Brent Robison lives in the Catskill Mountains of New York with his wife, a maker of fabulous masks. His fiction has appeared in over a dozen literary journals and several anthologies, and has won the Literal Latte Short Short Award, the Chronogram Short Fiction Contest, a Fiction Fellowship from the New Jersey Council on the Arts, and a Pushcart Prize nomination. He is the author of a story collection, The Principle of Ultimate Indivisibility, and two novels, Ponckhockie Union and A Book with No Author, all from Recital Publishing. He blogs occasionally at Ultimate-Indivisibility.
Tom Newton is the author of Warfilm (Bloomsbury 2015), Seven Cries of Delight (Recital Publishing, 2019) and Voyages to Nowhere (Recital Publishing 2021). He has spent many years working in the film industry as a prop man, while pursuing a parallel existence as musician, sound engineer and mastering engineer. He was a participant in London's punk music scene in the late seventies. He lives on a mountain in Woodstock, New York with his wife and daughter.
Petrie Harbouri, born in London, is the author of three novels, Graffiti (Bloomsbury, London 1998), Our Lady of the Serpents (Bloomsbury, London 1999) and The Brothers Carburi (Bloomsbury, London 2001). As Caroline Harbouri, she is a translator of gardening books from French and novels from Greek. Since 1995 she has been the editor of The Mediterranean Garden, a quarterly journal on horticulture in mediterranean-climate regions. She lives in Greece.
Kevin Swanwick resides in the Hudson Valley of New York with his wife, two children, mother in-law and three dogs. His favorite dog is Dante, a Keeshond, who prefers the fall and winter seasons. Having worked in the post-modern machinery of the technology industry for over 30 years, Kevin is attempting to engage his erstwhile and neglected career as a writer of essays and fiction. He finds the world a terribly complex place and likes to write about it from the perspective of a grateful citizen of Carthage who got to watch the Romans invade but was spared because of his accidental usefulness.
His essays and some fiction can be found in Elephant Journal, LA Progressive and on his blog, in no particular order.
See Kevin's Blog»
Violet Snow has written about her ancestors for the New York Times “Disunion” blog, Civil War Times, American Ancestors, Woodstock Times, Jewish Currents, and PurpleClover.com. Her mystery novels star a New Jersey real estate agent and a raft of discontented ancestors seeking to connect with their descendants. Works in progress include Chaos and Old Night: Bringing in the Ancestors, an account of her quest to forge a relationship with her great-great-grandfather through his Civil War diary, and May and August: How I Made Friends with My Ancestors, creative nonfiction about her great-grandmother, drawing on letters, genealogical records, and a travel diary of Wales from 1892.
Violet currently lives in upstate New York and writes for Woodstock Times, Energy Times, and other periodicals. She holds a black belt in the martial art of aikido, and she is learning to speak Welsh.
Read her blog »
Wendy Drolma, nestled quietly at her work table in Woodstock, New York and surreptitiously spied on by the several dozen handcrafted leather masks that inhabit her showroom declines, if only to herself, the curious title of Maskmaker. In spite of having been creating masks for over twenty years she sees herself as more of an Alchemist. The masks are a synonym, of sorts, for something essential and puzzling that vibrates just below the surface and tends to retreat as we draw near. Paradoxically, it's this cosmic game of hide and seek that fuels her desire to mold materials into something more...well...enduring. Something that has meaning in our lives and gives us the courage to stand before other people and feel powerful in the face of our destructibility.
Regina Clarke follows her passions for reading mysteries, watching film noir, and 1950s science fiction movies, especially The Day the Earth Stood Still and the 1956 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, not forgetting the Ray Bradbury-inspired It Came From Outer Space—all brilliant. She feels deep reverence for nature and wildlife. Her short stories have appeared in NewMyths, parABnormal Magazine, Martian Wave, SciFi Shorts, Murderous Ink Press, and Water Dragon Publishers “The Future’s So Bright Anthology,” among others. She holds a Ph.D in English Literature and has published 30 novels in fantasy, mystery, and science fiction, but finds fantasy seems to draw her in the most. Her novel MARI was a finalist in the ListenUp Audiobooks competition. Visit Regina at her Author Page and read one of her blog posts on Medium.com-- “How to Shift into Another Dimension” has drawn a fair crowd. You can also visit her website and watch some short book trailer videos for four of her books HERE.
