Michael McDowell is a prolific horror writer who has distinguished himself with a varied body of work within the genre. He was born in Enterprise, Alabama, in 1950 and died of AIDS-related illness in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1999. His first horror novel, The Amulet, relates the tragedies that befall various individuals who come in possession of a supernatural pendant in a small town. In McDowell's second novel, Cold Moon Over Babylon, a murdered woman's corpse is dispatched into a river, but her spirit roams the land, and in the evening hours it seeks revenge on her killer even as he plots the demise of her surviving relatives. Don D'Ammassa, writing in the St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers, noted that McDowell's ability to maintain a sense of mundane normalcy against supernatural activity provides the novel with "a fine balance between reality and unreality," and he called Cold Moon Over Babylon "one of the best ghost stories ever written at novel length." A similarly disturbing tension between dull reality and the supernatural is produced in The Elementals, wherein a host of visitors come to stay at a secluded house occupied by embodiments of elemental forces. McDowell's Katie, meanwhile, concerns a clairvoyant serial killer whose powers of perception enable her to evade her trackers. The attractive but deranged heroine of this novel manages to conduct her murderous activities despite the awareness of her parents, who are content to derive financial gain from their daughter's crimes. Madness is central to McDowell's Toplin, which details the vile imaginings of a man who suffers from mental illness but nonetheless determines to conduct himself within society. D'Ammassa praised Toplin as "perhaps the best novel ever written from the point of view of a schizophrenic." Among McDowell's other writings is the six-part serial novel Blackwater, a chronicle of a southern family drawn to the supernatural. In addition, McDowell has also supplied the screenplays for various films, including director Tim Burton's horror comedy Beetlejuice and his animated production The Nightmare Before Christmas. Stephen King called McDowell one of the "finest writers of paperback originals in America today." Tabitha King was asked to complete McDowell's unfinished novel Candles Burning, which was published in 2006 to good reviews. Concerning his career, McDowell never tried to be something he wasn't. "I am a commercial writer and I'm proud of that", he said in the book Faces of Fear in 1985. "I am writing things to be put in the bookstore next month. I think it is a mistake to try to write for the ages."

Pseudonyms: Jael Cracken, Peter Pica, John Runciman, C.C. Shackleton, Arch Mendicant, & "Doc" Peristyle. Brian Wilson Aldiss was one of the most important voices in science fiction writing today. He wrote his first novel while working as a bookseller in Oxford. Shortly afterwards he wrote his first work of science fiction and soon gained international recognition. Adored for his innovative literary techniques, evocative plots and irresistible characters, he became a Grand Master of Science Fiction in 1999. Brian Aldiss died on August 19, 2017, just after celebrating his 92nd birthday with his family and closest friends. Brian W. Aldiss Group on Good Reads

Garry Douglas Kilworth is a historical novelist who also published sci-fi, fantasy, and juvenile fiction. Kilworth is a graduate of King's College London. He was previously a science fiction author, having published one hundred twenty short stories and seventy novels.

Peter Straub was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the son of Gordon Anthony Straub and Elvena (Nilsestuen) Straub. Straub read voraciously from an early age, but his literary interests did not please his parents; his father hoped that he would grow up to be a professional athlete, while his mother wanted him to be a Lutheran minister. He attended Milwaukee Country Day School on a scholarship, and, during his time there, began writing. Straub earned an honors BA in English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1965, and an MA at Columbia University a year later. He briefly taught English at Milwaukee Country Day, then moved to Dublin, Ireland, in 1969 to work on a PhD, and to start writing professionally After mixed success with two attempts at literary mainstream novels in the mid-1970s ("Marriages" and "Under Venus"), Straub dabbled in the supernatural for the first time with "Julia" (1975). He then wrote "If You Could See Me Now" (1977), and came to widespread public attention with his fifth novel, "Ghost Story" (1979), which was a critical success and was later adapted into a 1981 film. Several horror novels followed, with growing success, including "The Talisman" and "Black House", two fantasy-horror collaborations with Straub's long-time friend and fellow author Stephen King. In addition to his many novels, he published several works of poetry during his lifetime. In 1966, Straub married Susan Bitker.They had two children; their daughter, Emma Straub, is also a novelist. The family lived in Dublin from 1969 to 1972, in London from 1972 to 1979, and in the New York City area from 1979 onwards. Straub died on September 4, 2022, aged 79, from complications of a broken hip. At the time of his death, he and his wife lived in Brooklyn (New York City).

Poppy Z. Brite (born Melissa Ann Brite, now going by Billy Martin) is an American author born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Born a biological female, Brite has written and talked much about his gender dysphoria/gender identity issues. He self-identifies almost completely as a homosexual male rather than female, and as of 2011 has started taking testosterone injections. His male name is Billy Martin. He lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Athens, Georgia prior to returning to New Orleans in 1993. He loves UNC basketball and is a sometime season ticket holder for the NBA, but he saves his greatest affection for his hometown football team, the New Orleans Saints. Brite and husband Chris DeBarr, a chef, run a de facto cat rescue and have, at any given time, between fifteen and twenty cats. Photos of the various felines are available on the "Cats" page of Brite's website. They have been known to have a few dogs and perhaps a snake as well in the menagerie. They are no longer together. During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Brite at first opted to stay at home, but he eventually abandoned New Orleans and his cats and relocated 80 miles away to his mother's home in Mississippi. He used his blog to update his fans regarding the situation, including the unknown status of his house and many of his pets, and in October 2005 became one of the first 70,000 New Orleanians to begin repopulating the city. In the following months, Brite has been an outspoken and sometimes harsh critic of those who are leaving New Orleans for good. He was quoted in the New York Times and elsewhere as saying, in reference to those considering leaving, "If you’re ever lucky enough to belong somewhere, if a place takes you in and you take it into yourself, you don't desert it just because it can kill you. There are things more valuable than life."

