Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Koji Suzuki

Koji Suzuki is a Japanese writer, who was born in Hamamatsu and lives in Tokyo. Suzuki is the author of the Ring novels, which have been adapted into other formats, including films, manga, TV series and video games.  Did you start out writing or working in the horror field, and if so why? If not, what were you writing initially and what compelled you to move into horror? My first novel Paradise was a love story in the South Pacific during the Age of Discovery (my second novel was Ring) and my third novel was also situated in the South…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Lisa Tuttle

Lisa Tuttle, a Texan by birth, Scottish by inclination and residence, is the author of 13 novels and seven short story collections. Windhaven, written in collaboration with George R.R. Martin, was her first novel and his second and has been almost continuously in print since 1981. She’s also written non-fiction and books for children and worked as a journalist and library assistant. The Curious Affair of the Missing Mummies, the third in a series of 1890s-set, supernaturally tinged mysteries, is forthcoming from Jo Fletcher Books, as well as a new collection, Riding the Nightmare, is out from Valancourt this summer.…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro started writing stories at age six; she's still at it. Did you start out writing or working in the horror field, and if so why? If not, what were you writing initially and what compelled you to move into horror? I started out just writing stories of the kind that I like to read, and most of those were genre fiction. I began mainly with fantasy—not entirely fantasy, but for the most part fantasy—and since I’d read an awful lot of science fiction in my late youth and early teens, I decided I'd try my hand at…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Nancy Holder

Nancy Holder is the former vice president and former board member of HWA. She is New York Times bestselling author of over a hundred book-length projects and hundreds of short stories, essays, and articles. She has received 7 Bram Stoker Awards including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association and was named Faust Grand Master from the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers. She is known for writing material for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and other intellectual properties, as well as novelizing movies such as Wonder Woman and Crimson Peak. She taught in the Stonecoast MFA in Creative…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Paula Guran

Editor, anthologist, and reviewer Paula Guran has edited more than fifty science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies and more than fifty novels and collections featuring the same. She was senior editor for Prime Books for seven years. Previously, she edited the Juno fantasy imprint from its small press inception through its incarnation as an imprint of Pocket Books. Guran edits the annual Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror series (first ten volumes with Prime; now published by Pyr). In an earlier life, she produced the weekly email newsletter DarkEcho (winning two Stokers, an IHG award, and a World Fantasy Award nomination), edited Horror…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Kathryn Ptacek

Kathryn Ptacek is the editor of the landmark Women of Darkness I and Women of Darkness II, published at a time when most anthologies included few or no women writers. She knew they were out there, though. She has published numerous novels, short stories, articles, reviews, and poetry in various genres. She edits the monthly HWA Newsletter. She is also the recipient of three of HWA’s awards: The Silver Hammer Award, the Mentor of the Year Award, and the Richard Laymon President’s Award. Her books are available on Amazon and from Crossroad Press as e-books. She also sells extra copies…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Nisi Shawl

Nisi Shawl’s debut novel Everfair, an alternate history of Africa’s Congo region, was a Nebula Award finalist. They’re the author of the Otherwise Award-winning story collection Filter House. They edited both volumes of the acclaimed New Suns anthology series, winner of the World Fantasy, Locus, and Ignyte awards. With Cynthia Ward they co-wrote Writing the Other: A Practical Approach, a standard text on inclusivity for over a decade. Recent publications include the horror collections Our Fruiting Bodies and Exploring Dark Short Fiction 3: A Primer to Nisi Shawl, as well as Speculation, a middle grade fantasy novel about redeeming a…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Stephen Gallagher

Stoker and World Fantasy Award nominee, winner of British Fantasy and International Horror Guild Awards for his short fiction, Stephen Gallagher has built a career both as a novelist and as a creator of primetime miniseries and episodic television. In the US he was lead writer on NBC's Crusoe and creator of CBS Television's Eleventh Hour. His fifteen novels include Chimera, Oktober, and Valley of Lights. He's the creator of Sebastian Becker, Special Investigator to the Lord Chancellor's Visitor in Lunacy, in a series of novels that includes The Kingdom of Bones, The Bedlam Detective, and The Authentic William James.…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Terry Dowling

Terry Dowling is author of Basic Black: Tales of Appropriate Fear (International Horror Guild Award winner for Best Collection 2007), An Intimate Knowledge of the Night, Blackwater Days, Amberjack: Tales of Fear & Wonder and The Night Shop: Tales for the Lonely Hours. He has been called “Australia’s finest writer of horror” by Locus magazine, its “premier writer of dark fantasy” by All Hallows and its “most acclaimed writer of the dark fantastic” by Cemetery Dance magazine. The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series featured more horror stories by Terry in its twenty-one year run than any other writer. Terry’s…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Ramsey Campbell

The Oxford Companion to English Literature describes Ramsey Campbell as “Britain’s most respected living horror writer,” and the Washington Post sums up his work as “one of the monumental accomplishments of modern popular fiction.” He has received the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association, the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild, and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015 he was made an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University for outstanding services to literature. The two volumes of Phantasmagorical Stories offer a sixty-year retrospective of…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Yvonne Navarro

Yvonne Navarro is an award-winning author of twenty-four published novels and a lot of short stories, articles and a reference dictionary. She writes several genres but favors horror or dark fantasy. Her work has won the Bram Stoker and IATW Awards, among others. Her shorter work has appeared in hundreds of anthologies and magazines. Her franchise work includes the Predator, Aliens, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, V-Wars, and more. She lives in Tucson, Arizona and dotes on her rescued dogs, Kyah and Chewbecca, and cranky talking parakeet, BirdZilla. Find her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/yvonne.navarro.001 Did you start out writing or working…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Stefan Dziemianowicz

