The Best Horror of the Year – Volume One

About the Authors

Mike Allen lives in Roanoke, Va. with his wife Anita, a demonic cat, and a comical dog. By day he covers arts and theater for the city's daily newspaper; in his spare time the hats he wears include editor of the poetry journal Mythic Delirium and the anthology series Clockwork Phoenix. He's a semi-regular performer in the local improv venue and a three-time winner of the Rhysling Award for poetry. The Philadelphia Inquirer called his work "poetry for goths of all ages." His latest fiction includes horror tales in Tales of the Talisman and Cabinet des Fées, as well as Follow the Wounded One, a dark fantasy chapbook from the publishers of Not One of Us magazine. His short horror story "The Button Bin" was a finalist for the 2008 Nebula Awards.

Laird Barron's work has appeared in places such as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, SCI FICTION, Inferno: New Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, Poe, and The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy. It has also been reprinted in numerous year's best anthologies. His debut collection, The Imago Sequence & Other Stories, was recently published by Night Shade Books. Mr. Barron is an expatriate Alaskan currently at large in Washington State.

Simon Bestwick lives in Lancashire. Since 1997, he has had in excess of one hundred pieces of fiction published in Britain, the US, and Canada, including appearances in the award-winning anthologies Inferno and Acquainted with the Night. His first story collection, A Hazy Shade of Winter, was published in 2004 and the title story was reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror #18. His second collection, Pictures of the Dark, and his first novel, Tide Of Souls, were published in 2009.

Richard Bowes has written five novels, the most recent of which is the Nebula Award-nominated From the Files of the Time Rangers. His most recent short fiction collection is Streetcar Dreams and Other Midnight Fancies from PS Publishing. He has won the World Fantasy, Lambda, International Horror Guild, and Million Writers awards.

Recent and forthcoming stories appear in

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Electric Velocipede, Clarkesworld, and Fantasy magazines and in the Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Year's Best Gay Stories 2008, Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, The Beastly Bride, Haunted Legends, Fantasy Best of the Year 2009, Year's Best Fantasy, and Naked City anthologies. Several of these stories are chapters in his novel in progress, Dust Devil on a Quiet Street.

Steve Duffy's short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies in Europe and North America. His forthcoming collection, The Moment of Panic, will be his third, and includes the International Horror Guild Award-winning tale "The Rag-and-Bone Men." He lives in North Wales.

Graham Edwards, after spending rather too much of his life messing about with graphic design, animation, and pretty pictures, decided to write instead. The rest, as they say, is alternative history. His fantasy novels include Dragoncharm and its sequels, and Stone & Sky, which kicks off a time-travel adventure trilogy.

His short fiction has been published in

Realms of Fantasy and Jim Baen's Universe. He exists as part of the usual set of physical dimensions in an English city called Nottingham.

Adam Golaski is the author of the fiction collections Worse Than Myself and Color Plates. He edits the journal New Genre and is cofounder of Flim Forum Press. The publication of "Green," his translation of Sir Gawain & the Green Knight, is ongoing in the critical journal Open Letters. Golaski's work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including: McSweeney's, Supernatural Tales, Conjunctions, Haunted Histories, Exotic Gothic II, Torpedo, and The Lifted Brow.

Euan Harvey teaches writing and linguistics at Mahidol University International College in Thailand. He lives in the suburbs of Bangkok with his long-suffering wife and three children, where he leads a life of sun-drenched tropical indolence. (At least, that's what he planned when he moved to Thailand; so far, things haven't quite worked out that way.) His fiction has been published in Semaphore, Byzarium, Black Gate, and several times in Realms of Fantasy.

Trent Hergenrader is a Ph.D. student in Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His short stories have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, Black Static, and the anthology Federations, among other places. Hergenrader is also a graduate of the 2004 Clarion Writers Workshop. He lives in Madison, WI.

Glen Hirshberg's first two collections, American Morons and The Two Sams each won the International Horror Guild Award and were selected by Locus as one of the best books of the year. He is also the author of a novel, The Snowman's Children, and a five-time World Fantasy Award finalist. With Dennis Etchison and Peter Atkins, he cofounded the Rolling Darkness Revue, a traveling ghost story performance troupe that tours the West Coast of the United States each October. His fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including multiple appearances in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Inferno, The Dark, Dark Terrors 6, Trampoline, and Cemetery Dance. He lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife and children.

Daniel Kaysen's short dark fiction has appeared online at ChiZine and Strange Horizons, and in print in Interzone and Crimewave, among other venues. "The Rising River " was his first publication in Black Static. He has since appeared there several more times. He lives in England, near London.