aka Les Simons, Kathryn Atwood, Anne Mayfield, Kathleen Maxwell, Kathryn Grant Kathryn Anne Ptacek was born on 12 September 1952 in Omaha, Nebraska, USA, but was raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She received her B. A. in Journalism, with a minor in history, from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, where she was graduated with distinction in 1974. While attending the university, she was a student of award-winning mystery writer Tony Hillerman and well-known YA writer Lois Duncan. Afterward, she worked briefly for a political party best left unnamed, was a telephone solicitor for the New Mexico Assn. of Retarded People, and spent two years as an advertising lay-out artist for a regional grocery warehouse co-op, and then worked for the University of New Mexico first as a secretary in the Dept. of Speech and Hearing, then for the University's Computing Center as their only technical writer and editor. After the sale of her first novel, an historical romance, in July 1979, she quit to become a full-time novelist. As Les Simons, Kathryn Atwood, Anne Mayfield, Kathleen Maxwell, Kathryn Ptacek, and Kathryn Grant, she has written an historical fantasy series, numerous historical romances, and five horror novels. Her dark fantasy have won the Silver Medal and Gold Medal awards given by the West Coast Review of Books. She has also edited three anthologies, the critically acclaimed Women of Darkness and its companion Women of Darkness II (both Tor), and Women of the West (Doubleday). Editions of her books have appeared in England, Japan, Norway, Sweden and Germany. Her short stories have appeared in Greystone Bay, Doom City (Greystone Bay II), Fantasy Tales, the Post Mortem anthology, Pulphouse 5, The Horror Show, Freak Show (HWA anthology), A Confederacy of Horrors, Into The Fog, The Ultimate Witch, and Phobias. She is a member of Horror Writers Association, Mystery Writers of America, the International Women Writers Guild, and the Police Writers Club. She also prepares a market report for Hellnotes, is the editor of the Horror Writers Association's monthly newsletter, and publishes a market newsletter, The Gila Queen's Guide to Markets, which goes to writers and artists around the world. On 1982, she married to dark fantasy novelist Charles L. Grant, who died in 2006. She shares a 116-year-old Victorian clapboard house with five cats in Newton, New Jersey. Her hobbies include gardening, jewelry making, and various needlework. She also has a large collection of gila monster memorabilia, and collects unusual teapots and cat whiskers.

Winner of Nebula, Phillip K. Dick, World Fantasy and Bram Stoker awards. Obituaries: in Seattle PI in Peninsula Daily News in Seattle Times from Komo News

Graham Masterton was born in Edinburgh in 1946. His grandfather was Thomas Thorne Baker, the eminent scientist who invented DayGlo and was the first man to transmit news photographs by wireless. After training as a newspaper reporter, Graham went on to edit the new British men's magazine Mayfair, where he encouraged William Burroughs to develop a series of scientific and philosophical articles which eventually became Burroughs' novel The Wild Boys. At the age of 24, Graham was appointed executive editor of both Penthouse and Penthouse Forum magazines. At this time he started to write a bestselling series of sex 'how-to' books including How To Drive Your Man Wild In Bed which has sold over 3 million copies worldwide. His latest, Wild Sex For New Lovers is published by Penguin Putnam in January, 2001. He is a regular contributor to Cosmopolitan, Men's Health, Woman, Woman's Own and other mass-market self-improvement magazines. Graham Masterton's debut as a horror author began with The Manitou in 1976, a chilling tale of a Native American medicine man reborn in the present day to exact his revenge on the white man. It became an instant bestseller and was filmed with Tony Curtis, Susan Strasberg, Burgess Meredith, Michael Ansara, Stella Stevens and Ann Sothern. Altogether Graham has written more than a hundred novels ranging from thrillers (The Sweetman Curve, Ikon) to disaster novels (Plague, Famine) to historical sagas (Rich and Maiden Voyage - both appeared in the New York Times bestseller list). He has published four collections of short stories, Fortnight of Fear, Flights of Fear, Faces of Fear and Feelings of Fear. He has also written horror novels for children (House of Bones, Hair-Raiser) and has just finished the fifth volume in a very popular series for young adults, Rook, based on the adventures of an idiosyncratic remedial English teacher in a Los Angeles community college who has the facility to see ghosts. Since then Graham has published more than 35 horror novels, including Charnel House, which was awarded a Special Edgar by Mystery Writers of America; Mirror, which was awarded a Silver Medal by West Coast Review of Books; and Family Portrait, an update of Oscar Wilde's tale, The Picture of Dorian Gray, which was the only non-French winner of the prestigious Prix Julia Verlanger in France. He and his wife Wiescka live in a Gothic Victorian mansion high above the River Lee in Cork, Ireland.

Nancy was born in 1941 in Phoenix and grew up in a hotel on the Arizona-Mexico border where she worked the switchboard at the age of nine. She also found time to hang out in the old state prison and the hobo jungle along the banks of the Colorado River. She attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, earning her BA in 1963. Instead of taking a regular job, she joined the Peace Corps and was sent to India (1963-1965). When she returned, she moved into a commune in Berkeley, sold newspapers on the street for a while, then got a job in the Entomology department at UC Berkeley and also took courses in Chemistry there. Restless, again, she decided to visit Africa. She and a friend tried to hitchhike by boat but the ship they'd selected turned out to be stolen and was boarded by the Coast Guard just outside the Golden Gate Bridge. Nancy eventually got to Africa on a legal ship. She spent more than a year on Lake Cabora Bassa in Mozambique, monitoring water weeds. Next she was hired to help control tsetse fly in the dense bush on the banks of the Zambezi in Zimbabwe. Part of the time she spent in the capital, Harare, and was introduced to her soon-to-be husband by his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend. He proposed a week later. Harold and Nancy now live in the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona on a major drug route for the Sinaloa Cartel. This is the setting for The Lord of Opium. They have a son, Daniel, who is in the U.S. navy. Nancy's honors include the National Book Award for The House of the Scorpion and Newbery Honors for The Ear, the Eye and The Arm, A Girl Named Disaster and The House of the Scorpion. She is the author of nine novels, three picture books and a number of short stories. Her books have been translated into 26 languages.

