An urban legend is a genre of folklore comprising stories or fallacious claims circulated as true, especially as having happened to a "friend of a friend" or a family member, often with horrifying, humorous, or cautionary elements. These legends can be entertaining but often concern mysterious peril or troubling events, such as disappearances and strange objects or entities. Urban legends may confirm moral standards, reflect prejudices, or be a way to make sense of societal anxieties. Urban legends in the past were most often circulated orally, but now can also be spread by any media. This includes newspapers, mobile news apps, e-mail, and most often, social media. Some urban legends have passed through the years/decades with only minor changes, in where the time period takes place. Generic urban legends are often altered to suit regional variations, but the lesson or moral remains majorly the same.
Nancy A. Collins is an American horror fiction writer best known for her series of vampire novels featuring her character Sonja Blue. Collins has also written for comic books, including the Swamp Thing series, Jason vs. Leatherface, Predator: Hell Come A' Walkin' and her own one-shot issue Dhampire: Stillborn.
Garth Richard Nix is an Australian writer who specialises in children's and young adult fantasy novels, notably the Old Kingdom, Seventh Tower and Keys to the Kingdom series. He has frequently been asked if his name is a pseudonym, to which he has responded, "I guess people ask me because it sounds like the perfect name for a writer of fantasy. However, it is my real name."
"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by the American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of Putnam's Magazine and reprinted with minor textual alterations in his The Piazza Tales in 1856. In the story, a Wall Street lawyer hires a new clerk who, after an initial bout of hard work, refuses to make copies or do any other task required of him, refusing with the words "I would prefer not to."
Flash fiction is a fictional work of extreme brevity that still offers character and plot development. Identified varieties, many of them defined by word count, include the six-word story; the 280-character story ; the "dribble" ; the "drabble" ; "sudden fiction" ; "flash fiction" ; and "microstory".
Kelly Link is an American editor and author of short stories. While some of her fiction falls more clearly within genre categories, many of her stories might be described as slipstream or magic realism: a combination of science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, and realism. Among other honors, she has won a Hugo award, three Nebula awards, and a World Fantasy Award for her fiction, and she was one of the recipients of the 2018 MacArthur "Genius" Grant.
Horace Austin Warner "Haw" Tabor, also known as The Bonanza King of Leadville and The Silver King, was an American prospector, businessman, and Republican politician. His success in Leadville, Colorado's silver mines made him one of the wealthiest men in Colorado. He purchased more mining enterprises throughout Colorado and the Southwestern United States, and he was a philanthropist. After the collapse in the silver market during the Panic of 1893, Tabor was financially devastated. He lost most of his holdings, and he labored in the mines. In his last year, he was the postmaster of Denver.
Alan Kent Haruf was an American novelist.
Peyton List is an American actress and professional model, known for roles on Mad Men, FlashForward, The Tomorrow People and Frequency. She began her career on daytime television, playing Lucy Montgomery on the CBS soap opera As the World Turns from 2001 to 2005, before she went to primetime with regular roles on the short-lived dramas Windfall (2006) and Big Shots (2007).
Sarah Andrews was an American geologist and author of twelve science-based mystery novels and several short stories. Many of the novels feature "clear-thinking, straight-talking" forensic geologist Em Hansen and take place in the Rocky Mountains region of the United States. Her novels have been praised for their combination of science and detective work within the mystery genre. Andrews, her husband Damon, and son Duncan died in a plane crash in Nebraska on the 24th of July, 2019.
Carrie Vaughn is an American writer, the author of the urban fantasy Kitty Norville series. She has published more than 60 short stories in science fiction and fantasy magazines as well as short story anthologies and internet magazines. She is one of the authors for the "Wild Cards" books. Vaughn won the 2018 Philip K. Dick Award for Bannerless, and has been nominated for the Hugo Awards.
Gertrude Barrows Bennett, known by the pseudonym Francis Stevens, was a pioneering author of fantasy and science fiction. Bennett wrote a number of fantasies between 1917 and 1923 and has been called "the woman who invented dark fantasy".
Niobia Bryant is an African-American novelist of both romance and mainstream fiction. She also writes urban fiction as Meesha Mink and young adult fiction as Simone Bryant.
Suzi Q. Smith is an American an award-winning artist, activist, and educator who lives in Denver, Colorado.
Ruth Murray Underhill was an American anthropologist. She was born in Ossining-on-the-Hudson, New York, and attended Vassar College, graduating in 1905 with a degree in Language and Literature. In 1907, she graduated from the London School of Economics and began travelling throughout Europe. During World War I, she worked for an Italian orphanage run by the Red Cross.
Erika Dawn Krouse is an American novelist and short story writer. She is the author of two books of fiction, and her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Literary magazines, including Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, and Story.
Kristen Marie Hamilton is an American professional soccer player who plays for Kansas City Current of the National Women's Soccer League and for Western Sydney Wanderers in the Australian W-League.
Jessica Ann Rothenberg, better known as Jessica Rothe, is an American actress. She is known for her role in the MTV comedy series Mary + Jane (2016) and her lead role as Tree Gelbman in the comedy slasher film Happy Death Day (2017) and its 2019 sequel. She has also appeared in La La Land (2016), Forever My Girl (2018), and Valley Girl (2020). In 2020, Rothe appeared in the Amazon Prime Video science fiction drama series Utopia.
Helen Peterson was a Cheyenne-Lakota activist and lobbyist. She was the first director of the Denver Commission on Human Relations. She was the second Native American woman to become director of the National Congress of American Indians at a time when the government wanted to discharge their treaty obligations to the tribes by eliminating their tribal governments through the Indian termination policy and forcing the tribe members to assimilate into the mainstream culture. She authored a resolution on Native American education, which was ratified at the second Inter-American Indian Conference, held in Cuzco, Peru. In 1986, Peterson was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame and the following year, her papers were donated to the Smithsonian's National Anthropological Archives.
Loren Rhoads is a San Francisco-based author, editor, and lecturer on cemetery history. She is a member of Horror Writers Association, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and the Association for Gravestone Studies.
