by Aimee Bender
Champion Mojo Storyteller JOE R. LANSDALE is the author of over thirty novels and numerous short stories. His work has appeared in national anthologies, magazines, and collections, as well as numerous foreign publications. His work has been collected in eighteen short-story collections, and he has edited or co-edited over a dozen anthologies. He has received the Edgar Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Grinzani Cavour Prize for Literature, the Herodotus Historical Fiction Award, the Inkpot Award for Contributions to Science Fiction and Fantasy, and many others. His novella Bubba Hotep was adapted to film by Don Coscarelli, starring Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis. His story “Incident On and Off a Mountain Road” was adapted to film for Showtime’s “Masters of Horror.” He is currently co-producing several films, among them The Bottoms, based on his Edgar Award-winning novel, with Bill Paxton and Brad Wyman, and The Drive-In, with Greg Nicotero. He is Writer In Residence at Stephen F. Austin State University, and is the founder of the martial arts system Shen Chuan: Martial Science and its affiliate, Shen Chuan Family System. He is a member of both the United States and International Martial Arts Halls of Fame. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas with his wife, dog, and two cats.
BENTLEY LITTLE was born in Arizona a month after his mother attended the world premiere of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. He is the author of eleven novels, including The Haunted, The Revelation, The Mailman, The Summoning, Death Instinct (published under the name Phillip Emmons), University, Dominion, The Ignored, The Store, The House and The Town. An acknowledged master of horror, he is currently at work on his next novel.
BEN LOORY lives in Los Angeles, in a house on top of a hill. He was born in Dover, New Jersey, and is a graduate of Harvard College. His short stories have appeared everywhere from The New Yorker to ESPN Magazine. In 2012, his story “The Duck” was featured on the Valentine’s Day episode of NPR’s This American Life (“What I Did For Love”).
His book Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day (Penguin, 2011) is now in its fourth printing. It was chosen as a selection of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program and the Starbucks Coffee Bookish Reading Club, and was named one of the 10 Best Fiction Books of the Year by the Hudson Booksellers retail chain.
As a screenwriter, Ben Loory has worked for Jodie Foster, Alex Proyas (director of Dark City and The Crow), and Mark Johnson (Academy Award-winning producer of Rain Man). He is a member of the Writers Guild of America west, and holds an MFA from the American Film Institute.
CARLTON MELLICK III is one of the leading authors of the bizarro genre. Since 2001, his books have drawn an international cult following, despite the fact that they have been shunned by most libraries and chain bookstores.
His short fiction has appeared in Vice Magazine, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror #16, The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction, and Demons: Encounters with the Hungry Dead, among others. He is also a graduate of Clarion West, where he studied under the likes of Chuck Palhaniuk, Connie Willis, and Cory Doctorow.
He lives in Portland, OR, the bizarro fiction mecca.
ALISSA NUTTING is author of the short story collection Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls. The book was selected by judge Ben Marcus as winner of the 6th Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction. She received her PhD from the University of Las Vegas, Nevada in 2011.
TOM PICCIRILLI is the author of more than twenty novels including The Last Kind Words, Shadow Season, The Cold Spot, The Coldest Mile, and A Choir of Ill Children. He’s won two International Thriller Awards and four Bram Stoker Awards, as well as having been nominated for the Edgar, the World Fantasy Award, the Macavity, and Le Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire.
ANDERSEN PRUNTY is the author of Fuckness, The Driver’s Guide to Hitting Pedestrians, and other books. He lives in Ohio.
Former bartender, prize-winning photographer, and Surrealist Party City Councillor in his home town of Genoa, Italy, ROBERTO QUAGLIA won the British Science Fiction Award in 2010 for a story in The Beloved of My Beloved (NewCon Press, UK) co-written with Ian Watson, perhaps the only full-length genre fiction book by two authors with different mother tongues. Of his masterful parody, Jonathan Livingshit Pigeon: A Tail of Transcendence he declared: “Once in your life you have to write a shitty book.”