Steven Karl Zoltán Brust (born November 23, 1955) is an American fantasy and science fiction author of Hungarian descent. He was a member of the writers' group The Scribblies, which included Emma Bull, Pamela Dean, Will Shetterly, Nate Bucklin, Kara Dalkey, and Patricia Wrede, and also belongs to the Pre-Joycean Fellowship. http://us.macmillan.com/author/steven... (Photo by David Dyer-Bennet)

William F. Nolan is best known as the co-author (with George Clayton Johnson) of Logan's Run—a science fiction novel that went on to become a movie, a television series and is about to become a movie again—and as single author of its sequels. His short stories have been selected for scores of anthologies and textbooks and he is twice winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Special Award from the Mystery Writers of America. Nolan was born in 1928 in Kansas City Missouri. He attended the Kansas City Art Institute and worked as an artist for Hallmark Cards. He moved to California in the late 1940s and studied at San Diego State College. He began concentrating on writing rather than art and, in 1952, was introduced by fellow Missouri native (and established writer) Ray Bradbury to another young up-and-coming author, Charles Beaumont. Moving to the Los Angeles area in 1953, Nolan became along with Bradbury, Beaumont, and Richard Matheson part of the "inner core" of the soon-to-be highly influential "Southern California Group" of writers. By 1956 Nolan was a full-time writer. Since 1951 he has sold more than 1500 stories, articles, books, and other works. Although Nolan wrote roughly 2000 pieces, to include biographies, short stories, poetry, and novels, Logan’s Run retains its hold on the public consciousness as a political fable and dystopian warning. As Nolan has stated: “That I am known at all is still astonishing to me... " He passed away at the age of 93 due to complications from an infection.

Clive Barker was born in Liverpool, England, the son of Joan Rubie (née Revill), a painter and school welfare officer, and Leonard Barker, a personnel director for an industrial relations firm. Educated at Dovedale Primary School and Quarry Bank High School, he studied English and Philosophy at Liverpool University and his picture now hangs in the entrance hallway to the Philosophy Department. It was in Liverpool in 1975 that he met his first partner, John Gregson, with whom he lived until 1986. Barker's second long-term relationship, with photographer David Armstrong, ended in 2009. In 2003, Clive Barker received The Davidson/Valentini Award at the 15th GLAAD Media Awards. This award is presented "to an openly lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender individual who has made a significant difference in promoting equal rights for any of those communities". While Barker is critical of organized religion, he has stated that he is a believer in both God and the afterlife, and that the Bible influences his work. Fans have noticed of late that Barker's voice has become gravelly and coarse. He says in a December 2008 online interview that this is due to polyps in his throat which were so severe that a doctor told him he was taking in ten percent of the air he was supposed to have been getting. He has had two surgeries to remove them and believes his resultant voice is an improvement over how it was prior to the surgeries. He said he did not have cancer and has given up cigars. On August 27, 2010, Barker underwent surgery yet again to remove new polyp growths from his throat. In early February 2012 Barker fell into a coma after a dentist visit led to blood poisoning. Barker remained in a coma for eleven days but eventually came out of it. Fans were notified on his Twitter page about some of the experience and that Barker was recovering after the ordeal, but left with many strange visions. Barker is one of the leading authors of contemporary horror/fantasy, writing in the horror genre early in his career, mostly in the form of short stories (collected in Books of Blood 1 – 6), and the Faustian novel The Damnation Game (1985). Later he moved towards modern-day fantasy and urban fantasy with horror elements in Weaveworld (1987), The Great and Secret Show (1989), the world-spanning Imajica (1991) and Sacrament (1996), bringing in the deeper, richer concepts of reality, the nature of the mind and dreams, and the power of words and memories. Barker has a keen interest in movie production, although his films have received mixed receptions. He wrote the screenplays for Underworld (aka Transmutations – 1985) and Rawhead Rex (1986), both directed by George Pavlou. Displeased by how his material was handled, he moved to directing with Hellraiser (1987), based on his novella The Hellbound Heart. His early movies, the shorts The Forbidden and Salome, are experimental art movies with surrealist elements, which have been re-released together to moderate critical acclaim. After his film Nightbreed (Cabal), which was widely considered to be a flop, Barker returned to write and direct Lord of Illusions. Barker was an executive producer of the film Gods and Monsters, which received major critical acclaim. Barker is a prolific visual artist working in a variety of media, often illustrating his own books. His paintings have been seen first on the covers of his official fan club magazine, Dread, published by Fantaco in the early Nineties, as well on the covers of the collections of his plays, Incarnations (1995) and Forms of Heaven (1996), as well as on the second printing of the original UK publications of his Books of Blood series. A longtime comics fan, Barker achieved his dream of publishing his own superhero books when Marvel Comics launched the Razorline imprint in 1993. Based on detailed premises, titles and lead characters he created specifically for this, the four interrelated titles—set outside the Marvel universe—were Ectokid,

Marni Scofidio was born in San Francisco, California, and raised near Buffalo, New York. She has been resident in Britain since 1991. Her modern ghost stories have appeared in semi- and professional magazines and anthologies, including BEST NEW HORROR and YEAR'S BEST FANTASY & HORROR, in four countries. She has been nominated for a British Fantasy Society Award for Short Fiction. She holds a BA (Hons) Design, University of Wales. Scofidio is married to her Welshman and Wicked Stepmother to one stepson. KNUCKLEBONES is her first novel. Of her work Chet Williamson (ROBERT BLOCH’S PSYCHO: SANITORIUM, MURDER IN CORMYR) wrote: ‘Knucklebones is a brilliant debut novel—written with a poetic eye, filled with characters that truly live, and a pace that had me barrelling through the last half of the book. For decades, Marni Scofidio has written such incredible short stories that I've long wished for a full novel, and Knucklebones is even better than I dared hope. It's dark, chilling, and delicious, written with a unique and individual style. You'd be a knucklehead to miss it. A marvellous book.’ Bram Stoker Award-winning poet, short-story writer and novelist Mark McLaughlin (co-author of THE ABOMINATIONS OF NEPHREN-KA and THE BLASPHEMY IN THE CANOPIC JAR) also wrote: ‘Marni Scofidio is a world-class writer whose stories have appeared in prestigious “Best Of” horror anthologies. If you consider yourself an aficionado of dark fiction, please do not miss the opportunity to read her new novel, KNUCKLEBONES. Her literary works are exquisite macabre treasures to be cherished.’

