Maria Alexander (poetry)

Maria Alexander has been an award-winning author of horror and mystery novels, short fiction, screenplays, poetry, and essays for over 20 years. Her debut novel, Mr. Wicker, won the 2014 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. Her debut teen novel, Snowed, won the 2016 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel and was nominated for the 2017 Anthony Award. Her latest queer teen tale, Brimstone & Blades, has earned multiple awards. A lover of swords and esoteric arts, she can be found on Substack and other online platforms. For more, visit www.mariaalexander.net.

Erin Al-Mehairi (poetry)

Erin Sweet Al-Mehairi is an author, editor, journalist, advocate, and publicist with twenty-five years of experience in communication fields. She’s been putting pen to paper for over thirty years.  
Breathe. Breathe. was her debut collection of dark poetry and short stories. She has poetry and short stories featured in many anthologies, online magazines, and was co-editor of a Gothic anthology.  
Born in England, she now mothers three busy teens and five spoiled rescue cats in a forest in Ohio while running her Hook of a Book editing and PR business. Find Erin at: website Oh, for the Hook of a Book!, Amazon, GoodReads, or most social media platforms. 

Michael Bailey (story)

Michael Bailey is a recipient of the Bram Stoker Award (and eight-time nominee), Benjamin Franklin Award, and a three-time Shirley Jackson Award nominee. He has authored numerous novels, novellas, novelettes, and fiction & poetry collections. Recent work includes Agatha’s Barn, a tie-in novella to Josh Malerman’s Carpenter’s Farm, a collaborative novella with Erinn L. Kemper called The Call of the Void, and Sifting the Ashes, a collaborative and lengthy poetry collection with Marge Simon. He runs the small press Written Backwards and has edited and published twelve anthologies, such as The Library of the Dead, the Chiral Mad Series, and Miscreations: Gods, Monstrosities & Other Horrors. He lives in Costa Rica where he is rebuilding his life after surviving one of the most catastrophic wildfires in California history.

Richard Chizmar (story)

RICHARD CHIZMAR is the New York Times bestselling author of the Gwendy Trilogy (with Stephen King), as well as Chasing the Boogeyman, Widow’s Point, and many other books.
He is the founder/publisher of Cemetery Dance magazine and the Cemetery Dance Publications book imprint. He has edited more than 35 anthologies and his short fiction has appeared in dozens of publications, including multiple editions of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and The Year’s 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories. He has won two World Fantasy awards, four International Horror Guild awards, and the HWA’s Board of Trustee’s award.
Chizmar (in collaboration with Johnathon Schaech) has also written screenplays and teleplays for United Artists, Sony Screen Gems, Lions Gate, Showtime, NBC, and many other companies. He has adapted the works of many bestselling authors including Stephen King, Peter Straub, and Bentley Little.
Chizmar’s work has been translated into more than fifteen languages throughout the world, and he has appeared at numerous conferences as a writing instructor, guest speaker, panelist, and guest of honor.

Sèphera Girón (story)

Sèphera Girón is the award-winning author of over twenty published horror novels and dozens of short stories. Her latest book is an anthology created with Andrew Robertson called Dearly Departed. An interactive work-for-hire book on TALES was published recently called Let Us Burn. Her next book for TALES is being created solely by her and the third chapter of Four Witches and a Dude has been posted. Sèphera has stories in Dark Rainbow, Group Hex 1, Group Hex 2, Abandon, Amazing Monster Tales No. 1, Creatures in Canada - A Darkling Around the World Anthology, The Pulp Horror Book of Phobias 1 and 2, and more. Sèphera attended The Stowe Story Labs screenwriting program in Birmingham, Alabama in 2022 to work on her horror TV pilot, The Calling. Sèphera has written several pilots and screenplays and is shopping them around. Sèphera has roles in the horror movies, Killer Rack and Slime City Massacre and will be featured in the horror short Pandora coming out later in 2023. Sign up for Sephera’s World Observations on Substack for free to follow her weekly insights on many topics and soon, she’ll be posting some fiction as well. http://sephera.substack.com
 Sèphera currently lives in Toronto. http://sepheragiron.ca

Maxwell I Gold (poetry)

Maxwell I. Gold is a Jewish-American author and poet with an extensive body of work comprising over 350 poems since 2017. His writings have earned a place alongside many literary luminaries in the speculative fiction genre. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, magazines, and anthologies. Maxwell’s work has been recognized with multiple nominations including the Eric Hoffer Award, Pushcart Prize, and Bram Stoker Awards. Find him and his work at www.thewellsoftheweird.com.

Stephen King (story)

Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers, most recently Billy Summers, If It Bleeds, Elevation and Fairy Tale. 

John Palisano (introduction)

John Palisano’s novels include DUST OF THE DEAD, GHOST HEART, NERVES, and NIGHT OF 1,000 BEASTS. His novellas include GLASS HOUSE and STARLIGHT DRIVE: FOUR HALLOWEEN TALES. His first short fiction collection ALL THAT WITHERS celebrates over a decade of short story highlights.

