About the Authors

 

Lars Ahn is a Danish author and journalist. He has published one novel and two short story collections in Danish and has won two Niels Klim Awards for best Danish science fiction short stories. He was born in South Korea but was adopted as an infant and grew up in Denmark. His translated stories can be found in the anthologies Sky City and Unconventional Fantasy: Forty Years of the World Fantasy Convention.

Flavius Ardelean is a writer of fantasy and horror for adults and children. He is the author of six novels and three short story collections, for which he has received multiple awards and nominations in his home country. He has an MA in Publishing from Oxford with a dissertation on the field of international horror publishing and is an affiliate member of the Horror Writers Association.

Christien Boomsma has been writing since she learned her first letters, but her professional career didn’t begin in earnest until she won the Paul Harland Prize for Dutch-language fantastic literature in 2004 and 2006. She focuses on works for young readers, with titles like Schaduwloper [Shadow Walker] (2014) and Vuurdoop [Baptism of Fire] (2015). Her love for horror started in 2006 when she wrote a ghost story for her own children. She became intrigued by the interplay of darkness and evil, slowly and inexorably creeping closer. That finally resulted in the collection of twelve modern ghost stories Spookbeeld [Spectre] (2012) and a number of horror stories for adults. ‘The Bones in Her Eyes’ came about after she ran over a cat one night. She was struck by the strange, clear look in the cat’s eyes – even though it was already dead. A look that even now is still fresh in her mind and has caused her its share of nightmares.

Bernardo Esquinca’s fiction is characterized by a fusion of the genres of the supernatural and the crime novel. Born in Guadalajara in 1972, he is the author of several novels and story collections, including one translated into English, The Owls Are Not What They Seem (2014). He has been a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte and in 2017 won the Premio Nacional de Novela Negra. He has also written screenplays and audio series. He lives in Mexico City with his daughter Pía and his Xoloitzcuintle dog, Ramona.

Anders Fager was born in 1964 in Stockholm. After a career as an army officer and game designer he turned to writing full time in 2009, when he released his first volume of Lovecraftian short stories, Svenska kulter [Swedish Cults]. The book was a critical success and a hit with readers and led to an expanded version, Samlade Svenska kulter [Collected Swedish Cults] in 2011. His works have been published in Finland, Italy, and France, where he became the only Swedish writer ever to have been nominated twice for the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire. He lives in Stockholm with a tank full of fish and is very happily married.

Cristina Fernández Cubas was born in Arenys de Mar, Barcelona, in 1945. Since the publication of her first volume of short stories in 1980, she has become an undeniable point of reference for the generations of short story writers to have followed. She has been translated into eight languages. Her most recent collection of stories, La habitación de Nona, once again proved her mastery in this genre, winning both the prestigious National Book Prize in Spain and the equally prestigious Premio de la Crítica, among other noteworthy prizes.

Ariane Gélinas is the literary director of the journal Le Sabord as well as the artistic director of Brins d’éternité. She also edits reviews and columns on speculative fiction in Lettres québécoises and Les libraires. She is the author of Les villages assoupis (Prix Jacques-­Brossard, Arts Excellence and Aurora/Boréal) and the collection Le sabbat des éphémères. Her novels Les cendres de Sedna (Prix Arts Excellence and Aurora/Boréal) and Quelques battements d’ailes avant la nuit appeared in 2016 and 2019 respectively.

Marko Hautala is a Finnish writer of literary horror whose work has been translated into eight different languages, including the novel The Black Tongue, published in English in 2015. One of his novels was recently optioned for a film. In his native Finland, Hautala has received the Tiiliskivi Prize, Kalevi Jäntti Literary Prize and has been nominated for the Young Aleksis Kivi Prize.

Flore Hazoumé was born in Brazzaville, Congo, the daughter of a Beninese father and a Congolese mother. She grew up in France and is now a citizen of Ivory Coast, where she has lived for more than thirty years. She is the author of ten books, including novels, story collections, and works for young adults. Her writing deals with themes connected to African societies, contemporary history, and family. She is at present head of the nongovernmental organization Audace-­C, which works in the fields of art, culture and education, and she is the founder of Scrib Magazine.

José María Latorre was born in Zaragoza in 1945. He was a cele­brated film critic in his native Spain as well as a prolific author of some thirty books and an award-­winning screenwriter. His best macabre stories have been collected in La noche de Cagliostro y otros relatos de terror [Cagliostro’s Night and Other Tales of Terror] (2006) and Música muerta y otros relatos [Dead Music and Other Tales] (2014). He died in 2014.

Luigi Musolino was born in 1982 in Torino, Italy, where he still lives and works. A specialist in Italian folklore, he is the author of several collections of short stories in the areas of weird fiction, horror, and rural Gothic: Bialere (2012), Oscure Regioni [Dark Regions] (2 vols., 2014-­15), and Uironda (2018). In 2019 his first novel, Eredità di carne [Legacy of Flesh] appeared. He has translated into Italian works by Brian Keene, Lisa Mannetti, Michael Laimo, and the autobiographical writings of H. P. Lovecraft. His stories have been published in Italy, the United States, Ireland, and South Africa.