Brief biographies are, like history texts, too organized to be other than orderly misrepresentations of the truth. So when it's written that Lucius Shepard was born in August of 1947 to Lucy and William Shepard in Lynchburg, Virginia, and raised thereafter in Daytona Beach, Florida, it provides a statistical hit and gives you nothing of the difficult childhood from which he frequently attempted to escape, eventually succeeding at the age of fifteen, when he traveled to Ireland aboard a freighter and thereafter spent several years in Europe, North Africa, and Asia, working in a cigarette factory in Germany, in the black market of Cairo's Khan al Khalili bazaar, as a night club bouncer in Spain, and in numerous other countries at numerous other occupations. On returning to the United States, Shepard entered the University of North Carolina, where for one semester he served as the co-editor of the Carolina Quarterly. Either he did not feel challenged by the curriculum, or else he found other pursuits more challenging. Whichever the case, he dropped out several times and traveled to Spain, Southeast Asia (at a time when tourism there was generally discouraged), and South and Central America. He ended his academic career as a tenth-semester sophomore with a heightened political sensibility, a fairly extensive knowledge of Latin American culture and some pleasant memories. Toward the beginning of his stay at the university, Shepard met Joy Wolf, a fellow student, and they were married, a union that eventually produced one son, Gullivar, now an architect in New York City. While traveling cross-country to California, they had their car break down in Detroit and were forced to take jobs in order to pay for repairs. As fortune would have it, Shepard joined a band, and passed the better part of the 1970s playing rock and roll in the Midwest. When an opportunity presented itself, usually in the form of a band break-up, he would revisit Central America, developing a particular affection for the people of Honduras. He intermittently took odd jobs, working as a janitor, a laborer, a sealer of driveways, and, in a nearly soul-destroying few months, a correspondent for Blue Cross/Blue Shield, a position that compelled him to call the infirm and the terminally ill to inform them they had misfiled certain forms and so were being denied their benefits. In 1980 Shepard attended the Clarion Writers’ Workshop at Michigan State University and thereafter embarked upon a writing career. He sold his first story, "Black Coral," in 1981 to New Dimensions, an anthology edited by Marta Randall. During a prolonged trip to Central America, covering a period from 1981-1982, he worked as a freelance journalist focusing on the civil war in El Salvador. Since that time he has mainly devoted himself to the writing of fiction. His novels and stories have earned numerous awards in both the genre and the mainstream.

Born Charlotte Denise Watson, in 1958 in Seattle (Washington), the eldest of three children in a working class family. Displayed an early interest in literature. Dreamed of being a writer since third grade when Pippi Longstocking hijacked my imagination. My mother believed it was dangerous for a daughter to always have her head in a book—which led to reading by flashlight beneath bedcovers, a geeky, camouflaged appetite for studying the dictionary and keeping poems secret until publishing my first at nineteen. I studied Social Sciences at Seattle University and began law school shortly after the birth of my first daughter. Once I realized I could actually become a lawyer, I left the University of Puget Sound and never looked back. I worked as a pretrial screener, outreach coordinator, sexual abuse counselor, emergency housing counselor, child welfare worker, mental health screener, volunteer coordinator for a literacy program, research interviewer, and finally, when my youngest daughter left for college, a professional librarian. It turns out, writing is the only thing I thought I was any good at, but it is definitely my calling. Through an extraordinary blast of effort and good fortune, a collection of short fiction, Killing Color, was published by Calyx Books (1992); then shortly after, a novel, One Dark Body, by HarperCollins (1993); then an anthology, Sisterfire: Black Womanist Fiction and Poetry (1994); another novel, touch, (1995), and finally, a children's book, Eli and the Swamp Man (1996). I received the following awards, fellowships, grants: Seattle Arts Commission Individual Artist Grant, 1989; King County Arts Commission Fiction Publication Award, 1989; Artist Trust GAP Grant, 1989; Seattle Artists 1991 Research and Development Grant; Great Lakes Colleges Association Fiction Award, 1992; Black Women’s Gathering Women of Achievement Award, 1992; Washington State Arts Commission Fiction Fellowship, 1993; Brandeis University Women’s Committee Distinguished Author’s Award, 1993; Governor’s Writers Award, 1993; Seattle University Award for Professional Achievement, 1994; Granta literary magazine’s Best of Young American Novelists, shortlist, 1995; Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. My fiction and nonfiction have been published in Essence, Ms., Parenting, American Visions, The Seattle Times, and Goodness Portland; as well as anthologies such as When I Am An Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple, The Bluelight Corner, Spooks, Spies, and Private Eyes, Edgewalking on the Western Rim, and In Search of Color Everywhere. I am currently revising a third novel, as well as a YA historical fiction tale I hope will be published as an illustrated story. My muse is history. The task of healing and reconciling the past, propels the writing. My tools: word, image, ritual, dream, magic. - See more at: http://www.charlottewatsonsherman.com... (from http://www.charlottewatsonsherman.com/)

Serbian writer, essayist, translator, and anthologist. Grozdana Olujić received a master's degree in English and English literature at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade. Her first novel, An Excursion to Heaven (Izlet u nebo) was released in 1958, when the writer was 24 years old. The book became a bestseller, received an award of Narodna prosvjeta publishing house for the best novel of Yugoslavia and was instantly translated into several European languages. The novel was first adapted for the stage, and in 1962, based on the book, the film director Jovan Živanović shot the melodrama Strange Girl (Čudna devojka). The novels Vote for love (Glasam za ljubav), Do not wake a sleeping dog (Ne budi zaspale pse) and Wild seed (Divlje seme) published in the 60s confirmed Grozdana Olujić as one of the leading authors of Serbian literature. Short story The Game (Igra) from the collection African Violet (Afrička ljubičica), published in 1985, received the main prize of an international short story competition in Arnsberg (Deutscher und internationale Kurzgeschichtenpreis). Almost all of the stories from that collection were translated into foreign languages and were included in various anthologies of short prose around the world: in Germany, USA, Ukraine, Russia, Israel, India, Great Britain, France, etc. In 2009, the writer's novel Voices in the Wind (Glasovi u vetru) became the winner of NIN Award, the main literary award of Serbia. Olujić also translated a number of works into Serbian: Saul Bellow, Amrita Pritam, William Kennedy, Arnold Wesker, Yukio Mishima and others. She is also highly praised for her essays on Kafka, Thomas Wolfe, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf and most notably for the essay The Poetics of fairy tale (1981).

