Specializing in dark fantasy and horror, Angela Slatter is the author of the Aurealis Award-winning The Girl with No Hands and Other Tales, the World Fantasy Award finalist Sourdough and Other Stories, Aurealis finalist Midnight and Moonshine (with Lisa L. Hannett), as well as Black-Winged Angels, The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings, and The Female Factory (again with Lisa L. Hannett). Her short stories have appeared in Fantasy, Nightmare, Lightspeed, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Fearie Tales, A Book of Horrors, and Australian, UK, and U.S. “best of” anthologies. She is the first Australian to win a British Fantasy Award, holds an MA and a PhD in Creative Writing, is a graduate of Clarion South and the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop, and was an inaugural Queensland Writers Fellow. She blogs at angelaslatter.com about shiny things that catch her eye.
Anna Taborska studied Experimental Psychology at Oxford University and went on to gainful employment in public relations, journalism, and advertising before throwing everything over to become a filmmaker, screenwriter, and horror author. You can watch clips from Anna’s films and view her full resume at imdb.com/name/nm1245940. Her short stories have appeared in such anthologies as the eighth and ninth volumes of The Black Book of Horror and Exotic Gothic (Postscripts #28/29) and been reprinted in Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume One and The Best Horror of the Year: Volume 4. A collection of her short fiction, For Those Who Dream Monsters, was published in 2013 by Mortbury Press.
Catherynne M. Valente is the New York Times bestselling author of over a dozen works of fiction and poetry, including Palimpsest, the Orphan’s Tales series, Deathless, and the crowdfunded phenomenon The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. Her latest novel is The Boy Who Lost Fairyland. She is the winner of the Andre Norton, Tiptree, Mythopoeic, Rhysling, Lambda, Locus, and Hugo awards. She has been a finalist for the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. A cantankerous “mermaid”appears in Valente’s The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden as do blue, three-breasted, sailor-devouring aquatic lamia. There is a story of a mermaid lured by a lonely man in The Orphan’s Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice.
Genevieve Valentine’s first novel, Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, won the 2012 Crawford Award and was nominated for the Nebula. Her second novel, The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, a 1920s retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, was published by Atria last year. Persona, a near-future political thriller, was published by Saga Press in March 2015. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Journal of Mythic Arts, Lightspeed, and other periodicals, as well as anthologies Federations, The Living Dead 2, After, Teeth, and more. Her story “Light on the Water” was a 2009 World Fantasy Award nominee, and “Things to Know About Being Dead” was nominated for a 2012 Shirley Jackson Award. She is a coauthor of pop-culture book Geek Wisdom (Quirk Books). Valentine is also currently the writer of DC’s Catwoman.
A. C. Wise was born and raised in Montreal, and currently lives in the Philadelphia area. She is the author of numerous short stories, available in print and online. In addition to her fiction writing, she co-edits Unlikely Story, and writes a monthly “Women to Read: Where to Start” column at SF Signal. Her first short story collection will be published by Lethe Press in 2015.
Gene Wolfe was honored with the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1996. He was inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2007. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named him its twenty-ninth Grand Master in December 2012, and he received the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award in 2013. Wolfe has also won three World Fantasy Awards, two Nebulas, six Locus awards, a British Science Fiction Association Award, the August Derleth Award, and the John W. Campbell Award for individual works. The author of The Fifth Head of Cerberus, the bestselling The Book of the New Sun tetralogy, as well as—among numerous others—Soldier of the Mist, The Knight, The Wizard, and The Book of the Long Sun. He is also a prolific writer of distinguished short fiction, which has been collected in many volumes over the last four decades, most recently in The Best of Gene Wolfe. His latest novel, A Borrowed Man, will be published this fall.
