Kentucky where he taught himself to read and write. He read just about any book he could get his hands on but found himself gravitating to fantasy books where orphans could wield magic and fly with dragons. Now he wants nothing more than to add his own stories to the world so another child somewhere will find an escape in a magical world.
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Genevieve Morrissey
Genevieve Morrissey is an avid student of British and American social history, who, through one of those strange little quirks of fate, spends most of her days talking with scientists. THEA, her most recent novel, is a coming-of-age story set in 1920s Oklahoma City. MARRIAGE AND HANGING is a historical mystery set in early 19th-century New England. Her post-apocalyptic ANTLANDS series explores a future history of societies coping with the loss of civilization, and their attempts to rebuild it.
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In addition to writing, Genevieve enjoys reading obscure books, travel, and solitude. -
S.H. Cooper
S.H. Cooper is a Florida based, multi-genre author with a focus on horror and fantasy. Her titles include the Victorian gothic novella, INHERITING HER GHOSTS, the cosmic horror novella, THE FESTERING ONES, and the YA fantasy novel, THE KNIGHT'S DAUGHTER, in addition to three short story collections and the horror comedy podcast, Calling Darkness. She is also a regular contributor to the award winning anthology series, The NoSleep Podcast. When not writing, she enjoys spending time with her husband, pets, and a cup of Earl Grey.
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Lauren Bolger
Lauren loves Horror. She will talk about music until you make snoring sounds or walk away, and she plays the drums. She lives in a suburb sort of near Chicago with her spouse and two kids. She's also a Chicago chapter member of the Horror Writers Association.
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