John Brunner was born in Preston Crowmarsh, near Wallingford in Oxfordshire, and went to school at St Andrew's Prep School, Pangbourne, then to Cheltenham College. He wrote his first novel, Galactic Storm, at 17, and published it under the pen-name Gill Hunt, but he did not start writing full-time until 1958. He served as an officer in the Royal Air Force from 1953 to 1955, and married Marjorie Rosamond Sauer on 12 July 1958 At the beginning of his writing career Brunner wrote conventional space opera pulp science fiction. Brunner later began to experiment with the novel form. His 1968 novel "Stand on Zanzibar" exploits the fragmented organizational style John Dos Passos invented for his USA trilogy, but updates it in terms of the theory of media popularised by Marshall McLuhan. "The Jagged Orbit" (1969) is set in a United States dominated by weapons proliferation and interracial violence, and has 100 numbered chapters varying in length from a single syllable to several pages in length. "The Sheep Look Up" (1972) depicts ecological catastrophe in America. Brunner is credited with coining the term "worm" and predicting the emergence of computer viruses in his 1975 novel "The Shockwave Rider", in which he used the term to describe software which reproduces itself across a computer network. Together with "Stand on Zanzibar", these novels have been called the "Club of Rome Quartet", named after the Club of Rome whose 1972 report The Limits to Growth warned of the dire effects of overpopulation. Brunner's pen names include K. H. Brunner, Gill Hunt, John Loxmith, Trevor Staines, Ellis Quick, Henry Crosstrees Jr., and Keith Woodcott. In addition to his fiction, Brunner wrote poetry and many unpaid articles in a variety of publications, particularly fanzines, but also 13 letters to the New Scientist and an article about the educational relevance of science fiction in Physics Education. Brunner was an active member of the organisation Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and wrote the words to "The H-Bomb's Thunder", which was sung on the Aldermaston Marches. Brunner had an uneasy relationship with British new wave writers, who often considered him too American in his settings and themes. He attempted to shift to a more mainstream readership in the early 1980s, without success. Before his death, most of his books had fallen out of print. Brunner accused publishers of a conspiracy against him, although he was difficult to deal with (his wife had handled his publishing relations before she died).[2] Brunner's health began to decline in the 1980s and worsened with the death of his wife in 1986. He remarried, to Li Yi Tan, on 27 September 1991. He died of a heart attack in Glasgow on 25 August 1995, while attending the World Science Fiction Convention there aka K H Brunner, Henry Crosstrees Jr, Gill Hunt (with Dennis Hughes and E C Tubb), John Loxmith, Trevor Staines, Keith Woodcott Winner of the ESFS Awards in 1980 as "Best Author" and 1n 1984 as "Novelist"..

Jonathan Carroll (b. 1949) is an award-winning American author of modern fantasy and slipstream novels. His debut book, The Land of Laughs (1980), tells the story of a children’s author whose imagination has left the printed page and begun to influence reality. The book introduced several hallmarks of Carroll’s writing, including talking animals and worlds that straddle the thin line between reality and the surreal, a technique that has seen him compared to South American magical realists. Outside the Dog Museum (1991) was named the best novel of the year by the British Fantasy Society, and has proven to be one of Carroll’s most popular works. Since then he has written the Crane’s View trilogy, Glass Soup (2005) and, most recently, The Ghost in Love (2008). His short stories have been collected in The Panic Hand (1995) and The Woman Who Married a Cloud (2012). He continues to live and write in Vienna.

Gene Wolfe was an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He was noted for his dense, allusive prose as well as the strong influence of his Catholic faith, to which he converted after marrying a Catholic. He was a prolific short story writer and a novelist, and has won many awards in the field. The Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award is given by SFWA for ‘lifetime achievement in science fiction and/or fantasy.’ Wolfe joins the Grand Master ranks alongside such legends as Connie Willis, Michael Moorcock, Anne McCaffrey, Robert Silverberg, Ursula K. Le Guin, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Joe Haldeman. The award will be presented at the 48th Annual Nebula Awards Weekend in San Jose, CA, May 16-19, 2013. While attending Texas A&M University Wolfe published his first speculative fiction in The Commentator, a student literary journal. Wolfe dropped out during his junior year, and was drafted to fight in the Korean War. After returning to the United States he earned a degree from the University of Houston and became an industrial engineer. He edited the journal Plant Engineering for many years before retiring to write full-time, but his most famous professional engineering achievement is a contribution to the machine used to make Pringles potato crisps. He lived in Barrington, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. A frequent Hugo nominee without a win, Wolfe has nevertheless picked up several Nebula and Locus Awards, among others, including the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the 2012 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. He is also a member of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. http://us.macmillan.com/author/genewolfe

For the British author of thrillers and non-fiction see Michael Shea Michael Shea (1946-2014) was an American fantasy, horror, and science fiction author who lived in California. He was a multiple winner of the World Fantasy Award and his works include Nifft the Lean (1982) (winner of the World Fantasy Award) and The Mines of Behemoth (1997) (later republished together as The Incomplete Nifft, 2000), as well as The ARak (2000) and In Yana, the Touch of Undying (1985).

Delia Sherman (born 1951) is a fantasy writer and editor. Her novel The Porcelain Dove won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award. She was born in Tokyo and brought up in New York City. She earned a PhD in Renaissance studies at Brown University and taught at Boston and North-eastern universities. She is the author of the novels Through a Brazen Mirror, The Porcelain Dove (a Mythopoeic Award winner), and Changeling. Sherman co-founded the Interstitial Arts Foundation, dedicated to promoting art that crosses genre borders. She lives in New York City with her wife and sometime collaborator, Ellen Kushner.