Guy Reed is a graduate of The American Academy of Dramatic Arts and author of the 2011 poetry chapbook, The Effort To Hold Light (Finishing Line Press). Most recently, he’s published poems in Poetry East and contributed 2 poems, performing one, in a featured role for the independent feature film, I Dream Too Much (2015, 77 Films, Attic Light Films). A Minnesota native, Guy currently lives in the Catskill Mountains with his wife and their two children.
Ian Caskey is currently working on a collection of short stories, tentatively titled, Fairview Beyond. His writing has appeared in BOMB magazine,The Griffin, and John Jay's Finest. His writing credentials include Residency at the Edward F. Albee Foundation June 2015 and honorable mention in the Lorraine Hemingway Short Story contest in 2013. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. For more check out his vids and cartoons on Instagram @iancaskey.
Djelloul Marbrook is the author of five books of poems and six of fiction, and four more poetry books and five of fiction are forthcoming in 2017-18 from Leaky Boot Press (UK). He grew up in Brooklyn, West Islip and Manhattan. He served in the U.S. Navy and for many years was a newspaper reporter and editor (Providence Journal, Elmira Star-Gazette, Baltimore Sun, Winston-Salem Journal, Washington Star, among others). His awards include the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize (2007), Literal Latté's first prize in fiction (2008), and the International Book Award in Poetry (2010). His poetry has been published in many journals, including American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Taos Poetry Journal, Orbis (UK), Le Zaporogue (Denmark), Oberon,The Same, Reed, Fledging Rag, Poets Against the War and Poemelon. He lives in New York's Hudson Valley with his wife Marilyn and maintains a lively presence on Facebook, Twitter and at djelloulmarbrook.com.
Erica Obey’s most recent novel, The Horseman’s Word, was published in July 2019. She is also the author of three other historical and paranormal novels, including the award-winning The Curse of the Braddock Brides. She-Empress of Mu is the second in Erica’s new Watson and Doyle series, in which Knives Out meets Silicon Valley. Erica is the incoming president of the MWA-NY chapter, and served as the Chair of the 2018 Edgars Best Novel Committee. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and pursued an academic career specializing in the women folklorists of the nineteenth century before she decided she’d rather be writing the stories herself.
Jim Murdoch is a Scottish writer whose books doggedly refuse to fit into neat genres. He likes to think of himself as a literary author but struggles to maintain the requisite level of pretentiousness. For twenty years Jim churned out tiny poems and imagined that was his lot in life until a long dry spell pushed him to try something new. When he toted up the words there was the best part of a novel. He's now written several but still can't get used to being called a novelist. In 2007, like the rest of the world, he moved online and started a blog which, much to his surprise, is still going although he keeps promising himself he'll quit any day now. 'Tomorrowscape' is from his 2013 short story collection Making Sense.
You can learn more about Jim on his website.
Fred Stelling travels the world on international business as a Marketing expert in the Healthcare industry. He may or may not also be a spy.
Fred lives in New York’s lower Hudson Valley area with his beautiful, extremely intelligent and talented wife, Nancy and their 3 exceptional children Myles, Heather and Lindsay. Levi the dog actually runs the house, keeping the rest of the family in line with his expectations, lazing around the place while his humans do all the work.
“Electricity” was Fred’s first published work of fiction. He has three short stories currently under development, including his vision of a possible smackdown match between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison to decide the AC/DC question once and for all.
Bryan Maloney worked for many years as a local government officer. As a minor cog in a large and largely dysfunctional bureaucratic machine, he discovered only latterly that the tedium and trench warfare of office politics was escapable by climbing mountains and rock routes in the British Isles, the Alps and the Greater Ranges. Having spent a decade recovering from lifelong drug and alcohol abuse he has recently rediscovered a childhood love of writing stories.
Robert B. Wyatt attempts to issue new forms of story publishing off the track of current trade publishers, though he has served the book industry over the years as editorial director of Avon Books, same title at Delacorte Books for Young Readers, editor-in-chief for Ballantine mass market books, founder and inventor of the Available Press, also at Ballantine; and publisher of the imprint, A Wyatt Book for St. Martin's Press. He has independently issued fiction, JAM & THE BOX and its companion volume, THE FLUFFYS AND THE BOX, which tells the same story from a feline point of view.
Richard Klin is the author of Something to Say: Thoughts on Art and Politics in America and Abstract Expressionism for Beginners. His work has been featured on NPR's All Things Considered and has appeared in the Atlantic, the Brooklyn Rail, the Forward, and others. His novel, Petroleum Transfer Engineer, will be published in March 2018.
Sparrow is a semi-retired substitute teacher in Phoenicia, N.Y. He has written for The Sun since 1981. Sparrow is the author of seven books, the most recent being On certain nights everyone in the USA has the same dream (Inpatient Press), a journal of his 2016 Presidential campaign. He plays flutophone in the voluptuary pop group Foamola.
