Jean Lorrain, born Paul Duval, was a French poet and novelist of the Symbolist school. Lorrain was a dedicated disciple of dandyism, and openly gay. Lorrain wrote a number of collections of verse, including La forêt bleue (1883) and L'ombre ardente, (1897). He is also remembered for his decadent novels and short stories, such as Monsieur de Phocas (1901) and Histoires des masques (1900), as well as for one of his best novels, Sonyeuse, which he links to portraits exhibited by Antonio de La Gandara in 1893.

Walter John de la Mare was an English poet, short story writer and novelist, probably best remembered for his works for children and The Listeners. He was descended from a family of French Huguenots, and was educated at St Paul's School. His first book, Songs of Childhood, was published under the name Walter Ramal. He worked in the statistics department of the London office of Standard Oil for eighteen years while struggling to bring up a family, but nevertheless found enough time to write, and, in 1908, through the efforts of Sir Henry Newbolt he received a Civil List pension which enabled him to concentrate on writing; One of de la Mare's special interests was the imagination, and this contributed both to the popularity of his children's writing and to his other work occasionally being taken less seriously than it deserved. De la Mare also wrote some subtle psychological horror stories; "Seaton's Aunt" and "Out of the Deep" are noteworthy examples. His 1921 novel, Memoirs of a Midget, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.

Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman was born in Randolph, Massachusetts, and attended Mount Holyoke College (then, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary) in South Hadley, Massachusetts, for one year, from 1870–71. Freeman's parents were orthodox Congregationalists, causing her to have a very strict childhood. Religious constraints play a key role in some of her works. She later finished her education at West Brattleboro Seminary. She passed the greater part of her life in Massachusetts and Vermont. Freeman began writing stories and verse for children while still a teenager to help support her family and was quickly successful. Her best known work was written in the 1880s and 1890s while she lived in Randolph. She produced more than two dozen volumes of published short stories and novels. She is best known for two collections of stories, A Humble Romance and Other Stories (1887) and A New England Nun and Other Stories (1891). Her stories deal mostly with New England life and are among the best of their kind. Freeman is also remembered for her novel Pembroke (1894), and she contributed a notable chapter to the collaborative novel The Whole Family (1908). In 1902 she married Doctor Charles M. Freeman of Metuchen, New Jersey. In April 1926, Freeman became the first recipient of the William Dean Howells Medal for Distinction in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She died in Metuchen and was interred in Hillside Cemetery in Scotch Plains, New Jersey.

People remember American writer Washington Irving for the stories " Rip Van Winkle " and " The Legend of Sleepy Hollow ," contained in The Sketch Book (1820). This author, essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19th century wrote newspaper articles under the pseudonym Jonathan Oldstyle to begin his literary career at the age of nineteen years. In 1809, he published The History of New York under his most popular public persona, Diedrich Knickerbocker. Historical works of Irving include a five volume biography of George Washington (after whom he was named) as well as biographies of Oliver Goldsmith, Muhammad, and several histories, dealing with subjects, such as Christopher Columbus, the Moors, and the Alhambra, of 15th-century Spain. John Tyler, president, appointed Irving to serve as the first Spanish speaking United States minister to Spain from 1842 to 1846.

Robert Murray Gilchrist was born in Sheffield, England in 1867. He never married and throughout his life lived mostly in remote places, including the North Derbyshire village of Holmesfield and a remote part of the Peak District. He began his writing career in 1890 with a novel, Passion the Plaything, and would go on to publish a total of 22 novels, six story collections, four regional interest books, and a play. His stories appeared in many popular periodicals of that era, including The Temple Bar and the decadent journal The Yellow Book. Not much is known about Gilchrist’s personal life, but he is known to have lived for a time with a male companion, and given that Gilchrist never married and sometimes featured homoerotic themes in his work, as in the story ‘My Friend’, it is possible he was homosexual. Though well known today to connoisseurs of weird and Decadent fiction, Gilchrist’s story collection The Stone Dragon and Other Tragic Romances was generally poorly received by critics on its initial appearance in 1894, and following the book’s failure, Gilchrist chose to write in other genres. It was not until Hugh Lamb began anthologizing some of Gilchrist’s work in the 1970s that he began to be rediscovered. Now he is ranked by many alongside other fin de siècle practitioners of weird fiction, including Vernon Lee, Arthur Machen, and Eric Stenbock and The Stone Dragon is a volume highly sought-after by collectors. During World War I, Gilchrist was noted for his charitable assistance to Belgian refugees, many of whom attended his funeral after his death in 1917. -Valancourt Books

