Board of Trustees & Senior Staff

Celebrated psychological horror author L. Marie Wood is the winner of multiple awards including the Bram Stoker Award®, the Golden Stake Award for Literature, and the International Impact Book Award. She is also a MICO Award-winning screenwriter, an Elgin Award finalist poet, an accomplished essayist, and a playwright. Wood is the President of the Horror Writers Association, the founder of the Speculative Fiction Academy, an English and Creative Writing professor, as well as a horror scholar. Learn more at www.lmariewood.com.

Becky Spratford is a Readers’ Advisory Librarian in Illinois specializing in serving leisure reading patrons ages 13 and up. She trains library staff all over the world on how to match books with readers through the local public library. She runs the critically acclaimed RA training blog RA for All, and its evil twin, RA for All: Horror. She is on the Steering Committee of the Adult Reading Round Table and is under contract to provide content for EBSCO’s NoveList database, reviews for Booklist and articles and columns for Library Journal. Becky specializes in helping libraries work with horror books and readers as the author of The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Horror, Second Edition (ALA Editions, 2012). As the public library world’s most visible horror expert, Becky has been profiled in the Chicago Tribune, appeared on Wisconsin Public Radio, and recorded numerous podcasts all in an effort to make sure libraries don’t forget about horror as they develop their collections, craft displays, and work with patrons. Becky was invited as a special guest at StokerCon 2017 for her contribution to the genre, and has run the annual StokerCon Librarian’s Day of programming since 2018. You can interact with Becky on Twitter @RAforAll.

Treasurer – Michael Bailey

Michael Bailey is a recipient and ten-time nominee of the Bram Stoker Award, a five-time Shirley Jackson Award nominee, and a three-time recipient of the Benjamin Franklin Award, along with an insane number of independent publishing accolades through his press Written Backwards. He has written, edited, and published many books. His latest is Silent Nightmares, co-edited with Chuck Palahniuk, and “The Wait of Water,” a story appearing in Views from the Overlook by Vintage to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Stephen King’s The Shining. His passion is finding and lifting new literary voices from around the world, and he mentors writers regularly. He is also a screenwriter and producer for various film projects. He lives in the Southern Caribbean among sloths and monkeys and birds of all colors, crafts the world’s finest chocolates (from tree to bar), and is represented by the Tobias Literary Agency.