Marko Hautala is a Finnish horror writer whose novels and short stories have appeared in eight different languages. In 2020, his novelette “Pale Toes” (in Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories Vol. 1) was nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award. Hautala’s novel The Dark Architect is currently being developed into a movie by Matila & Rohr Productions: https://matilarohr.com/en/
Chinaza Eziaghighala is a medical doctor and storyteller. She is a University of Iowa International Writing Program, Voodoonauts, and EbonyLife Creative Academy alum. Her works are in/forthcoming in British Science Fiction Association’s (BSFA) Fission #2 Volume 1 anthology, Mythaxis, Planet Scumm, Metastellar, BrittlePaper, Afritondo, and BSFA’s Focus. Chimera, her debut novella, is forthcoming in 2024 from Nosetouch Press. She is diversifying her writing by working as a screenwriter for TV and film and also moonlights as a budding film development executive. In her free time, she enjoys mobile photography, meditation, dancing, and spending time with loved ones, because she is a human being, not a human doing. Connect with her here: chinazaeziaghighala.disha.page or @chinazaezims on Twitter.
Kev Harrison is a writer of dark fiction and English language teacher from the UK, living and working in Lisbon, Portugal where he resides with his partner in crime Ana and their two cat overlords. He’s previously lived in various cities in the United Kingdom, as well as Turkey and Poland. His subterranean horror novella, Below, is out now from Brigids Gate Press, while his debut novella, The Balance, is also available through Lycan Valley Press. His short fiction collection, Paths Best Left Untrodden is available through Northern Republic. His debut novel, Shadow of the Hidden, arrives in March 2024 through Brigids Gate Press. His short fiction has been published in a variety of magazines, podcasts and anthologies and he is a staff writer for This is Horror.
Marie O’Regan is a multiple award-nominated author/editor based in Derbyshire. Her fiction has appeared in many genre magazines and anthologies, and she is the author of three collections (Mirror Mere, In Times of Want, and The Last Ghost and Other Stories), a novella (Bury Them Deep), and the internationally best-selling debut novel Celeste. Her genre journalism has appeared in magazines like The Dark Side, Rue Morgue, and Fortean Times, and she co-authored an interview book with prominent figures from the horror genre, Voices in the Dark. She is co-editor of the bestselling Hellbound Hearts, Mammoth Book of Body Horror, A Carnivàle of Horror– Dark Tales from the Fairground, Exit Wounds, Wonderland, Cursed, Twice Cursed, The Other Side of Never, and Trickster’s Treats #3, and sole editor of bestselling The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women and Phantoms. Marie is also Managing Editor of PS Publishing’s novella imprint, Absinthe Books. www.marieoregan.net
Tonya Liburd is an Apex Magazine Reader’s Choice 2022 Fiction Winner, and is a 2017 and 2018 Rhysling Award nominee. Her fiction is used in Nisi Shawl’s Writing the Other course and Tananarive Due’s Black Horror course at UCLA (which has featured Jordan Peele as guest lecturer) as an example of “code switching.” She is also the recipient of a 2020 Ontario Arts Council writer’s grant, a 2021 Horror Writers Association Diversity Grant, and a 2023 Recommender’s Grant for writing.
Marty Young is a Bram Stoker nominated and multiple Australian Shadows award-winning writer and editor, and sometimes ghost hunter. His fiction and anthologies have been nominated for and won numerous awards, while his essays on horror literature have been published in journals and university textbooks across the world. Marty was also the founding president of the Australian Horror Writers Association from 2005-2010, and one of the creative minds behind the internationally acclaimed Midnight Echo Magazine, for which he also served as executive editor until mid-2013. As of 2023, Marty is the co-chair of Asylumfest, an all-new annual Australian horror con.
Eric Nash (he/him) lives with ghosts in Southwest England. His dark tales have been published in numerous venues, including Bleed Error magazine, Coffin Bell Journal, Demain’s Short Sharp Shocks! series, and by WyldbloodPress. Read more of his work at https://eric-nash-inked-up-and-earthbound.com/, or give him a follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/EANash1.