Greek-born American writer Lafcadio Hearn spent 15 years in Japan; people note his collections of stories and essays, including Kokoro (1896), under pen name Koizumi Yakumo. Rosa Cassimati (Ρόζα Αντωνίου Κασιμάτη in Greek), a Greek woman, bore Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (Πατρίκιος Λευκάδιος Χερν in Greek or 小泉八雲 in Japanese), a son, to Charles Hearn, an army doctor from Ireland. After making remarkable works in America as a journalist, he went to Japan in 1890 as a journey report writer of a magazine. He arrived in Yokohama, but because of a dissatisfaction with the contract, he quickly quit the job. He afterward moved to Matsué as an English teacher of Shimané prefectural middle school. In Matsué, he got acquainted with Nishida Sentarô, a colleague teacher and his lifelong friend, and married Koizumi Setsu, a daughter of a samurai. In 1891, he moved to Kumamoto and taught at the fifth high school for three years. Kanô Jigorô, the president of the school of that time, spread judo to the world. Hearn worked as a journalist in Kôbé and afterward in 1896 got Japanese citizenship and a new name, Koizumi Yakumo. He took this name from "Kojiki," a Japanese ancient myth, which roughly translates as "the place where the clouds are born". On that year, he moved to Tôkyô and began to teach at the Imperial University of Tôkyô. He got respect of students, many of whom made a remarkable literary career. In addition, he wrote much reports of Japan and published in America. So many people read his works as an introduction of Japan. He quit the Imperial University in 1903 and began to teach at Waseda University on the year next. Nevertheless, after only a half year, he died of angina pectoris.

Drexel Jerome Lewis Bixby (January 11, 1923 Los Angeles, California – April 28, 1998 San Bernardino, California) was a American short story writer, editor and scriptwriter, best known for his comparatively small output in science fiction. He also wrote many westerns and used the pseudonyms D. B. Lewis, Harry Neal, Albert Russell, J. Russell, M. St. Vivant, Thornecliff Herrick and Alger Rome (for one collaboration with Algis Budrys). He was the editor of Planet Stories from Summer 1950 to July 1951; and editor of Two Complete Science Adventure Novels from Winter 1950 to July 1951. Probably his best-known work is the Star Trek: The Original Series 1967 episode "Mirror, Mirror", which introduced the series' concept of the Mirror Universe, also "Requiem for Methuselah" (Episode 76, Season 3:) about 'Flint' a 6,000 year old man. He also wrote the short story "It's a Good Life" (1953), adapted as a teleplay for The Twilight Zone by Rod Serling and parodied in the Simpsons Halloween episode "Treehouse of Horror II". His 1968 Star Trek episode "Day of the Dove" is also much respected by fans of science fiction. Bixby also conceived and co-wrote the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage, later novelized by Isaac Asimov. Jerome Bixby's last work, a screenplay The Man From Earth, was conceived in the early 1960s and completed on his deathbed in April 1998. In 2007, Jerome Bixby's The Man From Earth (as it is now called) was turned into an independent motion picture executive produced by his son Emerson Bixby, directed by Richard Schenkman and starring David Lee Smith, William Katt, Richard Riehle, Tony Todd, Annika Peterson, Alexis Thorpe, Ellen Crawford and John Billingsley. Bixby wrote the original screenplay for 1958's It! The Terror from Beyond Space, which was the inspiration for 1979's Alien. The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine seventh season (1999) Mirror Universe episode, "The Emperor's New Cloak," is dedicated to Bixby's memory.