Margo Lanagan lives in Sydney, Australia, and works as a contract technical writer. She has published three collections of speculative short stories: White Time, Black Juice, and Red Spikes, and a novel, Tender Morsels. Her stories have won two World Fantasy Awards, two Ditmar Awards, four Aurealis Awards, and two Michael L. Printz Honors, and have been shortlisted for many other awards, including a Nebula, a Hugo and the James Tiptree Jr. Award. Lanagan taught at Clarion South in 2005, 2007, and 2009. She has also published poetry, and fiction for junior readers and teenagers.

Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.

Joe R. Lansdale has been a freelance writer since 1973, and a full time writer since 1981. He is the author of thirty novels and eighteen short story collections and has received the Edgar Award, seven Bram Stoker Awards, the British Fantasy Award, and Italy 's Grinzani Prize for Literature, among others. As obvious from his awards, he writes in several different genres and is proficient in them all.

The novella "Bubba Ho-Tep" was filmed by Don Coscarelli and is now considered a cult classic, and his story "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" was filmed for Showtime's

Masters of Horror.

He has written for film, television, comics, and is the author of numerous essays and columns. His most recent work is the collection

Sanctified and Chicken Fried, The Portable Lansdale, and Vanilla Ride, his latest in the Hap Collins, Leonard Pine mystery series.

Daniel LeMoal is a writer and communications assistant based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. His fiction has appeared in the pages of genre publications such as On Spec and Apex Science Fiction & Horror Digest, while his journalism has run in local dailies including the Winnipeg Free Press, the Winnipeg Sun and the Portage la Prairie Daily Graphic. He also once worked on the kill floor of a slaughterhouse. To this day, people still ask him what wieners are really made out of. They never like the answer.

E. Michael Lewis studied creative writing at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wa. He is a lifelong native of the Pacific Northwest, where he raised two sons who routinely make him proud. His work can be found in All Hallows, Shadowed Realms, and The Harrow.

Margaret Ronald's fiction has appeared in such venues as Fantasy Magazine, Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, Baen's Universe, and Clarkesworld magazine. Her debut novel, Spiral Hunt, was published in early 2009. She is an alum of the Viable Paradise workshop and a member of BRAWL. Originally from rural Indiana, she now lives outside Boston.

Nicholas Royle, born in Manchester in 1963, is the author of five novels -including Counterparts, The Director's Cut, and Antwerp-and two novellas-The Appetite and The Enigma of Departure. He has published around 120 short stories, twenty of which are collected in Mortality. Widely published as a journalist, with regular appearances in Time Out and the Independent, he has also edited thirteen original anthologies, including two Darklands volumes and The Tiger Garden: A Book of Writers' Dreams. The winner of three British Fantasy Awards, he teaches creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.

R. B. Russell's first collection of strange fiction, Putting the Pieces in Place, was published in January 2009, and his second collection, Literary Remains, will be published in late 2009. He runs Tartarus Press with his wife, Rosalie Parker, and also writes music and poetry and occasionally draws illustrations for dust jackets.

Miranda Siemienowicz lives in Melbourne, Australia. Her work has appeared in literary and speculative magazines including Overland, Island, and Aurealis, and been reprinted in Australian Dark Fantasy and Horror Volume 3 (Brimstone Press).

William Browning Spencer is the author of four novels and two collections of short stories. Spencer's satirical horror novel Résumé with Monsters describes a corporate America in which Lovecraftian monsters haunt the workplace. The novel won the International Horror Award for best novel. Various creatures from Lovecraft also inhabit his novel Irrational Fears, in which alcoholics are discovered to be the progeny of an ancient underground tribe who worship Tsathoggua.

His short stories have been included in

The Year's Best Science Fiction and The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and have been finalists for the Bram Stoker, World Fantasy, and Shirley Jackson awards. He currently lives in Austin, Texas, and is completing his novel My Sister Natalie: Snake Goddess of the Amazon, which will be published by Subterranean Press.

JoSelle Vanderhooft is the critically acclaimed author of poetry collections The Minotaur's Last Letter to His Mother, the 2007 Stoker Award-nominated Ossuary, Desert Songs, The Handless Maiden and Other Tales Twice-Told, Fathers, Daughters, Ghosts & Monsters, The Memory Palace, and Death Masks; the novels The Tale of the Miller's Daughter, and Owl Skin; and Ugly Things, a collection of short stories. She is currently at work on a series of novels.

Her poetry and fiction has been published online and in print in a number of publications, including

Cabinet des Fees, Star*Line, Mythic Delirium, MYTHIC, Jabberwocky, Helix, The Seventh Quarry.

An assistant editor of a gay and lesbian newspaper by day, she lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.