He won the Bram Stoker Award© in short fiction for “Happy Joe’s Rest Stop” and Colorado’s Yog Soggoth award in 2018. More short stories have appeared in anthologies from Weird Tales, Cemetery Dance, PS Publishing, Independent Legions, Space & Time, Dim Shores, DarkFuse, Crystal Lake, Terror Tales, Lovecraft eZine, Horror Library, Bizarro Pulp, Written Backwards, Dark Continents, Big Time Books, McFarland Press, Darkscribe, Dark House, Omnium Gatherum, and more.

Non-fiction pieces have appeared in BLUMHOUSE, FANGORIA, and DARK DISCOVERIES magazines and he’s been quoted in VANITY FAIR and the LOS ANGELES TIMES.

Say ‘hi’ at: www.johnpalisano.com and http://www.amazon.com/author/johnpalisano and www.facebook.com/johnpalisano and www.twitter.com/johnpalisano and www.goodreads.com/johnpalisano

Richard Thomas (story)

Richard Thomas is the award-winning author of eight books: three novels—Disintegration and Breaker (Penguin Random House Alibi), as well as Transubstantiate (Otherworld Publications); four short story collections—Staring Into the Abyss (Kraken Press), Herniated Roots (Snubnose Press), Tribulations (Cemetery Dance), and Spontaneous Human Combustion (Turner Publishing); and one novella in The Soul Standard (Dzanc Books). With over 165 stories published, his credits include The Best Horror of the Year (Volume Eleven), Cemetery Dance (twice), Behold!: Oddities, Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders (Bram Stoker winner), PANK, storySouth, Gargoyle, Weird Fiction Review, Midwestern Gothic, Shallow Creek, The Seven Deadliest, Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories, Qualia Nous, Chiral Mad (numbers 2-4), PRISMS, Pantheon, and Shivers VI (with Stephen King and Peter Straub). He has won contests at ChiZine and One Buck Horror, has received five Pushcart Prize nominations, and has been long-listed for Best Horror of the Year six times. He was also the editor of four anthologies: The New Black and Exigencies (Dark House Press), The Lineup: 20 Provocative Women Writers (Black Lawrence Press) and Burnt Tongues (Medallion Press) with Chuck Palahniuk. He has been nominated for the Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson, Thriller, and Audie awards. In his spare time he is a columnist at Lit Reactor. He was the Editor-in-Chief at Dark House Press and Gamut Magazine. His agent is Paula Munier at Talcott Notch. For more information visit www.whatdoesnotkillme.com.

Wrath James White (poetry)

WRATH JAMES WHITE is a former World Class Heavyweight Kickboxer, a professional Kickboxing and Mixed Martial Arts trainer, distance runner, performance artist, and former street brawler, who is now known for creating some of the most disturbing works of fiction in print.

Wrath is the author of such extreme horror classics as THE RESURRECTIONIST (now a major motion picture titled "Come Back To Me") SUCCULENT PREY, and it's sequel PREY DRIVE, YACCUB'S CURSE, 400 DAYS OF OPPRESSION, SACRIFICE, VORACIOUS, TO THE DEATH, THE REAPER, SKINZZ, EVERYONE DIES FAMOUS IN A SMALL TOWN, THE BOOK OF A THOUSAND SINS, HIS PAIN, POPULATION ZERO and many others. He is the co-author of TERATOLOGIST co-written with the king of extreme horror, Edward Lee, SOMETHING TERRIBLE co-written with his son Sultan Z. White, ORGY OF SOULS co-written with Maurice Broaddus, HERO and THE KILLINGS both co-written with J.F. Gonzalez, POISONING EROS co-written with Monica J. O'Rourke, and BOY’S NIGHT co-written with Matt Shaw among others.

Mercedes Yardley (story)

Mercedes M. Yardley is a dark fantasist who wears red lipstick and poisonous flowers in her hair. She is the author of Beautiful Sorrows, the Stabby Award-winning Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love, Pretty Little Dead Girls, and Nameless. She won the Bram Stoker Award for her story Little Dead Redand was a Bram Stoker Award nominee for her short story “Loving You Darkly” and the Arterial Bloom anthology.Mercedes lives and works in Las Vegas. You can find her at mercedesmyardley.com.

Justin Zimmerman (story)

Justin Zimmerman’s stories of horror and dark fiction have appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, including “Welcome to a Town Called Hell,” “Ghost Stories for Starless Nights,” and “Bon Appetit: Stories and Recipes for Human Consumption.” He lives in New York with his wife and way too many cats. 

Orion Zangara Art will provide artwork to the four poems and the seven stories for this anthology if funding goals are met. Let's make it happen!

Orion Zangara is a freelance illustrator and comic book artist based near Washington, DC. He graduated from The Joe Kubert School, an institution specializing in sequential art, founded by his legendary grandfather, Joe Kubert.

Orion is the illustrator of the horror Christmas anthology "Silent Nightmares," edited by Michael Bailey and Chuck Palahniuk, the author of "Fight Club." This collection of original dark holiday stories will be published in Fall 2026 by Saga Press Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

Previously, he illustrated "The Stone Man Mysteries," a young adult horror mystery graphic novel trilogy co-written by New York Times best-selling author Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple, published by Lerner Publishing Group.

Although his favorite genre is horror, he draws and loves all sorts of genres: superheroes, fantasy, science fiction, and realism. He is excited to draw whatever is required for his clients.

Visit his website at www.orionzangaraart.com and follow him on social media as @orionzangaraart. You can contact him at orionzangaraart@gmail.com.