Oliver Smith was born in 1966, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. His stories generally deal with the weird, fantastic, and speculative: there’s a mermaid in the bathroom, jars of pickled brains are plotting in the pantry, a giant flea is sat where the flatmate used to be, and down the pub a strange green man has lost his head and isn't going to take it lying down. He studied fine art painting and his writing practice developed from an interest in various surrealist techniques. He utilizes an analogous approach when writing using various cut-up and fold in techniques, automatic writing, and formal poetic exercises. His influences include Kingsley Amis, Lucius Apuleius, J G Ballard, Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Angela Carter, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Alasdair Gray, Aldous Huxley, Henrik Ibsen, Franz Kafka, H P Lovecraft, David Madsen, Gustav Meyrink, Michael Moorcock, George Orwell, Edgar Allan Poe, Herbert Rosendorfer, Bruno Schulz, Clark Ashton Smith, and August Strindberg. His prose writing has appeared in the following anthologies: ‘Land’s End’ Inkermen Press (2008), ‘Cold Turkey’ Inkermen Press (2009), ‘This Hermetic Legislature: A Homage to Bruno Schulz’ Ex Occidente Press (2012), ‘Transactions of the Flesh: A Homage to Joris-Karl Huysmans’ Ex Occidente Press/Zagava Press (2013), ‘Dark Hall Press Cosmic Horror Anthology’ Dark Hall Press (2014) His poetry has appeared in S T Joshi’s ‘Spectral Realms’ from Hippocampus Press. More short stories are due to be published in the anthologies ‘History and Horror, Oh My’ from Mystery and Horror, LLC and ‘Techno-Horror’ from Dark Hall Press.