Follow Sparrow on Twitter: Sparrow@Sparrow14
On certain nights everyone in the USA has the same dream »
Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) took up writing full-time in 1912 after a ‘nervous breakdown’, when he forgot his identity and wandered alone for four days. Subsequently he abandoned his successful business career in Ohio, divorced his first wife and devoted the rest of his life to writing. He is best known for his collection of short stories ‘Winesburg, Ohio’ (1919).
He published nine novels - the most successful being ‘Dark Laughter’ (1925). He also published four short story collections, two books of poetry and one play as well as numerous works of non-fiction.
He was married four times and died of peritonitis, after having swallowed a toothpick.
Thomas Hudson Reeve resides with his wonderful wife Kat in Kingston, NY, but for 40 years he has actually lived mostly on movie sets. He has been an avid photographer since he was a kid and he has always been a writer, as in the line of dialogue from “The Shining” wherein Jack Torrance is told that he has always been the caretaker of the Overlook Hotel.
Philip K. Dick (1928 – 1982) is known as one of the 20th Century’s most influential science fiction writers, frequently venturing into subject matter outside the conventions of the genre. Dick said, "In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real." A prolific writer, he produced 44 published novels and 121 short stories. In 2005, Time magazine named his book Ubik one of the hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. Movies based on his works include, among others, Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, The Adjustment Bureau, and the series The Man in the High Castle. He died after a stroke at the age of 53 and was buried next to his twin sister, Jane, who died in infancy.
Ellenora Cage is a filmmaker, poet and photographer who has turned her lens on fiction in the the last few years. Her poetry books include: Misses et Mademoiselles Three Graces Press 1988, Animus Dandelion Three Graces Press 1991, and Moment Three Graces Press 1995. She has appeared in literary journals Crossroads and Bombay Gin, and has performed in the New York City poetry scene at St. Mark’s Church, La Mama, and Nuyorican Cafe. Her films include: What Lily Knew (8mm, 13 mins,1995), Rose Varieties (8mm, 7mins, 1996), Saturn Return (16mm, 9 mins, 1997), Cinepoésie (1996) -- a combination of poetry performance and film in collaboration with artist Julie Patton.
She holds a BA from the University of Colorado in film, theater and photography and was the recipient of a McDowell fellowship. She lives nestled at the foot of Overlook mountain in Woodstock, New York.
Rob Ackerman is a playwright. His work includes Tabletop, for Working Theater, Drama Desk Award winner for Best Ensemble Performance; Origin of the Species, a play which became an indie film featuring Amanda Peet; Volleygirls, winner of three awards at the 2013 New York Musical Theater Festival, including Most Promising New Musical and Best in Fest; Teach for America, commissioned and produced by American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco; Call Me Waldo and Disconnect, both for Working Theater. His next play, Loyalty, will premiere this October at the Hudson Guild Theatre in Manhattan as part of the New York Theater Festival. Rob’s plays have been anthologized by Vintage Books, Dramatists Play Service, Smith and Kraus, and Playscripts, and nurtured at Yaddo, Flux, the Lark, and Dorset Theatre Festival. For years, he has worked as Prop Master for the SNL Film Unit. He was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, majored in theater and Spanish at Middlebury College, and earned an M.F.A. in stage directing at Northwestern University. Rob and his wife, author Carol Weston, live in Manhattan, and he is a member of Dramatists Guild of America, Inc.
Rob Ackerman's Wikipedia page »
Alan Brooks lives in Woodstock, New York. Besides the “Indigo” series, Alan has written another science fiction novel, “Till Human Voices Wake Us”, is working on the second “Indigo” book and is always busy with writing, directing and producing films and stage plays. His short film, “Catching the Sun” is due out in 2018 and a series of short plays called “Coupling” is currently being workshopped and cast.
Alan Brooks' author page on Amazon »
George Hovis is a native of North Carolina. His debut novel, The Skin Artist, was nominated for the 2019 Sir Walter Raleigh Award. His writing has appeared widely in anthologies and journals. His fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and was a 2018 prize winner in The Carolina Quarterly’s national contest. His book Vale of Humility: Plain Folk in Contemporary North Carolina Fiction was published in 2007 by the University of South Carolina Press.