Stefan Dziemianowicz has edited more than fifty anthologies of horror, fantasy, and science fiction, including the Bram-Stoker Award-winning (thanks, HWA!) Horrors: 365 Scary Stories. He is the author of the story collection Bloody Mary and Other Tales for a Dark Night and co-editor of Supernatural Literature of the World: An Encyclopedia. He was a founding editor of the British Fantasy Award-winning Necrofile: The Review of Horror Fiction and his reviews and features have appeared in the Washington Post, Locus, Publishers Weekly, and other publications. His fingerprints are all over a lot of genre titles and literary classics in the marketplace…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Stuart David Schiff

Stuart got his undergraduate degree from Cornell University (1968) and his D.D.S. from The Columbia School of Dental and Oral Surgery (1972). He spent 8 years in the Army that included time as one of only four dentists in the 82nd Airborne. After he left the Army (1980), he joined a group dental practice in upstate NY and retired in 2012. He has won four World Fantasy Awards, the British Fantasy Award and had two Hugo nominations. In 2014 he was a Guest of honor at the World Fantasy Convention. Did you start out working in the horror field, and…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Lucy Taylor

Lucy Taylor is the Stoker Award–winning author of seven novels and five short story collections. Her most recent work includes stories in Body Shocks (Tachyon) Horror Library, Volume 7 (Dark Moon Books), and the Western/horror novella Desolation (Poltergeist Press). Her work has been translated into Italian, German, Czech, Russian, Spanish, and other languages. She lives in the high desert outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, and enjoys ballroom and Latin dancing, Pilates, hiking, swimming, and being a 24/7 concierge, chef, and dispenser-of-treats to her two rescue kitties. Did you start out writing or working in the horror field, and if so…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Nancy Kilpatrick

Nancy Kilpatrick is an Award-winning author and editor. She has published 23 novels, 3 novellas, over 250 short stories, 6 collections, and has edited 15 anthologies. She wrote the non-fiction book The Goth Bible: A Compendium for the Darkly Inclined. Much of her work has been translated into 9 languages. Her most recent project is the six-book novel series Thrones of Blood, the final volume #6 coming soon in print and ebook. The series has been optioned for film and TV. Website: nancykilpatrick.com Facebook: nancy.kilpatrick.31 Twitter: @nancykwriter Occasional Blog: http://nancykilpatrickwriter.blogspot.ca/ Instagram: nancykilpatrickauthor/ Amazon author Page: amazon.com/author/www.nancykilpatrick.com Newsletter subscription (free): nancykilpatrick.com…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Marge Simon

  Marge Simon lives in Ocala, Florida, with her husband, poet/writer Bruce Boston. She has won multiple Bram Stoker Awards, Rhysling Awards, the Elgin, Dwarf Stars, and Strange Horizons Readers’ Awards. She received HWA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021. Marge’s works have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, New Myths, and Daily Science Fiction. Her stories also appear in anthologies such as the 2020 Bookfest Award-winning Under Her Skin, the Colorado Book Award-winning Shadow Atlas, and Sifting the Ashes, to name a few. She attends the ICFA annually as a guest poet/writer and is…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Steve Rasnic Tem

Steve Rasnic Tem is a past winner of the Bram Stoker, World Fantasy, and British Fantasy Awards. He won the Bram Stoker Award for his novel Blood Kin and his novel Ubo was a finalist. He has published over 500 short stories in his 40+ year career. Some of his best are collected in Thanatrauma and Figures Unseen from Valancourt Books, and in The Night Doctor & Other Tales from Macabre Ink. You can visit his home on the web at www.stevetem.com. Did you start out writing or working in the horror field, and if so why? If not, what…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Reggie Oliver

Reggie Oliver is an actor, director, playwright, illustrator and award-winning author of fiction. Published work includes six plays, three novels, an illustrated children’s book, The Hauntings at Tankerton Park (Zagava 2016), nine volumes of short stories, including Mrs Midnight (2011 winner of Children of the Night Award for best work of supernatural fiction), and, the biography of the writer Stella Gibbons, Out of the Woodshed (Bloomsbury 1998). His stories have appeared in over one hundred different anthologies and three “selected” editions of his stories have been published, the latest being Stages of Fear (Black Shuck Books 2020). His ninth volume…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Stephen Volk

  Stephen Volk created BBC TV’s notorious Halloween mockumentary Ghostwatch and the award-winning ITV drama series Afterlife. His feature screenplays include The Awakening starring Rebecca Hall, William Friendkin's The Guardian, and Ken Russell’s Gothic starring Natasha Richardson as Mary Shelley. He is also the author of four collections – Dark Corners, Monsters in the Heart (which won the British Fantasy Award), The Parts We Play, and Lies of Tenderness. His other books include the acclaimed Dark Masters Trilogy, featuring Peter Cushing, Alfred Hitchcock, and Dennis Wheatley, while Under a Raven’s Wing teams Sherlock Holmes with Poe’s detective Dupin in 1870s Paris. You can visit Stephen’s website at www.stephenvolk.net or follow him on Twitter: @stevevolkwriter…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Kathe Koja

  Kathe Koja writes novels and short fiction and creates and produces live and virtual immersive stories. Her work has won awards, been multiply translated, and optioned for film.  DARK PARK is forthcoming in August 2023 and CATHERINE THE GHOST in Fall 2024. @kathekoja on IG and FB https://kathekoja.com/ Did you start out writing or working in the horror field, and if so why? If not, what were you writing initially and what compelled you to move into horror? The first stories I sold were to SF magazines and anthologies. When I wrote The Cipher, which was actually an offshoot of…