She was an undergraduate at Trinity College, Dublin. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway College, University of London, where she teaches on the MA in Creative Writing. She is the current President of The Poetry Society. Her Book: Poems 1988-1998 (2000), consists of a selection of poetry from her three earlier collections: Electroplating the Baby (1988), which won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for Best First Collection, Phrase Book (1992), and My Life Asleep (1998), which won the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection). She has also won the National Poetry Competition twice. Together with Matthew Sweeney she edited an anthology of contemporary poetry in English, but gathered from around the world, entitled Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times (1996). Jo Shapcott has worked with a number of musicians on collaborative projects. She has written lyrics for, or had poems set to music by, composers such as John McCabe, Detlev Glamert, Nigel Osborne, Alec Roth, Erollyn Wallen, Peter Wiegold and John Woolrich. Her poems were set to music by composer Stephen Montague in The Creatures Indoors, premiered by the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Centre in London in 1997. From 2001-2003, during the BBC Proms season, she presented the weekly 'Poetry Proms' on Radio 3. Her book Tender Taxes, a collection of versions of Rainer Maria Rilke's poems in French, was published in 2002. The Transformers, due for publication in 2010, is a collection of public lectures given by Jo Shapcott as part of her Professorship at Newcastle, and she is co-editor (with Linda Anderson) of a collection of essays about Elizabeth Bishop. Her translation, with Narguess Farzad, of Poems by Farzaneh Khojandi was published in 2008. Her latest book of poems is Of Mutability, published in 2010, shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) and overall winner of the 2010 Costa Prize. In 2011 Jo Shapcott was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name Christopher Fowler was an English novelist living in London. His books contain elements of black comedy, anxiety and social satire. As well as novels, he wrote short stories, scripts, press articles and reviews. He lived in King's Cross, on the Battlebridge Basin, and chose London as the backdrop of many of his stories because any one of the events in its two-thousand-year history can provide inspiration. In 1998 he was the recipient of the BFS Best Short Story of the Year, for 'Wageslaves'. Then, in 2004, The Water Room was nominated for the CWA People's Choice Award, Full Dark House won the BFS August Derleth Novel of The Year Award 2004 and 'American Waitress' won the BFS Best Short Story of the Year 2004. The novella 'Breathe' won BFS Best Novella 2005.

Natalie Babbitt was an American writer and illustrator of children's books. She attended Laurel School for Girls, and then Smith College. She had 3 children and was married to Samuel Fisher Babbitt. She was the grandmother of 3 and lived in Rhode Island. She was a board member of the National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance a national not-for-profit that actively advocates for literacy, literature, and libraries. http://us.macmillan.com/author/natali...

Ursula K. Le Guin published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation, and has received many awards: Hugo, Nebula, National Book Award, PEN-Malamud, etc. Her recent publications include the novel Lavinia, an essay collection, Cheek by Jowl, and The Wild Girls. She lived in Portland, Oregon. She was known for her treatment of gender (The Left Hand of Darkness, The Matter of Seggri), political systems (The Telling, The Dispossessed) and difference/otherness in any other form. Her interest in non-Western philosophies was reflected in works such as "Solitude" and The Telling but even more interesting are her imagined societies, often mixing traits extracted from her profound knowledge of anthropology acquired from growing up with her father, the famous anthropologist, Alfred Kroeber. The Hainish Cycle reflects the anthropologist's experience of immersing themselves in new strange cultures since most of their main characters and narrators (Le Guin favoured the first-person narration) are envoys from a humanitarian organization, the Ekumen, sent to investigate or ally themselves with the people of a different world and learn their ways.

Harlan Jay Ellison was a prolific American writer of short stories, novellas, teleplays, essays, and criticism. His literary and television work has received many awards. He wrote for the original series of both The Outer Limits and Star Trek as well as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour; edited the multiple-award-winning short story anthology series Dangerous Visions; and served as creative consultant/writer to the science fiction TV series The New Twilight Zone and Babylon 5. Several of his short fiction pieces have been made into movies, such as the classic "The Boy and His Dog". webmaster@harlanellison.com

Scott Michael Bradfield is an American essayist, critic and fiction writer who resides in London, England. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott\_B...

Joan Aiken was a much loved English writer who received the MBE for services to Children's Literature. She was known as a writer of wild fantasy, Gothic novels and short stories. She was born in Rye, East Sussex, into a family of writers, including her father, Conrad Aiken (who won a Pulitzer Prize for his poetry), and her sister, Jane Aiken Hodge. She worked for the United Nations Information Office during the second world war, and then as an editor and freelance on Argosy magazine before she started writing full time, mainly children's books and thrillers. For her books she received the Guardian Award (1969) and the Edgar Allan Poe Award (1972). Her most popular series, the "Wolves Chronicles" which began with The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, was set in an elaborate alternate period of history in a Britain in which James II was never deposed in the Glorious Revolution,and so supporters of the House of Hanover continually plot to overthrow the Stuart Kings. These books also feature cockney urchin heroine Dido Twite and her adventures and travels all over the world. Another series of children's books about Arabel and her raven Mortimer are illustrated by Quentin Blake, and have been shown on the BBC as Jackanory and drama series. Others including the much loved Necklace of Raindrops and award winning Kingdom Under the Sea are illustrated by Jan Pieńkowski. Her many novels for adults include several that continue or complement novels by Jane Austen. These include Mansfield Revisited and Jane Fairfax. Aiken was a lifelong fan of ghost stories. She set her adult supernatural novel The Haunting of Lamb House at Lamb House in Rye (now a National Trust property). This ghost story recounts in fictional form an alleged haunting experienced by two former residents of the house, Henry James and E. F. Benson, both of whom also wrote ghost stories. Aiken's father, Conrad Aiken, also authored a small number of notable ghost stories.