aka Mrs. Clifford, Mrs. W.K. Clifford Lucy Clifford (née Lane), better known as Mrs. W.K. Clifford, was a British novelist and journalist. She married the mathematician and philosopher William Kingdon Clifford in 1875. After his death in 1879, she earned a prominent place in English literary life as a novelist, and later as a dramatist. She is perhaps most often remembered as the author of The Anyhow Stories, Moral and Otherwise (1882), a collection of stories written for her children. Clifford wrote cinematic adaptations of her short stories and plays. Amongst her other works are Aunt Anne (1892), A Flash of Summer: The Story of a Simple Woman's Life (1895), The Likeness of Night (1901) and A Woman Alone (1914). (less)

Henry Ferris Arnold is another "lost" author from the days of the pulps, something that is quite surprising since "The Night Wire" was considered the most popular story ever published in Weird Tales. What few sources give any information about his life say that he was born in 1901, worked as an author and journalist and died in 1963, but even these sketchy details (and his actual name, for that matter) may, or may, not, be true. All that is known as fact about Arnold, is that his fictional output, at least in the fields of science fiction and horror, consisted of only 3 works: "The Night Wire", appearing in Weird Tales in 1926; "The City of Iron Cubes," serialized in the March and April issues of Weird Tales and a two-part serial "When Atlantis Was," that appeared in the October and December 1937 issues of Amazing Stories. Outside of that, Arnold remains an enigma. From: http://thenostalgialeague.com/olmag/a...

Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short story writer and screenwriter of Norwegian descent, who rose to prominence in the 1940's with works for both children and adults, and became one of the world's bestselling authors. Dahl's first published work, inspired by a meeting with C. S. Forester, was Shot Down Over Libya. Today the story is published as A Piece of Cake. The story, about his wartime adventures, was bought by the Saturday Evening Post for $900, and propelled him into a career as a writer. Its title was inspired by a highly inaccurate and sensationalized article about the crash that blinded him, which claimed he had been shot down instead of simply having to land because of low fuel. His first children's book was The Gremlins, about mischievous little creatures that were part of RAF folklore. The book was commissioned by Walt Disney for a film that was never made, and published in 1943. Dahl went on to create some of the best-loved children's stories of the 20th century, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda and James and the Giant Peach. He also had a successful parallel career as the writer of macabre adult short stories, usually with a dark sense of humour and a surprise ending. Many were originally written for American magazines such as Ladies Home Journal, Harper's, Playboy and The New Yorker, then subsequently collected by Dahl into anthologies, gaining world-wide acclaim. Dahl wrote more than 60 short stories and they have appeared in numerous collections, some only being published in book form after his death. His stories also brought him three Edgar Awards: in 1954, for the collection Someone Like You; in 1959, for the story "The Landlady"; and in 1980, for the episode of Tales of the Unexpected based on "Skin".

Novelista y dramaturga, Griselda Gambaro nació en Buenos Aires en 1928. Comenzó a escribir tempranamente, dedicándose en principio a la narrativa, género que alternó después con la dramaturgia. Desempeñó distintos trabajos hasta que la obtención de premios y la percepción de sus derechos de autor le permitieron, hacia 1982, vivir de su tarea específica. Durante la dictadura militar argentina, un decreto del general Videla prohibió su novela “Ganarse la muerte” por encontrarla contraria a la institución familiar y al orden social. Debido a ésto y a la situación imperante, se exilió en Barcelona, España. Actualmente reside en un barrio suburbano de la provincia de Buenos Aires. Griselda Gambaro was born in Buenos Aires. Although known primarily as one of Latin America's most accomplished dramatist, she began her literary career by writing novellas and short stories. She has won several prestigious national awards in Argentina and has been a Guggenheim Fellow in the United States. El Campo is the most powerful of her more than dozen plays.