2011 saw publication in English of his mammoth (628 page) and disturbing analysis, The Myth of September 11: The Satanic Verses of Western Democracy. Roberto divides his time mainly between Italy and Bucharest in Romania since it came to pass that he started speaking fluent Romanian in addition to German (and Italian, and English).
MATTHEW REVERT is the author of The Tumours Made Me Interesting, How to Avoid Sex, and A Million Versions of Right. He lives in Australia.
KRIS SAKNUSSEMM is the internationally acclaimed author of the novels Zanesville, Private Midnight, Enigmatic Pilot, Reverend America and Eat Jellied Eels and Think Distant Thoughts. Lazy Fascist Press brought out a collection of his early stories called Sinister Miniatures (from which this story is taken) and is publishing his first play in 20 years entitled The Humble Assessment. His latest work is a “Memory Book” called Sea Monkeys, published by Soft Skull Press.
VINCENT SAKOWSKI is the author of Some Things Are Better Left Unplugged, Misadventures in a Thumbnail Universe, and Not Quite One of the Boys. He lives in Saskatoon, SK, Canada.
JEREMY C. SHIPP is the author of several books, including Cursed, Vacation, and Sheep and Wolves. His stories have appeared in Cemetery Dance, ChiZine, Apex Magazine, and many other publications. He lives in southern California.
ATHENA VILLAVERDE is a bizarro fiction writer from Toronto. She is the author of two books: Clockwork Girl and Starfish Girl. Her fiction has appeared in The Bizarro Starter Kit (Purple) and the Bram Stoker Award-winning anthology, Demons: Encounters with the Devil and His Minions, Fallen Angels, and the Possessed (edited by John Skipp).
Extremely former lecturer in literature in Dar es Salaam and in Tokyo, IAN WATSON wrote the Screen Story for Steven Spielberg´s A.I. Artificial Intelligence after a year´s work eyeball to eyeball with Stanley Kubrick. Numerous SF novels and a dozen story collections (most recently Saving for a Sunny Day from NewCon Press, UK) followed his prize-winning debut in 1973 with The Embedding, including 4 books set in the lurid, psychotic universe of Warhammer 40,000, which seem to be his best-selling titles. After 30 years in a tiny rural English village, he now lives in Gijón in the north of Spain.
D. HARLAN WILSON is an award-winning novelist, editor, literary critic and English prof.
ABOUT THE COVER ARTISTS
Alan M. Clark grew up in Tennessee in a house full of bones and old medical books. He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute. His illustrations have appeared in books of fiction, non-fiction, textbooks, young adult fiction and children’s books. Awards for his illustration work include the World Fantasy Award and four Chesley Awards. Two of his novels, Of Thimble and Threat: The Life of a Ripper Victim and A Parliament of Crows, have been published by Lazy Fascist Press. He and his wife, Melody, live in Oregon.
Kevin Ward is a native of Nashville, Tennessee. He has been drawing and illustrating his whole life. He has worked with Doubleday Publishing Group, Grolier Science Encyclopedia, Funk and Wagnalls, TSR, Inc., and NASA, among others. His work has been featured on the covers of authors such as Anne McCaffrey, Piers Anthony and Norman Spinrad.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Cameron Pierce is the author of eight books, including Die You Doughnut Bastards, Ass Goblins of Auschwitz, and the Wonderland Book Award-winning collection Lost in Cat Brain Land. He has edited two anthologies, In Heaven, Everything Is Fine: Fiction Inspired by David Lynch and Amazing Stories of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Cameron also serves as the head editor of Lazy Fascist Press, publishing books by such authors as Stephen Graham Jones, Alan M. Clark, Molly Tanzer, Sam Pink, Ross E. Lockhart, Blake Butler, Patrick Wensink, David Ohle, and Scott McClanahan.
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He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, author Kirsten Alene.