George received a PhD in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives with his wife and two children in upstate New York, where he is a professor of English at SUNY Oneonta and recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Go to:The Skin Artist »
John Langan is the author of two novels, The Fisherman and House of Windows, and three collections of stories, Sefira and Other Betrayals, The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies, and Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters. The Fisherman won the Bram Stoker and This Is Horror Awards for superior achievement in a novel in 2016. He's one of the founders of the Shirley Jackson Awards, for which he served as a juror during its first three years. He lives in New York's Hudson Valley with his wife, younger son, and many, many animals. He holds a first degree black belt in the Korean martial art of Tang Soo Do.
View John Langan's blog »
Miriam Silver-Altman is a senior at Onteora High School, Boiceville, NY. In her junior year, her story, "Habeas Corpus," won a 2019 Achievement Award in Writing, given by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). Miriam received the highest recognition, a Certificate of Superior Writing. She enjoys writing short stories, novellas, and poetry, and has been published in a number of local publications, including Chronogram, The Kingston Times, and The Battering Ram literary journal.
Gary Allen (who was once an illustrator) now cooks, eats, dreams, talks, and writes about food. He has written, edited, or contributed to some 40 non-fiction books, as well as several print and online periodicals. His most recent book is Can It: The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Food (2016), and coming in early 2019 is Sauces Reconsidered: Àpres Escoffier. He's also published occasional short fiction in anthologies, and is currently editing his first venture in longer fiction—a novel tentatively named Future Tense: The Remembrance of Things Not Yet Past.
You’ll find a directory of his online writings at: A Quiet Little Table in the Corner »
Or visit his own website: On the Table »
Ambrose Bierce was born in 1842 in Ohio, the tenth of thirteen children whose names all began with ‘A’. He joined the Union army at the outbreak of the Civil War and was seriously wounded. After the war, he lived and worked in San Francisco, England, and the Dakota Territory, then returned to San Francisco and was a regular columnist for the Hearst newspapers for nearly thirty years. Although best known as a journalist during his lifetime, Bierce wrote war stories, horror stories, ghost stories, poetry and social satire. His book The Devil's Dictionary was named as one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature." At the age of 71, he went to Mexico as an observer with Pancho Villa’s army. On December 26, 1913, he wrote a letter to a friend ending: “As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination.” He was never seen again and his disappearance remains an unsolved mystery.
Richard Sutton was born in California and has lived in almost every western state. After college he spent time as an Oregon commune-living, guitar-playing goatherd, tree-planter, cannery worker, health food store manager, and graphic artist. He also worked as a ski mechanic, sign carver, and frame carpenter before hitchhiking to New York and building his career in advertising design and freelance copy writing. He eventually established a design studio on Long Island. He turned Indian Trader full-time in 1989, operating his family business in authentic Native Indian arts successfully for more than twenty years.The initial drafts of his first two novels, The Red Gate and The Gatekeepers, were written from behind the cash register, during slow spells. He met his wife on Canal Street in NY's Lower East Side in 1973. They have lived in New York and in New Mexico ever since, enjoying music, sailing, their family, and their cats. Find his books at his author page, and see his design work here.
Marlene Adelstein is a writer and freelance book editor of novels, memoirs, and screenplays. Her debut novel, Sophie Last Seen, was just published by Red Adept Publishing. Her personal essays have appeared in: Longreads.com, Manifeststation.com, Rewireme.com, and TalkingWriting.com. She has been awarded writing residencies to Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, The Wurlitzer Foundation, Robert M. MacNamara Foundation among others. Prior to her editing career, she worked for over twenty years as an executive in feature film and television development for a variety of top Hollywood producers. Marlene lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.
Marlene's website »
Marlene's novel Sophie Last Seen »
Dr. Jamie Turndorf is known to millions as Dr. Love, through her popular website "AskDrLove.com". Besides The Calling, Dr. Turndorf is the author of the number one international Hay House bestseller, Love Never Dies: How to Reconnect and Make Peace with the Deceased. The book is based on Dr. Turndorf's experiences in the years since her beloved husband of nearly 30 years died in her arms while they were vacationing together. Her other non-fiction books are Kiss Your Fights Goodbye and Make Up, Don't Break Up. Dr. Turndorf is a frequent keynote speaker and workshop leader at venues such as Agape International, NY Open Center, Rythmia, and Kripalu. She also trains and certifies coaches in her Trans-Dimensional Grief Resolution Method.