Jane Yolen, author of over two hundred short stories, and over 350 books, is often called the Hans Christian Andersen of America—though she wonders (not entirely idly) whether she should really be called the “Hans Jewish Andersen of America.” She’s written a lot of poetry as well. By 1982, Yolen had written enough stories and poems about merfolk to fill a collection, Neptune Rising: Songs and Tales of the Undersea People, and she kept on writing them. She has been named both Grand Master of the World Fantasy Convention and Grand Master of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. She has won two Nebulas for her short stories, and a bunch of other awards, including six honorary doctorates. One of her awards, the Skylark, given by the New England Science Fiction Association, set her good coat on fire, a warning about faunching after shiny things that she has not forgotten.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Mark Teppo for his cooperation on “Letters to a Body on the Cusp of Drowning” by A. C. Wise.
“The Drowned Mermaid” © 2006 Christopher Barzak. First publication: Realms of Fantasy, June 2003.
“Salt Wine” by Peter S. Beagle © 2006 The Avicenna Development Corporation. First publication: Fantasy #3, June 2006.
“Swell”© 2009 Elizabeth Bear. First publication: Eclipse 3, ed. Jonathan Strahan. (Night Shade Books, 2009).
“Driftglass” © 1967 Samuel R. Delany. First publication: If, June 1967.
“Flotsam” © 2006 Amanda Downum. First publication: Strange Horizons, 14 August 2006.
“The Sea Change” © 1998 Neil Gaiman. First publication: Smoke & Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions (Avon Books, 1998).
“The Mermaid Game” © 2014 Chris Howard. First publication: The Mermaid Game (Lykeion Books, 2014).
“The Mermaid of the Concrete Ocean” © 2009 Caitlín R. Kiernan. First publication: Sirenia Digest #43, June 2009.
“Sea-Hearts” © 2009 Margo Lanagan. First publication: X5: A Novella Anthology, ed. Keith Stevenson (Coeur de Lion Publishing, 2009).
“Magritte’s Secret Agent” © 1981 Tanith Lee. First publication: Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone Magazine, May 1981.
“Each to Each”© 2014 Seanan McGuire. First publication: Lightspeed, June 2014.
“Somewhere Beneath Those Waves Was Her Home”© 2007 Sarah Monette. First publication: Fantasy, eds. Paul Tremblay & Sean Wallace (Prime Books, 2007).
“The Mermaids Singing Each to Each” © 2009 Cat Rambo. First publication: Clarkesworld, November 2009.
“Miss Carstairs and the Merman” © 1989 Delia Sherman. First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 1989.
“A Good Husband” © 2010 Angela Slatter. First publication: Sourdough and Other Stories (Tartarus Press, 2010).
“Rusalka” © 2012 Anna Taborska. First publication: Exotic Gothic 4 (Postscripts #28/29), ed. Danel Olsen (PS Publishing 2012).
“Urchins, While Swimming” © 2006 Catherynne M. Valente. First publication: Clarkesworld, December 2006.
“Abyssus Abyssum Invocat” © 2013 Genevieve Valentine. First publication: Lightspeed, February 2013.
“Letters to a Body on the Cusp of Drowning” © 2015 A. C. Wise. First publication: Thirteen: Stories of Transformation, ed. Mark Teppo (Underland Press, 2015).
“The Nebraskan and the Nereid” © 1985 Gene Wolfe. First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, December 1985.
“The Corridors of the Sea” © 1981 Jane Yolen. First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 1981.
Other Anthologies Edited by Paula Guran
Embraces
Best New Paranormal Romance
Best New Romantic Fantasy
Zombies: The Recent Dead
The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2010
Vampires: The Recent Undead
The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2011<
br />
Halloween
New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird
Brave New Love
Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful
Obsession: Tales of Irresistible Desire
The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2012
Extreme Zombies
Ghosts: Recent Hauntings
Rock On: The Greatest Hits of Science Fiction & Fantasy
Season of Wonder
Future Games
Weird Detectives: Recent Investigations
The Mammoth Book of Angels & Demons
The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2013
Halloween: Magic, Mystery, & the Macabre
Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales
Magic City: Recent Spells
The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2014
Zombies: More Recent Dead
Time Travel: Recent Trips
New Cthulhu 2: More Recent Weird
Blood Sisters: Vampire Stories by Women
Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep Page 47
