by Mark Morris
Laura Purcell is a former bookseller, who lives in Colchester with her husband and pet guinea pigs. Her gothic novel The Silent Companions was a Radio ٢ Book Club pick, appeared on the Zoe Ball ITV Book Club and won the WHSmith Thumping Good Read Award. Her most recent novels are The Corset and Bone China.
Robert Shearman has written six short story collections, and between them they have won the World Fantasy Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Edge Hill Readers Prize and four British Fantasy Awards. He began his career in the theatre, and was resident dramatist at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter and regular writer for Alan Ayckbourn at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough; his plays have won the Sunday Times Playwriting Award, the World Drama Trust Award and the Guinness Award for Ingenuity in association with the Royal National Theatre. A regular writer for BBC Radio, his own interactive drama series The Chain Gang has won two Sony Awards. But he is probably best known for his work on Doctor Who, bringing back the Daleks for the BAFTA winning first series in an episode nominated for a Hugo Award. His latest books are We All Hear Stories in the Dark, an interactive modern spin upon the Arabian Nights, and a novelisation of his Doctor Who episode Dalek for Target.
Angela Slatter is the author of the Verity Fassbinder supernatural crime series (Vigil, Corpselight, Restoration) and nine short story collections, including The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings and Winter Children and Other Chilling Tales. Her gothic fantasy novels, All These Murmuring Bones and Morwood, will be published by Titan in 2021 and 2022 respectively. She’s won a World Fantasy, a British Fantasy, an Australian Shadows and six Aurealis Awards; her debut novel was nominated for the Dublin Literary Award. Her work has been translated into French, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, Italian, Bulgarian and Russian. You can find her at www.angelaslatter.com, @AngelaSlatter on Twitter, and as angelalslatter on Instagram for photos of food and dogs that belong to someone else (the dogs, not the food).
Michael Marshall Smith is a novelist and screenwriter. Under this name he has published over ninety short stories and five novels – Only Forward, Spares, One of Us, The Servants and Hannah Green and her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence – winning the Philip K. Dick, International Horror Guild, and August Derleth Awards, along with the Prix Bob Morane in France. He has won the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction four times, more than any other author; and 2020 will see a Best of Michael Marshall Smith collection. Writing as Michael Marshall he has written seven internationally-best-selling thrillers including The Straw Men series, The Intruders – made into a BBCAmerica series starring John Simm and Mira Sorvino – and Killer Move. His most recent novel under this name is We Are Here. Now additionally writing as Michael Rutger, in 2018 he published the adventure thriller The Anomaly. A sequel, The Possession, was published in 2019. He is currently co-writing and exec producing development of The Straw Men for television. He is also Creative Consultant to The Blank Corporation, Neil Gaiman’s production company in Los Angeles, and involved in the development of multiple shows including Neverwhere and American Gods. He lives in Santa Cruz, California, with his wife, son, and three cats. Main Site: www.michaelmarshallsmith.com. eBooks: www.ememess.com. Twitter: @ememess. Instagram: @ememess
C.J. Tudor grew up in Nottingham and now lives in Sussex with her husband and young daughter. She left school at sixteen and has had a variety of jobs over the years, including trainee reporter, radio scriptwriter, TV presenter, voiceover artist and dog-walker. Her first novel The Chalk Man was a Sunday Times best-seller, sold to over forty countries and won the ITW Award for Best First Novel, The Strand Award for Best Debut and the Barry Award for Best Debut. Her second novel The Taking of Annie Thorne was also a Sunday Times best-seller. Her third novel The Other People has just been published. All three books have been optioned for TV. Everyone calls her Caz.
Stephen Volk is best known for the BBC’s notorious ‘Halloween hoax’ Ghostwatch and the award-winning ITV drama series Afterlife starring Andrew Lincoln and Lesley Sharp. His other screenplays include The Awakening starring Rebecca Hall, and Gothic starring Natasha Richardson as Mary Shelley. He is a Bram Stoker Award and Shirley Jackson Award finalist, a BAFTA winner, and the author of three collections: Dark Corners, Monsters in the Heart (which won the British Fantasy Award) and The Parts We Play. Arguably his most acclaimed fiction so far is The Dark Masters trilogy, consisting of Whitstable, which has as its protagonist Peter Cushing; Leytonstone, based on the boyhood of Alfred Hitchcock; and Netherwood, featuring novelist Dennis Wheatley and occultist Aleister Crowley. His provocative non-fiction is collected in Coffinmaker’s Blues: Collected Writings on Terror.
Catriona Ward was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in the United States, Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen and Morocco. She read English at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford and is a graduate of the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia. Her next gothic thriller The Last House on Needless Street will be published in March 2021 by Viper, an imprint of Serpents Tail, followed by a further book in 2022. Her last novel Little Eve (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2018) won the 2019 Shirley Jackson Award and the August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel at the 2019 British Fantasy Awards, and was a Guardian Best Book of 2018. Her debut Rawblood (W&N, 2015) won Best Horror Novel at the 2016 British Fantasy Awards, was shortlisted for the Author’s Club Best First Novel Award and a WHSmith Fresh Talent title. Her short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies. She lives in London and Devon.
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