The Calling on Amazon »
Mark Morganstern is a native of Schenectady, New York. He left a budding music career behind when he realized he didn't want to play bar mitzvahs on Long Island. He parlayed a long-term literary interest into an MA in Creative Writing from the City University of New York, subsequently subbing in a high school and booking music acts in his family business, the Rosendale Cafe. When off duty, he writes, submits, files rejections, gets published. His short fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals and his one-act plays have been staged at Greenkill Arts Center, Kingston, NY. His stories are available in the collection Dancing with Dasein (Burrito Books, 2015). He is the author of the novel The Joppenbergh Jump (Recital Publishing, 2020)
Nancy O. Graham, aka Noa Graham, is a Hudson-Valley-based actor and writer. Her somniloquies—poems based on sleeptalk—can be found in InFiltration: An Anthology of Innovative Poetry from the Hudson Valley, edited by Sam Truitt and Anne Gorrick.
noagraham.com
Biff Thuringer is the stage and pen name of Stephen Hopkins. During a long and extremely checkered career, he has risen to the upper middle of a number of unrelated professions, jettisoning each one as aversion to success and a general sense of disgust crept into his conflicted heart. He has been a social worker, computer systems analyst, recording artist, musician, journalist and publisher, as well as a New York City bicycle messenger, concert promoter and pioneering pedicab driver. He was an investigative reporter, executive editor of three newspaper chains and a number of satirical publications, wrote award-winning commentary, and toured America with the Neville Brothers and Al Green. He has been a traveling cameraman for a news website, operated an urban farmers’ market and helped found a successful private school. He has semi-retired to a life of raising children, writing, making music and art, and helping people, whether they deserve it or not. Wasted is his first full-length novel.
Tania Zamorsky is the author of six children's book adaptations for Sterling Publishing's "Classic Starts" series. As a practicing attorney, Tania spent a great deal of time writing things like "allegedly" and "res ipsa loquitor" (and taking Tums). Segueing fifteen years ago into public relations and corporate communications, she now writes things like press releases, articles and website copy -- and persuades other people to write about, and publish, her clients. She recently launched her own consultancy, Zamo PR & Communications (www.zamopr.com) and is working on a novel.
Carl Frankel is a writer and entrepreneur who is based in Kingston, NY. His non-fiction body of work has focused on socially responsible business and subsequently on sex and relationships. Of his five non-fiction books, two (The Art of Social Enterprise and Secrets of the Sex Masters) have won national prizes. His novel The Unraveling will be published in Spring 2019. The first volume of a trilogy called The Erotopian Chronicles, it tells the story of the transformational adventures that befall a group of Earthlings when they visit a culture with a healthy relationship toward pleasure, sex and celebration.
R. A. Nelson is the author of four novels and a poetry collection. Her first three novels comprise the Gatekeeper trilogy, a coming-of-age tale threaded with mystery, art, and European travel adventures. Her latest novel, The Ancient, is a historical fantasy set primarily in 10th-century Ireland. It redefines our ideas of mythological creatures against the backdrop of an epic battle between the Light and the Wasting.
As a freelance editor and writing coach, R. A. Nelson enjoys helping other growing writers find their voice and tell their story. She lives in Red Hook, NY, with her husband and dog. Visit her website at www.ranelsonwriting.com or connect on Instagram/Facebook (@ranelsonwriting) if you want to learn more!
Ginnah Howard's work has appeared in Water~Stone Review, Permafrost, Portland Review, Descant 145, Eleven Eleven Journal, The Tusculum Review, and elsewhere. Several stories have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Night Navigation, Book 2 of her upstate novel trilogy, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. Chronogram called Book 3, Doing Time Outside (Standing Stone Books, 2013), “a beautiful read.” Book 1 of the trilogy, Rope & Bone: A Novel in Stories (Illume, 2014) was listed by Publishers Weekly as one of the “best of the best” Indie books of 2015. In her latest book, I’m Sick of This Already: At-Risk Learning in a High School Class, Howard focuses on a year of working with students in a small rural town. Currently she is putting together a collection of poetry and prose titled An Opera of Hankering. For more information visit: www.GinnahHoward.com
As a child Roger Wall lived throughout the United States—east coast, Midwest, the South, west coast—before touching down at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he studied fiction writing. Writing and editing assignments let him explore the worlds of education, rural development in Africa, small town news, medicine, and grassroots environmental advocacy. His first novel, During-the-Event, won the 2018 Permafrost Prize from University of Alaska Press. He lives in the Catskill Mountains of New York. See
https://www.rogerwall.net/
VN Alexander is a novelist, Smoking Hopes, 1996; Naked Singularity, 2003; and Locus Amoenus, 2015, and a philosopher of science, The Biologist’s Mistress: Rethinking Self-Organization in Art, Literature and Nature, 2011 and “Nature’s Practical Jokes” in Fine Lines: Vladimir Nabokov's Scientific Art, which was one of Nature’s Top 20 Books of 2016. She is a Rockefeller Bellagio Center alum, former Public Scholar with the NY Council for the Humanities and 2020 Fulbright Scholar in Russia. Alexander is also editor of Dactyl Review. Her website is vnalexander.com
USA Today and International Best-selling author Alison Gaylin has been nominated for the Edgar four times. Most recently, her thriller IF I DIE TONIGHT, won the award in the category Best Paperback Original. Her critically acclaimed suspense novels have been published in such countries as the U.K., France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Japan and Romania. She has won the Shamus and RT Reviewers Choice Awards for her books, and has been nominated for the ITW Thriller, Anthony and Strand Book Awards. Her books have been on the bestseller lists in the US, Germany and Belgium. NEVER LOOK BACK (William Morrow, 2019) is her 11th book. http://alisongaylin.com
A native of Florida, U.R. Bowie spent three years in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam Era. He completed a nine-month course in Russian at the Defense Language Institute, in Monterey, California, and served in Europe as a language specialist in Army intelligence.
