Poets of the Dark: Interview with Denise Dumars
Denise Dumars has published hundreds of poems in journals, magazines, and anthologies, as well as authoring several volumes of poetry. She has been nominated for the Rhysling Award for speculative poetry several times, the Dwarf Stars award for poems of under 10 lines, and her book, Paranormal Romance: Poems Romancing the Paranormal, was nominated for the Elgin award. She is currently nominated for the Pushcart Prize. A retired college English professor, Denise is a fulltime writer now, writing fiction and nonfiction as well as poetry. Denise speaks on poetry and reads poetry at various conferences and conventions, including the The Eaton Conference on Science Fiction Poetry, The World Fantasy Convention, Westercon, Loscon, The Stoker Convention, The Gaslight Expo, and many more. Every weekend in April 2023 she is performing at one poetry event or another in Southern California. She lives in Los Angeles’ beautiful South Bay region, but her heart is in New Orleans. Find her at www.DeniseDDumars.com, and Rev. Dee’s Apothecary: a New Orleans-Style Botanica, www.DyanaAset.com. Her most current chapbook, Cajuns in Space and Other Speculative and Fantasy Poems, is available from her for $5 and is eligible for the Elgin Award. Contact her at eerieaerie@hotmail.com.
Amanda Worthington is a writer of the speculative whose work is alternately dark and whimsical. When she’s not writing, she’s probably enjoying the great outdoors, reading, working a crossword, or cuddling one of her 3 floofy cats. Her newest release is No Quarter: A Novella in Verse.
Madison McSweeney is the author of The Doom That Came to Mellonville (Filthy Loot), The Forest Dreams With Teeth (Demain Publishing), and the poetry chapbook Fringewood (Alien Buddha Press). Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies like Zombie Punks F*ck Off (Weirdpunk/CLASH), America
Suzanne Reynolds-Alpert is a Technical Services Librarian who writes short fiction and poetry in the horror, scifi, and dark fantasy genres. Her short stories have appeared in the anthologies 
Austin Gragg is a queer writer, poet, and stay-at-home dad. He’s been a finalist and multi-honorable mention in the Writers of the Future Contest, and 
Timothy P. Flynn is a dark poet from Massachusetts. His previous poetry resides in Space and Time magazine, Anthocon’s book collections: Anthology Years 1-3, Wicked Tales, Wicked Creatures, Scifaikuest, haikuniverse, Haiku Journal and the HWA Poetry Showcase Vol 5 & Vol 6, and in the current HWA Poetry Showcase Vol 9. Flynn’s first chapbook, Embrace the Madness, is available via eBook on Amazon. He is a member of the New England Horror Writers, an Affiliate member of the HWA, and recipient of the 2021 HWA Dark Poetry Scholarship. Follow him on Twitter: @TimothyPFlynn or on Instagram: instagram.com/timothypflynnwriter
Steven Clapp is a horror and speculative fiction author from Southern California. His past publication credits include a poem in the Horror Writers Association poetry anthology, Poetry Showcase Vol. 9 along with several short stories published in San Diego Writers Ink’s annual anthology, A Year in Ink (Vol.12-15) as well as winning San Diego Writers Ink’s Edgar Allan Poe Short Story Contest in 2018. Prior to that, his story “Freak” was published in the Australian e-zine The Mind Creative. April, 2014)
Lori R. Lopez wears many hats as an award-winning Author and Poet. She is also an Artist, Songwriter-Musician, Actress, Filmmaker, Tree-Hugger, Activist, Vegan, and Animal-Lover. Lori roamed graveyards as a kid and conducted funerals for dead birds, squirrels, insects and spiders. Her offbeat books include 
Cassondra Windwalker has roamed the South, the Midwest, the West, and currently haunts the Frozen North in the company of a tolerant husband, a zombie cat, a ghost dog, and a miscellany of ghasts who sometimes share their stories over a cup of tea (or a dram of whisky.) Her novels and full-length poetry collections are available in bookstores and online. She enjoys interacting with creatives and reasonably decent people of all sorts on Twitter @WindwalkerWrite.
Tania Chen is a Chinese-Mexican queer writer of living nightmares. Their work was selected for Brave New Weird Anthology by Tenebrous Press, and has also appeared in Unfettered Hexes by Neon Hemlock, Apparition Lit, Strange Horizons, Pleiades Magazine, Baffling Magazine, Longleaf Review, The Dread Machine among others. They are a graduate of the Clarion West Novella Bootcamp workshop of 2021 and a recipient of the HWA’s Dark Poetry Scholarship. Currently, they are assistant editor at Uncanny Magazine and can be found on twitter@archistratego or mastodon at @archistratego@wandering.shop
Gerri Leen lives in Northern Virginia and originally hails from Seattle. In addition to being an avid reader, she’s passionate about horse racing, tea, and collecting encaustic art and raku pottery. She has stories and poems in 
John Claude Smith has had three collections and two novels published, along with tales and/or poems in Vastarien, Pluto in Furs, the HWA Poetry Showcase series, and many more magazines and anthologies. His debut novel, Riding the Centipede, was a Bram Stoker Award Finalist. He is presently shopping two novels—one weird horror, one a non-traditional spin on vampires and werewolves—and an apocalyptic, music-based horror novella. Another novel is in final revisions, while there’s a fiction collection and a poetry collection in the works, too. Busy is good. He splits his time between the East Bay across from San Francisco, and Rome, Italy, where his heart resides always.
Naomi Simone Borwein is a poet and academic. Her work appears or is forthcoming across a spectrum of publications: 
J.E. Erickson is the author of 
Janine Cross is the author of Touched by Venom, voted by Library Journal as one of the top five sci-fi/fantasy novels of 2005 and the first book in The Dragon Temple Trilogy. She’s also the author of Shadowed by Wings, Forged by Fire, and a literary novel, The Footstop Cafe. As a private pilot, she occasionally writes articles for aviation magazines. She’s in a long-term relationship with the semi-colon but flirts outrageously with the comma splice. You can find her at: janinecross.ca
Sumiko Saulson is a Bram Stoker Nominated poet for their 2022 collection 
Teel James Glenn 
