Michael Cisco | |
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| Born | October 13, 1970 Glendale, California, U.S. |
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| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | New York University |
| Period | 1999–present |
| Genre | Horror Fiction, dark fantasy, weird fiction, surrealism, phantasmagoria |
| Literary movement | New Weird |
| Spouse | Farah Rose Smith (m. 2019) |
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| michaelcisco | |
Michael Cisco (born October 13, 1970) is an American writer, Deleuzian academic, and teacher currently living in New York City. [1] He is best known for his first novel, The Divinity Student, winner of the International Horror Guild Award for Best First Novel of 1999. His novel The Great Lover was nominated for the 2011 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel of the Year, and declared the Best Weird Novel of 2011 by the Weird Fiction Review. [2] He has described his work as "de-genred" fiction. [3]
Michael Terry Cisco was born and raised in Glendale, California. His father Terry Cisco worked as an inventor and principal scientist for the Hughes Aircraft Company and his mother worked as photographer and graphic designer for Glendale Community College's Public Information Office. Cisco attended Sarah Lawrence College as an undergraduate, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1992. As part of his undergraduate studies, Cisco studied at Oxford University for one year. He obtained his master's degree from SUNY Buffalo in 1994 and both his Masters of Philosophy in 2002 and PhD in 2004 at New York University. Cisco is a professor at the City University of New York.
Cisco's work can also be found in The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, Album Zutique,Leviathan III,Leviathan IV, Phantom, Lovecraft Unbound, Last Drink Bird Head, Cinnabar's Gnosis: A Homage to Gustav Meyrink, Black Wings, The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities, The Master in the Cafe Morphine: A Homage to Mikhail Bulgakov, Blood and Other Cravings, DADAOISM, This Hermetic Legislature: A Homage to Bruno Schulz, and The Weird.
His essay on author Sadeq Hedayat, "Eternal Recurrence in The Blind Owl," appeared in the journal, Iranian Studies [4] Other critical articles by Cisco have appeared in The New Weird, The Encyclopedia of the Vampire, The Weird Fiction Review, and Lovecraft Studies.
Centipede Press has published a limited edition box set, composed of four novels and a collection of short fiction.
All four novels are published for the first time in individual hardcover editions. Each book features a new introduction by Jeffrey Ford (The Traitor), Rhys Hughes (The Tyrant), Joseph S. Pulver (Secret Hours), Paul Tremblay (The Golem) and Ann VanderMeer (The Divinity Student).
Dim Shores published the novella The Knife Dance in 2016. The project was curated by Joseph S. Pulver.
Nightscape Press released Cisco's novella, Do You Mind if We Dance with Your Legs? in 2020 for their charitable chapbook series. One-third of all physical chapbook sales benefit the Los Angeles LGBT Center.
Cisco was on the editorial board of Vastarien Literary Journal as associate editor. [5]
The Divinity Student won the International Horror Guild Award for Best First Novel of 1999.
The Great Lover was nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award in 2012 and was declared the Best Weird Novel of 2011 by the Weird Fiction Review.
Unlanguage was nominated for Best Horror Novel by Locus Magazine in 2019.
Weird Fiction: A Genre Study was nominated for Superior Achievement in Long Fiction at the 2023 Bram Stoker Awards.
Robert Albert Bloch was an American fiction writer, primarily of crime, psychological horror and fantasy, much of which has been dramatized for radio, cinema and television. He also wrote a relatively small amount of science fiction. His writing career lasted 60 years, including more than 30 years in television and film. He began his professional writing career immediately after graduation from high school, aged 17. Best known as the writer of Psycho (1959), the basis for the film of the same name by Alfred Hitchcock, Bloch wrote hundreds of short stories and over 30 novels. He was a protégé of H. P. Lovecraft, who was the first to seriously encourage his talent. However, while he started emulating Lovecraft and his brand of cosmic horror, he later specialized in crime and horror stories working with a more psychological approach.
The King in Yellow is a book of short stories by American writer Robert W. Chambers, first published by F. Tennyson Neely in 1895. The British first edition was published by Chatto & Windus in 1895.
William Joseph Martin, formerly Poppy Z. Brite, is an American author. He initially achieved fame in the gothic horror genre of literature in the early 1990s by publishing a string of successful novels and short story collections. He is best known for his novels Lost Souls (1992), Drawing Blood (1993), and Exquisite Corpse (1996). His later work moved into the genre of dark comedy, with many stories set in the New Orleans restaurant world. Martin's novels are typically standalone books but may feature recurring characters from previous novels and short stories. Much of his work features openly bisexual and gay characters.
Robert William Chambers was an American artist and fiction writer, best known for his book of short stories titled The King in Yellow, published in 1895.