Bowie holds a Ph.D. in Russian language and literature from Vanderbilt University. For thirty years he taught Russian language, literature, culture and folklore at Miami University in Ohio. For one academic year, 1999-2000, he taught on a Fulbright Scholar Grant at Great Novgorod University, in Russia.
Since retirement Bowie has published extensively in fiction. Over a period of five years, 2014-2019, he published ten books of creative literary fiction. He lives in Gainesville, Florida.
U.R. Bowie’s website »
U.R. Bowie’s latest book: Sama Seeker in the Time of the End Times: A Spy Novel »
Michael Cook—writing as C. Michael Cook since the early 2000s—has always lived at the intersection of popular culture, mid-century nostalgia, digital technology and what's now called "elevated horror." The C stands for coffee, cocktails and Charles, but is mostly there because so many other Michael Cooks exist. His stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, received honorable mentions in Best Horror of the Year, and have appeared in FlashFictionMagazine.com, Unspeakable Horror and three volumes of The Horror Library. He writes, bicycles and collects typewriters in Chicago, and welcomes your visit at CMichaelCook.com and blogspot.cmichaelcook.com, where he posts the occasional review and turns his dreams into haunting microfiction.
James Goddard was born on the south coast of England at a time when there was hope in the world and no one had heard of Donald J. Trump. After a perfunctory education during which his interest in reading and writing were aroused he did a variety of unfulfilling jobs in trainee chain store management, optical retail and manufacturing, sales management and copywriting, all unfulfilling apart from the copywriting. With a group of friends he founded Kerosina Books, from which his expertise as an editor grew. In the 2010s he established Leaky Boot Press to publish books disliked by mainstream publishers. He has published fiction, poetry and non-fiction in a variety of print and online publications, and two books Dolls and Duets, a collection of collaborative poems written with the Indian poet Tikuli.
Go to Leaky Boot Press »
Sigrid Heath was born in St. Lucia, BWI, to a military family and has never stopped traveling. Among a host of other occupations, she’s been a singer, an actor, a journalist, and a playwright. Her monodrama, Wingbone: Twelve Scenes from the Life of Beryl Markham, produced by Ron Nyswaner, won the Berrilla Kerr award. She now lives on Paros, Greece, and teaches classic Greek literature to American college students. Far Cry is her first novel.
Go to Far Cry »
Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804 - 1864, was an American novelist, and short story writer. Much of his writing centers on New England, many works featuring moral metaphors with an anti-Puritan inspiration. His fiction works are considered part of the Romantic movement and, more specifically, dark romanticism. His themes often center on the inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his works often have moral messages and deep psychological complexity. He is most known for his novel The Scarlet Letter published in 1850.
Alexis Panselinos read Law at the University of Athens and worked as a practicing lawyer. His first book, a collection of stories, appeared in 1982 to great acclaim. In 1985 his novel The Great Procession won the State Prize. His novel Zaida or A Camel in the Snow was nominated for the 1997 European Literary Award. The Dark Inscriptions received the Novel Prize from the Diavazo literary magazine in 2012. His latest novel Light Greek Songs won the 2018 Prize of the Athens Academy. His novels have been widely translated in French, German, Italian, Polish and Romanian. He has received the Great Award for Life Achievement from the eminent literary magazine O Anagnostis (The Reader). He lives in Athens, Greece.