Charles de Lint is the much beloved author of more than seventy adult, young adult, and children's books. Renowned as one of the trailblazers of the modern fantasy genre, he is the recipient of the World Fantasy, Aurora, Sunburst, and White Pine awards, among others. Modern Library's Top 100 Books of the 20th Century poll, conducted by Random House and voted on by readers, put eight of de Lint's books among the top 100. De Lint is a poet, folklorist, artist, songwriter and performer. He has written critical essays, music reviews, opinion columns and entries to encyclopedias, and he's been the main book reviewer for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction since 1987. De Lint served as Writer-in-residence for two public libraries in Ottawa and has taught creative writing workshops for adults and children in Canada and the United States. He's been a judge for several prominent awards, including the Nebula, World Fantasy, Theodore Sturgeon and Bram Stoker. Born in the Netherlands in 1951, de Lint immigrated to Canada with his family as an infant. The family moved often during de Lint's childhood because of his father's job with an international surveying company, but by the time Charles was twelve—having lived in Western Canada, Turkey and Lebanon—they had settled in Lucerne, Quebec, not far from where he now resides in Ottawa, Ontario. In 1980, de Lint married the love of his life, MaryAnn Harris, who works closely with him as his first editor, business manager and creative partner. They share their love and home with a cheery little dog named Johnny Cash. Charles de Lint is best described as a romantic: a believer in compassion, hope and human potential. His skilled portrayal of character and settings has earned him a loyal readership and glowing praise from peers, reviewers and readers. Charles de Lint writes like a magician. He draws out the strange inside our own world, weaving stories that feel more real than we are when we read them. He is, simply put, the best. —Holly Black (bestselling author) Charles de Lint is the modern master of urban fantasy. Folktale, myth, fairy tale, dreams, urban legend—all of it adds up to pure magic in de Lint's vivid, original world. No one does it better. —Alice Hoffman (bestselling author) To read de Lint is to fall under the spell of a master storyteller, to be reminded of the greatness of life, of the beauty and majesty lurking in shadows and empty doorways. —Quill & Quire His Newford books, which make up most of de Lint's body of work between 1993 and 2009, confirmed his reputation for bringing a vivid setting and repertory cast of characters to life on the page. Though not a consecutive series, the twenty-five standalone books set in (or connected to) Newford give readers a feeling of visiting a favourite city and seeing old friends. More recently, his young adult Wildlings trilogy—Under My Skin, Over My Head, and Out of This World—came out from Penguin Canada and Triskell Press in 2012, 2013 and 2014. Under My Skin won 2013 Aurora Award. A novel for middle-grade readers, The Cats of Tanglewood Forest, published by Little Brown in 2013, won the Sunburst Award, earned starred reviews in both Publishers Weekly and Quill & Quire, and was chosen by the New York Times Editors as one of the top six children's books for 2013. His most recent adult novel, The Mystery of Grace (2009), is a fascinating ghost story about love, passion and faith. It was a finalist for both the Sunburst and Evergreen awards. De Lint is presently writing a new adult novel. His storytelling skills also shine in his original songs. He and MaryAnn (also a musician) recently released companion CDs of their original songs, samples of which can be heard on de Lin

Uruguayan novelist, poet, and author of short stories. Considered a leading light of the post-1960s period of prominence of the Latin-American novel, she has written more than 37 works. She was born in Montevideo, Uruguay but was exiled in 1972, and moved to Spain, where she became a citizen in 1975. As of 2005[update] she lives in Barcelona, where she continues to write fiction and works as a journalist. She studied at the University of the Republic.

Dr. James L. Powell graduated from Berea College with a degree in Geology. He holds a Ph.D. in Geochemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and taught Geology at Oberlin College for over 20 years. He served as Acting President of Oberlin, President of Franklin and Marshall College, President of Reed College, President of the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia, and President and Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. Powell currently serves as Executive Director of the National Physical Science Consortium. Asteroid 1987 SH7 is named for him.

A.S. Byatt (Antonia Susan Byatt) is internationally known for her novels and short stories. Her novels include the Booker Prize winner Possession, The Biographer’s Tale and the quartet, The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower and A Whistling Woman, and her highly acclaimed collections of short stories include Sugar and Other Stories, The Matisse Stories, The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, Elementals and her most recent book Little Black Book of Stories. A distinguished critic as well as a writer of fiction, A S Byatt was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999. BYATT, Dame Antonia (Susan), (Dame Antonia Duffy), DBE 1999 (CBE 1990); FRSL 1983; Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), 2003, writer; born 24 Aug. 1936; Daughter of His Honour John Frederick Drabble, QC and late Kathleen Marie Bloor Byatt has famously been engaged in a long-running feud with her novelist sister, Margaret Drabble, over the alleged appropriation of a family tea-set in one of her novels. The pair seldom see each other and each does not read the books of the other. Married 1st, 1959, Ian Charles Rayner Byatt (Sir I. C. R. Byatt) marriage dissolved. 1969; one daughter (one son deceased) 2nd, 1969, Peter John Duffy; two daughters. Education Sheffield High School; The Mount School, York; Newnham College, Cambridge (BA Hons; Hon. Fellow 1999); Bryn Mawr College, Philadelphia, USA; Somerville College, Oxford. Academic Honours: Hon. Fellow, London Inst., 2000; Fellow UCL, 2004 Hon. DLitt: Bradford, 1987; DUniv York, 1991; Durham, 1991; Nottingham, 1992; Liverpool, 1993; Portsmouth, 1994; London, 1995; Sheffield, 2000; Kent 2004; Hon. LittD Cambridge, 1999 Prizes The PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Of Fiction prize, 1986 for STILL LIFE The Booker Prize, 1990, for POSSESSION Irish Times/Aer Lingus International Fiction Prize, 1990 for POSSESSION The Eurasian section of Best Book in Commonwealth Prize, 1991 for POSSESSION Premio Malaparte, Capri, 1995; Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature, California, 1998 for THE DJINN IN THE NIGHTINGALE''S EYE Shakespeare Prize, Toepfer Foundation, Hamburg, 2002; Publications: The Shadow of the Sun, 1964; Degrees of Freedom, 1965 (reprinted as Degrees of Freedom: the early novels of Iris Murdoch, 1994); The Game, 1967; Wordsworth and Coleridge in their Time, 1970 (reprinted as Unruly Times: Wordsworth and Coleridge in their Time, 1989); Iris Murdoch 1976 The Virgin in the Garden, 1978; GEORGE ELIOT Selected Essays, Poems and Other Writings, 1979 (editor); Still Life, 1985 Sugar and Other Stories, 1987; George Eliot: selected essays, 1989 (editor) Possession: a romance, 1990 Robert Browning''s Dramatic Monologues, 1990 (editor); Passions of the Mind, (essays), 1991; Angels and Insects (novellas),1992 The Matisse Stories (short stories),1993; The Djinn in the Nightingale''s Eye: five fairy stories, 1994 Imagining Characters, 1995 (joint editor); New Writing 4, 1995 (joint editor); Babel Tower, 1996; New Writing 6, 1997 (joint editor); The Oxford Book of English Short Stories, 1998 (editor); Elementals: Stories of fire and ice (short stories), 1998; The Biographer''s Tale, 2000; On Histories and Stories (essays), 2000; Portraits in Fiction, 2001; The Bird Hand Book, 2001 (Photographs by Victor Schrager Text By AS Byatt); A Whistling Woman, 2002 Little

