Secret (1862) engendered, but M. E. Braddon (eventually Mrs Maxwell) wrote novels and plays; contributed essays, short stories, and poems to such high-circulation periodicals as Punch and The World; and edited the two literary magazines most closely associated with the Sensation Novel, Temple Bar and Belgravia. In the 1860s, the decade that was the high-water mark of Sensation, M. E. Braddon wrote at least twenty novels, sometimes at the rate of three per year, while bearing six children of her own and raising them together with six step-children.
Caitlin R. Kiernan is the author of several novels, including Daughter of Hounds, The Red Tree, and The Drowning Girl: A Memoir. She is a prolific short-fiction author – to date, over 200 short stories, novellas, and vignettes – most of which have been collected in Tales of Pain and Wonder; From Weird and Distant Shores; To Charles Fort, With Love; Alabaster; A is for Alien; and The Ammonite Violin & Others. Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlin R. Kiernan, Vol. 1, was released by Subterranean Press in October 2011, and her next collection, Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart, will be released (also by Subterranean) in 2012. Kiernan is a four-time nominee for the World Fantasy Award, an honoree for the James Tiptree Jr Award, and has twice been nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award. Born in Ireland, she lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
Mary Elinor Wilkins-Freeman (1852–1930) was born in Randolph, Massachusetts, the daughter of strict orthodox Congregationalists. She began writing stories and verse for children as a teenager, and her work quickly saw print. She wrote more than two dozen volumes of published short stories and novels. She is best known for two collections of stories, A Humble Romance and Other Stories (1887) and A New England Nun and Other Stories (1891). In April 1926, Freeman became the first recipient of the William Dean Howells Medal for Distinction in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She died in Metuchen and was interred in Hillside Cemetery in Scotch Plains, New Jersey.
Sarah Langan is the author of the novels The Keeper, The Missing, and Audrey’s Door. She is currently finishing her fourth book, Empty Houses. Her work has garnered three Bram Stoker Awards, an ALA Award, a New York Times Book Review editor’s pick, a PublishersWeekly favourite book of the year selection, and been optioned by The Weinstein Company for film. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, daughter, and rabbit.
Elizabeth Massie is a Bram Stoker Award- and Scribe Award-winning author of horror novels, short horror fiction, media tie-ins, mainstream fiction, historical novels, poetry, and non-fiction. Most recent works include Homegrown (a mainstream novel from Crossroad Press), Playback: Light and Shadow (an e-novella from Random House, prequel to the 2012 horror film Playback), and Sundown (a collection of horror shorts from Necon E-Books.) Massie lives in the Shenandoah Valley with illustrator Cortney Skinner. She is the founder of Hand to Hand Vision and Circle of Caring on Facebook. She likes snow and hates cheese.
Alex Bell was born in 1986 in Hampshire. Her contemporary supernatural mysteries are published by Gollancz, and her YA comic fantasies are published by Headline. She has travelled widely, is a ferociously strict vegetarian and generally prefers cats to people.
Alison Littlewood lives in West Yorkshire, England, where she hoards books, dreams and writes fiction – mainly in the dark fantasy and horror genres. Alison has contributed to Black Static, Dark Horizons, Not One of Us and the charity anthology Never Again. Her debut novel, A Cold Season, will be out early in 2012 from Jo Fletcher Books at Quercus. Visit her at www.alisonlittlewood.co.uk.
Nina Allan’s stories have appeared regularly in the magazines Black Static and Interzone, and have featured in the anthologies Catastrophia, House of Fear, Best Horror of the Year #2 and Year’s Best SF #28. A first collection of her short fiction, A Thread of Truth, was published by Eibonvale Press in 2007, followed by the story cycle The Silver Wind in 2011. Twice shortlisted for the BFS and BSFA Award, Nina’s next book, Stardust, will be available from PS Publishing in autumn 2012. An exile from London, she lives and works in Hastings, East Sussex.
Lisa Tuttle made her first professional sale forty years ago with the short story “Stranger in the House” – now the title story in Stranger in the House, Vol. 1 of her collected supernatural fiction, published by Ash-Tree Press. Perhaps best known for her short fiction, which includes the International Horror Guild Award-winning tale “Closet Dreams”, she is also the author of several novels, including The Pillow Friend, The Mysteries and The Silver Bough, as well as books for children and non-fiction works. Although born and raised in America, she has been a British resident for the past three decades, and currently lives with her family in Scotland.
Nancy Holder is a multiple award-winning, New York Times bestselling author (the Wicked Series.) Her two new YA dark fantasy series are Crusade and Wolf Springs Chronicles. Crusade: Vanquished and Wolf Springs Chronicles: Hot Blooded are on the shelves now. She has won four Bram Stoker Awards from the Horror Writers Association, as well as a Scribe Award for Best Novel (Saving Grace: Tough Love). Nancy has sold over eighty novels and a hundred short stories, many of them based on such shows as Highlander, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and others. She lives in San Diego with her daughter, Belle, two Corgis, and three cats. You can visit Nancy online at www.nancyholder.com
Yvonne Navarro lives in southern Arizona, where by day she works on historic Fort Huachuca. She is the author of twenty-two published novels and well over a hundred short stories, and has written about everything from vampires to psychologically disturbed husbands to the end of the world. Her work has won the HWA’s Bram Stoker Award plus a number of other writing awards. Visit her at www.yvonnenavarro.com and look her up on Facebook, to keep up with interludes in a crazy life that includes a military spouse, three Great Danes, a people-loving parakeet named BirdZilla, painting, and lots of white zinfandel and ice cream.
Mary Cholmondeley (1859–1925) was the eldest daughter and third child of a family of eight, and from an early age made up stories to tell to her brothers and sisters for their entertainment. She began to write seriously in her late teens and her first novel was Her Evil Genius, followed by The Danvers Jewels in 1886. In 1899 Mary’s best-known novel Red Pottage was published and caused something of a sensation at the time because of its pointed satire. In addition to novels, Mary wrote essays, articles and short stories.
Marion Arnott is a teacher working in Scotland and a writer when she can be. Her work has appeared in Peninsular Magazine, QWF, West Coast, Northwords, Books Ireland, Hidden Corners, Chapman Magazine, Scottish Child, Solander, Crimewave 4& 6, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2002, Best British Mysteries, The Alsiso Project, Elastic Press Book of Numbers, Nova Scotia, New Scottish Speculative Fiction, Elastic Press Book of Extended Play, Hayakawa Mystery Magazine (Japan), Roadworks magazine, Midnight Street and Scottish Momentist Fiction 2006, and her collection, Sleepwalkers (Elastic Press, 2003). She won the Philip Good Memorial Prize for Fiction (QWF), CWA Short Dagger, and has been shortlisted for the same award twice more. She was also nominated for the British Fantasy Society’s Best Short Story Award.
Lilith Saintcrow is the author of several urban fantasy and (as Lili St Crow) YA series. She lives in Vancouver, Washington, with her children and several other strays.
Award-winning author Nancy Kilpatrick has published eighteen novels, two hundred short stories, one non-fiction book, and has edited a number of anthologies including Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead (2010) and Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future