Jeff VanderMeer is an American author, editor, and literary critic. Initially associated with the New Weird literary genre, VanderMeer crossed over into mainstream success with his bestselling Southern Reach Trilogy. The trilogy's first novel, Annihilation, won the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards, and was adapted into a Hollywood film by director Alex Garland. Among VanderMeer's other novels are Shriek: An Afterword and Borne. He has also edited with his wife Ann VanderMeer such influential and award-winning anthologies as The New Weird, The Weird, and The Big Book of Science Fiction.
The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases (2003) is an anthology of fantasy medical conditions edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Mark Roberts, and published by Night Shade Books. A second edition was published by Spectra in 2005.
John Coulthart is a British graphic artist, illustrator, author and designer who has produced book covers and illustrations, CD covers and posters. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed Lovecraft-inspired book The Haunter of the Dark: And Other Grotesque Visions which contains a collaboration with Alan Moore entitled The Great Old Ones that is unique to this book and also has an introduction by Alan Moore.
Frank Belknap Long Jr. was an American writer of horror fiction, fantasy, science fiction, poetry, gothic romance, comic books, and non-fiction. Though his writing career spanned seven decades, he is best known for his horror and science fiction short stories, including contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos alongside his friend, H. P. Lovecraft. During his life, Long received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award (1977).
Caitlín Rebekah Kiernan is an Irish-born American paleontologist and writer of science fiction and dark fantasy works, including 10 novels, series of comic books, and more than 250 published short stories, novellas, and vignettes. Kiernan is a two-time recipient of both the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker awards.
Jeffrey Thomas is a prolific writer of science fiction and horror, best known for his stories set in the nightmarish future city called Punktown, such as the novel Deadstock and the collection Punktown, from which a story was reprinted in St. Martin's The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror #14. His fiction has also been reprinted in Daw's The Year's Best Horror Stories XXII, The Year's Best Fantastic Fiction and Quick Chills II: The Best Horror Fiction from the Specialty Press. He has been a 2003 finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for Monstrocity, and a 2008 finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Deadstock.
Richard Calder is a British science fiction writer who lives and works in the East End of London. He previously spent over a decade in Thailand (1990–1997) and the Philippines (1999–2002).
Lovecraftian horror, also called cosmic horror or eldritch horror, is a subgenre of horror fiction and weird fiction that emphasizes the horror of the unknowable and incomprehensible more than gore or other elements of shock. It is named after American author H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937). His work emphasizes themes of cosmic dread, forbidden and dangerous knowledge, madness, non-human influences on humanity, religion and superstition, fate and inevitability, and the risks associated with scientific discoveries, which are now associated with Lovecraftian horror as a subgenre. The cosmic themes of Lovecraftian horror can also be found in other media, notably horror films, horror games, and comics.
Harold Warner Munn was an American writer of fantasy, horror and poetry, best remembered for his early stories in Weird Tales. He was an early friend and associate of authors H. P. Lovecraft and Seabury Quinn. He has been described by fellow author Jessica Amanda Salmonson, who interviewed him during 1978, as "the ultimate gentleman" and "a gentle, calm, warm, and good friend." He was known for his intricate plotting and the careful research that he did for his stories, a habit he traced back to two mistakes made when he wrote his early story "The City of Spiders".
Norman Partridge is an American writer of horror and mystery fiction. He has written two detective novels about retired boxer Jack Baddalach, Saguaro Riptide and The Ten Ounce Siesta. He is also the author of a Crow novel, The Crow: Wicked Prayer, which was adapted in 2005 into the fourth Crow movie, bearing the same name.
Darrell Charles Schweitzer is an American writer, editor, and critic in the field of speculative fiction. Much of his focus has been on dark fantasy and horror, although he does also work in science fiction and fantasy. Schweitzer is also a prolific writer of literary criticism and editor of collections of essays on various writers within his preferred genres.
L. Timmel Duchamp is an American author of science fiction. She is also an editor for Aqueduct Press.
Mur Lafferty is an American podcaster and writer based in Durham, North Carolina. She was the editor and host of Escape Pod from 2010, when she took over from Steve Eley, until 2012, when she was replaced by Norm Sherman. She is also the host and creator of the podcast I Should Be Writing. Until July 2007, she was host and co-editor of Pseudopod. She was the Editor-in-Chief of the Escape Artists short fiction magazine Mothership Zeta until it went on hiatus in 2016.
Ann VanderMeer is an American publisher and editor, and the second female editor of the horror magazine Weird Tales. She is the founder of Buzzcity Press.
Leslie S. Klinger is an American attorney and writer. He is a noted literary editor and annotator of classic genre fiction, including the Sherlock Holmes stories and the novels Dracula, Frankenstein, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as well as Neil Gaiman's The Sandman comics, Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons's graphic novel Watchmen, the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, and Neil Gaiman's American Gods.
Joseph S. Pulver Sr. was an author and poet, much of whose work falls within the horror fiction, noir fiction / hardboiled, and dark fantasy genres. He lived in Germany, and died from COPD and other issues in a German hospital on April 24, 2020.
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