George Raymond Richard "R.R." Martin, born on September 20, 1948, in Bayonne, New Jersey, is a distinguished fantasy and science fiction writer. Son to Raymond Collins Martin, a longshoreman, and Margaret Brady Martin, he grew up with two sisters, Darleen Martin Lapinski and Janet Martin Patten. Martin's passion for writing emerged early, selling monster stories to neighborhood kids, which later evolved into a keen interest in comic books during his high school years, where he also started writing fiction for comic fanzines. His first professional story, The Hero, was sold in 1970 at age 21 and published in Galaxy's February 1971 issue. After earning a B.S. and then a M.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University, Martin served as a conscientious objector with VISTA, tied to the Cook County Legal Assistance Foundation from 1972-1974, alongside directing chess tournaments and teaching journalism. His marriage to Gale Burnick in 1975 ended in divorce by 1979 without children. Martin transitioned to full-time writing in 1979, after a stint as writer-in-residence at Clarke College. In Hollywood, Martin contributed to Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast on CBS, later producing his own pilot, Doorways. Residing in Santa Fe, New Mexico, he's been actively involved with the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America and the Writers' Guild of America, West.

aka Gabriel King (with Jane Johnson) Michael John Harrison, known for publication purposes primarily as M. John Harrison, is an English author and literary critic. His work includes the Viriconium sequence of novels and short stories, Climbers, and the Kefahuchi Tract trilogy, which consists of Light, Nova Swing and Empty Space.

Murakami Haruki (Japanese: 村上 春樹) is a popular contemporary Japanese writer and translator. His work has been described as 'easily accessible, yet profoundly complex'. He can be located on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/harukimuraka... Since childhood, Murakami has been heavily influenced by Western culture, particularly Western music and literature. He grew up reading a range of works by American writers, such as Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and he is often distinguished from other Japanese writers by his Western influences. Murakami studied drama at Waseda University in Tokyo, where he met his wife, Yoko. His first job was at a record store, which is where one of his main characters, Toru Watanabe in Norwegian Wood, works. Shortly before finishing his studies, Murakami opened the coffeehouse 'Peter Cat' which was a jazz bar in the evening in Kokubunji, Tokyo with his wife. Many of his novels have themes and titles that invoke classical music, such as the three books making up The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: The Thieving Magpie (after Rossini's opera), Bird as Prophet (after a piano piece by Robert Schumann usually known in English as The Prophet Bird), and The Bird-Catcher (a character in Mozart's opera The Magic Flute). Some of his novels take their titles from songs: Dance, Dance, Dance (after The Dells' song, although it is widely thought it was titled after the Beach Boys tune), Norwegian Wood (after The Beatles' song) and South of the Border, West of the Sun (the first part being the title of a song by Nat King Cole).

Nicholas Royle is the author of seven novels, two novellas and a short story collection. He has edited sixteen anthologies of short stories. A senior lecturer in creative writing at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University, he also runs Nightjar Press, publishing original short stories as signed, limited-edition chapbooks. He works as a fiction reviewer for The Independent and the Warwick Review and as an editor for Salt Publishing. From : http://www.nicholasroyle.com/biograph...

Craig Shaw Gardner was born in Rochester, New York and lived there until 1967, when he moved to Boston, MA to attend Boston University. He graduated from Boston University with a Bachelor's of Science degree in Broadcasting and Film. He has continued to reside in Boston since that time. He published his first story in 1977 while he held a number of jobs: shipper/receiver for a men's suit manufacturer, working in hospital public relations, running a stat camera, and also managed of a couple of bookstores: The Million Year Picnic and Science Fantasy Bookstore. As of 1987 he became a full time writer, and since then he has published more than 30 novels and more than 50 short stories. He also published under these pseudonyms: Peter Garrison

Stoker and World Fantasy Award nominee, winner of British Fantasy and International Horror Guild Awards for his short fiction, Stephen Gallagher has a career both as a novelist and as a creator of primetime miniseries and episodic television. His fifteen novels include Chimera, Oktober, Valley of Lights and Nightmare, with Angel. He's the creator of Sebastian Becker, Special Investigator to the Lord Chancellor's Visitor in Lunacy, in a series of novels that includes The Kingdom of Bones, The Bedlam Detective, and The Authentic William James. In his native England he's adapted and created hour-long and feature-length thrillers and crime dramas. In the US he was lead writer on NBC's Crusoe, creator of CBS Television's Eleventh Hour, and Co-Executive Producer on ABC's The Forgotten. Recent screen credits include an award-winning Silent Witness and Stan Lee's Lucky Man. He began his TV career as a writer on two seasons of Doctor Who, and wrote two novelizations of his stories under the pseudonym John Lydecker. ** Photo by Lisa Bowerman **