Go to The Lame Angel, the first of Alexis Panselinos' novels to be translated into English »
Salley Vickers is a British novelist and Literary Critic whose many works include Miss Garnet's Angel, The Other Side of You and Where Three Roads Meet, a retelling of the Oedipus myth to Sigmund Freud in the last months of his life. The Librarian published in 2018 includes biographical information in Author's Notes. Her latest novel published in 2019 is Grandmothers.
Chaunce Stanton lives on a crossroads at the border—literally. He and his wife, Naomi, moved from their life in the city to a five-acre hobby farm in southern Minnesota. There they tend to a small flock of egg-laying chickens and a burgeoning garden, and they putz around with permaculture. Chaunce majored in English and Creative Writing. In spite of that, he managed to complete three novels (each purporting to be literary) and oodles of short stories (most of them purporting to be satire). He is working on a series of novels (The Norwegian Pontoon Mafia) that follows the lives and loves of a chain of lakes in north-central Minnesota. He hosts the Boxflap Podcast, which is not as classy as The Strange Recital. He routinely walks to Iowa. You can view his written work at chaunce.biz.
David Markson (December 20, 1927 – c. June 4, 2010) was an American novelist. He was the author of several postmodern novels, including Springer's Progress, Wittgenstein's Mistress, Reader's Block, and This Is Not a Novel. His final book, The Last Novel, published in 2007, was called "a real tour de force" by The New York Times. Markson's work is characterized by an unconventional and experimental approach to narrative, character development and plot. In addition to his output of modernist and postmodernist experimental literature, he published a book of poetry, a critical study of Malcolm Lowry, three crime novels, and an anti-Western, The Ballad of Dingus Magee.
Lynne Tillman is the author of six novels—most recently, Men and Apparitions—five collections of short stories—most recently, The Complete Madame Realism and Other Stories—two collections of essays, and two other nonfiction books. Her story The Dead Live Longer was recently published in N+1magazine. She wrote the introductions to painter Amy Sillman's essays on art, Faux Pas and Marc Ribot's first story collection Unstrung. She lives in Manhattan with bass player David Hofstra.
Susan Hynds has been in love with literature ever since she binged a copy of Charlotte’s Web at the age of eight, reading, re-reading, re-re-reading, and filling her parents’ house with racking sobs every time Charlotte died anew. A professor emerita and former director of English Education at Syracuse University, her writing credits include an international literature textbook series for high school and middle school students and seven nonfiction books, one of which was awarded the Richard A. Meade award from the National Council of Teachers of English (On the Brink, Negotiating Literature and Life With Adolescents, Teachers College Press). Her fiction and memoir have been featured in The Strange Recital, Whiskey Blot, and Listen to Your Mother. A relative newcomer to the world of fiction, she has finished her first novel (Dreams of Waking Up) and is currently halfway through a second
Kos Kostmayer is a novelist, poet and award-winning playwright. His novel The Politics Of Nowhere will be published in January, 2022 and will be his second novel to come out from Dr. Cicero Books, which published his debut novel Fargo Burns in 2020. Kirkus Reviews called Fargo Burns “harrowing as well as joyful” and Jim Crace, author of Being Dead, said of the book: “Kostmayer’s visceral account of one man’s quest for quiet normality is dark, tense, playful and deeply affecting.” Dr. Cicero Books plans to bring out two additional novels by Kos in 2022 and 2023. His plays have been seen in New York City, Los Angeles, Toronto, Harare, Berlin and a number of colleges and universities. He is the recipient of the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, numerous Drama-Logue Awards, and the Otis L. Guernsey Prize from the Association of American Theater Critics. His poems and essays are forthcoming or have already appeared in Poetry Northwest, Jadaliyya, International Literary Quarterly, Chelsea, Commonweal, Monkey Bicycle, The Texas Observer and elsewhere. His work has been translated into Arabic, German and Swedish. Fargo Burns is now available in Arabic from the publishing house Hotout Wasilayl in a new translation by the distinguished Syrian translator and poet Osama Esber, who has also translated work by Toni Morrison, Michael Ondaatje, Naom Chomsky, Raymond Carver, Nadine Gordimer, Alan Lightman, Terry Eagleton and Betrand Russel, among others. Kos recently completed two volumes of poetry, The Year The Future Disappeared and The Marriage Bed, and is currently working on a novel – his sixth. He made his living for many years as a screenwriter in Hollywood, where he wrote numerous scripts for TV and film, including I Love You To Death, a Lawrence Kasdan film featuring Kevin Kline, Tracey Ullman, Joan Plowright, River Phoenix, William Hurt and Keannu Reeves. He is married to the artist Martha Ferris, and he and his wife live and work in the Hudson River Valley.