Pilar Pedraza has combined a career as a professor at the University of Valencia with a prolific writing career, producing an extensive body of work that includes stories, novels, columns, articles, and essays. As a fiction writer, she is the author of many novels and story collections, including La fase del rubí, La pequeña pasión, Arcano trece, La perra de Alejandría, and El amante germano. As a researcher, she has devoted various essays to cinema (Metropolis, Cat People, Federico Fellini, Agustí Villaronga and Jean Cocteau) and to the construction of the feminine in literature and cinema of the fantastic, with works such as Máquinas de amar and Espectra. She has received many awards throughout her career, including the Ignotus, Nocte, Sheridan Le Fanu, Gabriel, and Celsius Awards.

Michael Roch is a science fiction writer and scriptwriter born in 1987 in France. His first fantastic and horrific short stories were published in various underground fanzines before joining Walrus Editions with two science fiction novels: Twelve and Mortal Derby X. His novel Moi, Peter Pan (MU Editions, 2017), was longlisted for the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire in 2018. Since he returned to his native West Indies in 2015, he has conducted several creative writing workshops on the theme of Afrofuturism – a literary movement developing afrocentered counter-­dystopias – in prison and university environments. His latest novel, Le livre jaune [The Yellow Book], at the crossroads of Lovecraftian influences and the Astroblackness movement, is published by MU Editions (2019).

Solange Rodríguez Pappe was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador in 1976. With seven volumes of fiction to her credit, she explores the genres of weird and fantastic fiction, horror, and science fiction. She has won the Joaquín Gallegos Lara Prize for best story collection in 2010 (for Balas perdidas [Lost Bullets]) and 2019 (La primera vez que vi un fantasma [The First Time I Saw a Ghost]). She has worked as a Professor of Literary Arts and a coordinator of creative writing workshops since 2005. In 2014 she earned her MA with a study on Latin American apocalyptic literature and the possible destruction of her city. Her predictions are starting to come true.

Elisenda Solsona (Olesa de Montserrat, 1984) is a writer and secondary school teacher. She has a degree in Humanities and Audiovisual Communication and a master’s in Film Writing. She has published the collection of flash fiction, Cirurgies [Surgeries] (Voliana Editions, 2016) and a volume of short stories, Satèl·lits [Satellites] (Editorial Males Herbes, 2019). The latter book was a substantial success in Catalonia and won the Premi Imperdible for best Catalan book in the realm of fantastic literature.

Frithjof Spalder was born in 1933, the son of a well-­known Norwegian composer of the same name. He is the author of a collection of macabre tales, Jernjomfruen [The Iron Maiden] (1971) and a novel, Dødningerittet (1976) and has also translated books from English to Norwegian and worked as an animator. He is a trained designer and illustrator in black & white, watercolor, airbrush, and acrylic. He lives in Oslo.

Martin Steyn fell in love with words when he discovered Stephen King, and it wasn’t long before he took up a pencil and wrote a horror story of his own. Serial killers would later seduce him into crime and, armed with degrees in Psychology and Criminology, he’s been writing police procedurals and psychological thrillers set in Cape Town, South Africa, the first published in 2014. But the short story still holds a special place in his heart and every year a few appear in local magazines. Whenever he can get away with it, he slips a bit of horror in as well.

Yvette Tan is one of the Philippines’ most celebrated horror writers. Works in the genre include two collections, one in English and the other in Tagalog, and a full-­length film. She’s written for TV, magazines, and the web, and is currently agriculture editor of one of the Philippines’ leading newspapers. She’s commonly asked how horror is related to agriculture, and her answer is that they both involve keeping the apocalypse at bay.

Bathie Ngoye Thiam was born and raised in Baol (Senegal). He has lived for many years in Europe but remains attached to his country of birth. An architect by training, he expresses himself more through painting, writing, and on stage as an actor or storyteller. He has published two novels, a volume of plays, and a collection of fantastic tales based in part on Senegalese folklore.

Tanya Tynjäla was born in 1963 in Callao, Peru. She is the author of five books in the genres of fantasy and science fiction and is also a freelance journalist and a teacher of French and Spanish. Her short stories have been widely anthologized internationally, including in Argentina, Spain, Bulgaria, and Finland, among other places. She lives in Finland.

Attila Veres (b. 1985) is a Hungarian writer of horror and weird fiction. His first novel Odakint sötétebb [Darker Outside] (2017) was a surprise success in his native country, and was followed by the story collection Éjféli iskolák [Midnight Schools] (2018). His fiction appears regularly in Black Aether, a magazine dedicated to Hungarian cosmic horror, as well as in literary maga­zines. As a screenwriter he has written several short and feature length films all over Europe, and he won the Best Tele­vision Screenplay award at the 2020 Hungarian Film Awards for the TV feature Lives Recurring. He is originally from Nyíregyháza but currently lives in Budapest. ‘The Time Remaining’ is his first English publication.