Neil D’Silva is an Indian author known for his books such as Maya’s New Husband, Yakshini, and Playthings among others, all of which have hit the #1 spot on Amazon India charts in multiple categories. His work includes co-authored works such as Haunted and The Spirits Talk to Me with noted paranormal investigators Jay Alani and Sarbajeet Mohanty respectively. He is widely published with over 12 books with publishers such as Penguin Random House, Hachette, Rupa, and HarperCollins among others. He writes predominantly in the horror genre.
J. Ashley Smith is a British-Australian author of dark fiction and co-host of the Let The Cat In podcast. His first book, The Attic Tragedy, won the Shirley Jackson Award. Other stories have won the Ditmar Australian Shadows and Aurealis awards. He lives with his wife and two sons beneath an ominous mountain in the suburbs of North Canberra, gathering moth dust, tormented by the desolation of telegraph wires. You can find him at spooktapes.net, performing amazing experiments in electronic communication with the dead. His debut collection, The Measure of Sorrow, is out now from Meerkat Press.
Santiago Eximeno (Madrid, Spain, 1973) is a Spanish-genre writer who has published several novellas and collections, mainly horror literature. His work has been translated to English, Japanese, French and Bulgarian. His last book published in English is Umbría (Independent Legions Publishing, 2020). His short story, “Noverim Te,” was included in the 2019 Full recommended list (Best Horror of the Year volume Eleven) by Ellen Datlow.
Austrian Spencer lives with his family in Austria, nestled under a mountain, and is slowly hoarding gold in an attempt to lure his own dragon. Until such a time, he acts as the headbutting post to two cats, edits books for other writers, and writes horror novels or shorts such as: “Krampus” in Burial Day’s Gothic Blue Book VI: A Krampus Carol; “9/11” in Ghost Orchid Press’s Beneath: An Anthology of Dark Microfiction; and The Sadeiest.
Flavius Ardelean-Bachmann is a Romanian award-winning writer of dark fiction, the author of nine novels and three short story collections for adults and children. His work has been translated into German, Russian and Hungarian, and he made his English-language debut in the first volume of the Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories. Flavius has a master of arts in publishing from the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies, with a dissertation on the horror book industry, and has translated fiction from English and German into Romanian, most notably the cult classic The Other Side by Alfred Kubin. He lives in Germany.
Rosemary Thorne (she/her) is a bilingual Spanish writer, researcher, and translator living in Madrid, Spain. Born in 1968, she became an HWA member in 2019, choosing English as the most welcoming language for her horror fiction. Her first novel, El Pacto de las 12 uvas, was published in December 2021. She has also translated Edward Lee’s The Bighead into Spanish for Dimensiones Ocultas Press. Her goal for the years to come is to populate the English market with her dreadful monsters.
Kyla Lee Ward is a Sydney-based creative whose work has garnered Australian Shadows and Aurealis awards. She has placed in the Rhyslings and received multiple Stoker and Ditmar nominations. Reviewers have accused her of being “gothic and esoteric,” “weird and exhilarating” and of “giving me a nightmare.” This Attraction Now Late (2022) was her first collection of short fiction, after two poetry collections and the co-written novel, Prismatic. Those That Pursue Us Yet, a dark fantasy novella set in Paris and . . . other places, is due for release in 2023. Delve deeper at http://www.kylaward.com/ or come chat at https://www.facebook.com/kyla.ward.33/
Somto Ihezue is a Nigerian-Igbo editor, writer and filmmaker. He was awarded the 2021 African Youth Network Movement Fiction Prize. A British Science Fiction Award, Nommo Award and 2022 Afritondo Prize nominee, his works have appeared in Tor: Africa Risen Anthology, Fireside Magazine, Podcastle, Escape Pod, Strange Horizons, Nightmare Magazine, POETRY Magazine, Cossmass Infinities, Flash Fiction Online, Flame Tree Press, OnSpec, Africa In Dialogue, and others. Somto is Original Fiction Manager at Escape Artists. He is an acquiring editor with Android Press and an associate editor with Cast of Wonders. He is an alumnus of the Milford SF Writers ’22, and Voodoonauts ’22, and will be attending Clarion West ’24. He is a member of SFWA, ASFS, BSFA, BFS and Codex.