Vic Peterson was educated at Kenyon College, the University of Texas (Dallas), and the University of Chicago. He worked as a business executive and lives in Lawrence, Kansas. His poetry, essays, and book reviews have appeared in Sparrow, Contemporary Poetry Review, The Dactyl Review, Foreword, Arts Indiana, and elsewhere. The Berserkers is his first novel (Hawkwood 2022).
For more information » https://www.vicpeterson.com/
Caroline Ailanthus is a novelist, blogger, and free-lance writer and editor. Most of her work revolves around science somehow, even her fiction. Or, perhaps, especially her fiction. She is the author of two novels, To Give a Rose and Ecological Memory, as well as various blogs, short stories and essays.
Caroline grew up in Delaware and attended various small, odd schools, mostly in New England. She has a BA in Environmental Leadership and an MS in Conservation Biology. She now lives in Maryland with her husband and assorted dogs and cats. When she’s not writing, she can usually be found either walking her beagles or making a complete mess of the kitchen.
Go to Caroline's website and blog »
Kurt Vonnegut, November 11, 1922–April 11, 2007) was an American writer and humorist known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. In a career spanning over fifty years, he published fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works; further collections have been published after his death. He gained widespread acclaim with Slaughterhouse-Five in 1969 and has been hailed as one of America’s most important contemporary writers.
Eugene Mirabelli was born in 1931 in Arlington, Massachusetts, and began writing and publishing while in college. Six of his nine novels (including those forming Renato!) create a mosaic about an Italian American family that stretches from nineteenth-century Sicily to modern day Boston. He has received numerous awards, including a Rockefeller grant, and his many short stories, journalistic pieces, reviews and essays appear widely in magazines and anthologies, and are translated into Czech, French, Hebrew, Polish, Russian, and Sicilian. Occasionally he writes brief pieces on the arts, sciences, politics, and economics at CriticalPages.com. More about his books can be found at genemirabelli.com.
Paul Smart worked as a writer and editor for over a dozen Hudson Valley and Catskill Mountains regional publications in a career that spanned a third of a century. He has published three books, including Rock & Woodstock and With Different Eyes: A Covid Waltz in Words and Images. He currently lives in Guanajuato, Mexico with his wife Fawn and son Milo, where he is working on a number of film and library projects.
Wilkie Collins, 1824-1889, was an English novelist and dramatist. He was the son of the painter and Royal Academician, William Collins and his wife Harriet Geddes. Collins is best known for his books: The Woman in White, Armadale, No Name and The Moonstone. Today these books are considered to be forerunners of the detective fiction genre but at the time were known as ‘sensationalist’ novels. He was a close friend of Charles Dickens and they collaborated on dramatic works. He began to suffer from gout in the 1850s and became addicted to the opium he took to treat it. He died in 1889, at the age of sixty-five.
Stona Fitch is an American novelist whose eight novels (Senseless, Give + Take, Printer’s Devil, Third Rail) have been published in thirteen languages and adapted for film. The New York Times called his latest novel, Death Watch, “A cerebral inquiry into the sheer nihilistic idiocy of the modern condition” — and selected it as a top thriller of 2023. Fitch lives with his family in Concord, Massachusetts.
Fitch is the founder of the renegade Concord Free Press, the world’s first generosity-based publisher. The press distributes its books for free and encourages readers to make voluntary donations to charitable causes, or to help someone in need. To date, the Concord Free Press has inspired more than $6 million in generosity worldwide, and countless acts of kindness.
https://airoutslowly.blogspot.
Gerda Rhoads was born in Vienna and came to the United States with her parents by way of London and Rio. She was educated at Hunter College, became a ballet dancer and took up painting. Then she married a painter and they went to Paris and she turned to writing. She is the author of the novels The Lonely Women, A Place to Sleep, and Enough Romance. My Past is Mine is her first published story.
Bernard Cohen is an Australian writer, the author of five novels, a book of short stories and a children's picture book.
Cohen's first novel, Tourism, was published in 1992. The Blindman's Hat won the Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 1996. Cohen's fifth novel, The Antibiography of Robert F Menzies, won the inaugural Russell Prize for Humour Writing. Cohen's short stories have been widely anthologised, including in the Penguin Century of Australian Stories, Best Australian Stories 2002 and 2009 and Picador New Writing. His first collection of short stories, When I Saw the Animal (UQP), was published in 2018. From 1990 to 1991 he was co-editor of the literary journal Editions Review.
In 2006 Cohen founded The Writing Workshop, which runs creative writing programs for children in New South Wales, and online.