Horror is a genre of speculative fiction that is intended to disturb, frighten, or scare. Horror is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror, which are in the realm of speculative fiction. Literary historian J. A. Cuddon, in 1984, defined the horror story as "a piece of fiction in prose of variable length ... which shocks, or even frightens the reader, or perhaps induces a feeling of repulsion or loathing". Horror intends to create an eerie and frightening atmosphere for the reader. Often the central menace of a work of horror fiction can be interpreted as a metaphor for larger fears of a society.
Ramsey Campbell is an English horror fiction writer, editor and critic who has been writing for well over fifty years. He is the author of over 30 novels and hundreds of short stories, many of them winners of literary awards. Three of his novels have been adapted into films.
Kim James Newman is an English journalist, film critic and fiction writer. He is interested in film history and horror fiction—both of which he attributes to seeing Tod Browning's Dracula at the age of eleven—and alternative history. He has won the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Guild Award and the BSFA award.
Laird Samuel Barron is an American author and poet, much of whose work falls within the horror, noir, or horror noir and dark fantasy genres. He has also been the managing editor of the online literary magazine Melic Review. He lives in Upstate New York.
Dennis William Etchison was an American writer and editor of fantasy and horror fiction. Etchison referred to his own work as "rather dark, depressing, almost pathologically inward fiction about the individual in relation to the world". Stephen King has called Dennis Etchison "one hell of a fiction writer" and he has been called "the most original living horror writer in America".
Cemetery Dance Publications is an American specialty press publisher of horror and dark suspense. Cemetery Dance was founded by Richard Chizmar, a horror author, while he was in college. It is associated with Cemetery Dance magazine, which was founded in 1988. They began to publish books in 1992. They later expanded to encompass a magazine and website featuring news, interviews, and reviews related to horror literature.
Jonathan Maberry is an American suspense author, anthology editor, comic book writer, magazine feature writer, playwright, content creator and writing teacher/lecturer. He was named one of the Today's Top Ten Horror Writers.
Joseph Hillström King, better known by the pen name Joe Hill, is an American writer. His work includes the novels Heart-Shaped Box (2007), Horns (2010), NOS4A2 (2013), and The Fireman (2016); the short story collections 20th Century Ghosts (2005) and Strange Weather (2017); and the comic book series Locke & Key (2008–2013). He has won awards including Bram Stoker Awards, British Fantasy Awards, and an Eisner Award.
Al Sarrantonio is an American horror and science fiction writer, editor and publisher who has authored more than 50 books and 90 short stories. He has also edited numerous anthologies.
Reggie Oliver is an English playwright, biographer and writer of ghost stories.
Ronald Henry Glynn Chetwynd-Hayes was a British author, known best for his ghost and horror stories.
Lisa Morton is an American horror author and screenwriter.
Michael Laimo is an American horror author. He has been nominated for several Bram Stoker Awards. Two of his works, Deep in the Darkness and Dead Souls, have been made into feature films; his short story 1-800-Suicide was adapted into a short film.
Gregory Frost is an American author of science fiction and fantasy, and directs a fiction writing workshop at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. He received his Bachelor's degree from the University of Iowa. A graduate of the Clarion Workshop, he has been invited back as instructor several times, including the first session following its move to the University of California at San Diego in 2007. He is also active in the Interstitial Arts Foundation.
Rain Graves is an author of horror, fantasy, science fiction and poetry. She is also a noted Wine Poet, commissioned and featured by winemakers and wineries, and the Creator and Hostess of the Haunted Mansion Writer's Retreat.
Michael Raymond Donald Ashley is a British bibliographer, author and editor of science fiction, mystery, and fantasy.
Shadows over Innsmouth is an anthology of stories edited by Stephen Jones. It was published by Fedogan & Bremer in 1994 in an edition of 2,100 copies of which 100 were signed by the contributors. The anthology contains the H. P. Lovecraft novella "The Shadow over Innsmouth" and several stories by British authors written as sequels to the Lovecraft story. Seven of the stories are original to this collection. Others first appeared in the magazines Interzone, Dagon, Fear! and Weirdbook or in the anthologies Dark Mind, Dark Heart, Aisling and other Irish Tales of Terror and Irrational Numbers.
Linda D. Addison is an American poet and writer of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. Addison is the first African-American winner of the Bram Stoker Award, which she won five times. The first two awards were for her poetry collections Consumed, Reduced to Beautiful Grey Ashes (2001) and Being Full of Light, Insubstantial (2007). Her poetry and fiction collection How To Recognize A Demon Has Become Your Friend won the 2011 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection. She received a fourth HWA Bram Stoker for the collection The Four Elements, written with Marge Simon, Rain Graves, and Charlee Jacob. Her fifth HWA Bram Stoker was for the collection The Place of Broken Things, written with Alessandro Manzetti. Addison is a founding member of the CITH writing group.
999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense is a collection of short stories and novellas published in 1999 and edited by Al Sarrantonio. The title is a contraction of the year as well as 666 upside-down. All twenty-nine stories had never been published before. The book won the Bram Stoker Award for best original anthology and was on the final ballot for both the World Fantasy Award and the British Fantasy Award.
Centipede Press is an American independent book and periodical publisher focusing on horror, weird tales, crime narratives, science fiction, gothic novels, fantasy art, and studies of literature, music and film. Its earliest imprints were Cocytus Press and Millipede Press.
