The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (87 page)

Laura Anne Gilman
is the author of the Cosa Nostradamus books for Luna (the Retrievers and Paranormal Scene Investigations series), a YA trilogy for HarperCollins, and the award-nominated The Vineart War trilogy from Pocket. She also writes paranormal romances for Nocturne as Anna Leonard. Some of her short fiction was collected in
Dragon Virus.
In 2012, she will be dipping her pen into the mystery field, as well. A former executive editor at NAL, Laura Anne is an amateur chef, oenophile, and cat-servant. She lives in New York City, where she also runs d.y.m.k. productions.

Elizabeth Hand
(www.elizabethhand.com) is the multiple-award-winning author of twelve novels and three collections of short fiction. Her most recent novel,
Available Dark,
was named as one of the Top Ten Best Mystery/Thrillers of the year by
Publishers Weekly.
A
New York Times
and
Washington Post
Notable Author, Hand is also a longtime book critic and essayist who frequently contributes to the
Washington Post,
Salon,
Village Voice,
and
DownEast Magazine,
among many others. She has two children and divides her time between Maine and North London.

Glen Hirshberg
’s awards include the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award (for his novelette, “The Janus Tree”) and three International Horror Guild Awards, including two for Best Collection (for
American Morons
in 2006 and
The Two Sams
in 2003). He is also the author of two novels,
The Snowman’s Children
and
The Book of Bunk.
“After-Words” appears in his new collection,
The Janus Tree and Other Stories,
just out from Subterranean. With Dennis Etchison and Peter Atkins, he co-founded the Rolling Darkness Revue, a traveling ghost story performance troupe that tours the west coast of the United States and elsewhere each October. His fiction has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies.

Stephen Graham Jones
is the author of ten novels and two collections. Most recent are
Zombie Bake-Off
and
Growing Up Dead in Texas.
Next are
Flushboy
and
Not for Nothing.
Stephen’s been a Stoker finalist, a Shirley Jackson Award finalist three times, a Black Quill finalist, and has been an NEA fellow and won the Texas Institute of Letters Award for fiction. He teaches in the MFA program at UC Boulder.

Caitlín R. Kiernan
is the author of several novels, including the award-winning
Threshold,
Daughter of Hounds,
The Red Tree,
and, most recently,
The Drowning Girl.
Her short fiction has 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.
Her erotica has been collected in two volumes,
Frog Toes and Tentacles
and
Tales from the Woeful Platypus.
Subterranean Press published a retrospective of her early writing,
Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan (Volume One)
last year. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island with her partner, Kathryn.

Stephen King
has since published over fifty books, many short stories, and has become one of the world’s most successful writers. King has won numerous award and the National Book Foundation has honored him the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Maine and Florida with his wife, novelist Tabitha King. They are regular contributors to a number of charities including many libraries and have been honored for their philanthropic activities.

Margo Lanagan
is an internationally acclaimed writer of novels and short stories. Her fiction has garnered many awards, nominations, and shortlistings. Her
Black Juice
was a Michael L. Printz Honor Book, won two World Fantasy Awards and the Victorian Premier’s Award for Young Adult Fiction.
Red Spikes
won the CBCA Book of the Year: Older Readers, was a
Publishers Weekly
Best Book of the Year, a Horn Book Fanfare title, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize and longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Her novel
Tender Morsels
won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel and was a Michael L. Printz Honor Book for Excellence in Young Adult Literature. Her latest novel is
Sea Hearts
(Allen & Unwin, Australia), known as
The Brides of Rollrock Island
in the UK, it will come out under that title the US in September. She lives in Sydney.

Joe R. Lansdale
is the author of over thirty novels and numerous short stories. His novella,
Bubba Ho-tep,
was made into an award-winning film of the same name, as was
Incident On and Off a Mountain Road.
Both were directed by Don Coscarelli. His works have received numerous recognitions, including the Edgar, eight Bram Stoker awards, the Grinzani Prize for Literature, American Mystery Award, the International Horror Award, British Fantasy Award, and many others.
All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky,
his first novel for young adults, was published last year. His most recent novel for adults is
Edge of Dark Water.

Tanith Lee
was born in 1947, in London, England. She worked at various jobs until in 1974-75 DAW Books began to publish her science fiction and fantasy, beginning with
The Birthgrave.
Since then she has published over ninety books and over three hundred short stories, written for TV and BBC Radio. Her latest novels are available from the Immanion Press and reprints—such as Flat Earth sequence and The Birthgrave Trilogy—via Norilana Books. Much of her work will soon be available in ebook form via Orion, and other houses. She lives on the Sussex Weald with her husband writer/artist/photographer/model maker John Kaiine.

Yoon Ha Lee
is a Korean-American writer of science fiction and fantasy. She majored in math, and it is a source of continual delight to her that mathematics can be mined for story ideas. Her first collection of short fiction,
Conservation of Shadows,
will be published in 2013.

Charles de Lint
is a full-time writer and musician who presently makes his home in Ottawa, Canada, with his wife MaryAnn Harris. His most recent books are
Under My Skin
and
Eyes Like Leaves.
His first album,
Old Blue Truck,
came out in early 2011. For more information about his work, visit his website at www.charlesdelint.com. He’s also on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.

Maureen McHugh
has published four novels and two collections of short stories. She’s won a Hugo and a Tiptree award. Her most recent collection,
After the Apocalypse,
was named a
Publishers Weekly
Top Ten Best Book of 2011, was a Philip K. Dick Award finalist, a Story Prize Notable Book, and named to the io9 Best SF&F Books of 2011 List as well as the Tiptree Award Honor List. McHugh lives in Los Angeles, where she is attempting to sell her soul to the entertainment industry.

Sarah Monette
lives in a 106-year-old house in the Upper Midwest with a great many books, two cats, and one husband. Her first four novels were published by Ace Books. Her short stories have appeared in
Strange Horizons,
Weird Tales,
and
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet,
among other venues, and have been reprinted in several Year’s Best anthologies.
The Bone Key,
a 2007 collection of interrelated short stories, was re-issued last year in a new edition. Her non-themed collection,
Somewhere Beneath Those Waves
was published in 2011. Sarah has written two novels (
A Companion to Wolves
and
The Tempering of Men
and three short stories with Elizabeth Bear. Her next novel,
The Goblin Emperor,
will come out from Tor under the name Katherine Addison. Visit her online at www.sarahmonette.com.

Naomi Novik
’s first novel,
His Majesty’s Dragon,
the opening volume of the Temeraire series, was published in 2006 and has been translated into twenty-seven languages and optioned by Peter Jackson. She has won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel, and the Locus Award for Best First Novel. She is one of the founding board members of the Organization for Transformative Works, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the fair-use rights of fan creators, as well as one of the architects of the open-source Archive Of Our Own. Naomi lives in New York City with her husband, Edgar-winning mystery novelist Charles Ardai, and their shiny new daughter Evidence. Her website is naominovik.com and she can be followed as
naominovik
on Livejournal, Twitter, and Facebook.

Paul Park
lives in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, and teaches at Williams College. He has written eleven novels in a variety of genres, and numerous short stories. His most recent work includes
Ghosts Doing the Orange Dance
(nominated for the 2010 Nebula Award) and
Ragnarok,
a post-apocalyptic pseudo-Norse edda (nominated for the 2011 Rhysling Award). Under the name Paulina Claiborne, he has also written a recently published Forgotten Realms novel called
The Rose of Sarifal.

Norman Partridge
’s fiction includes horror, suspense, and the fantastic—“sometimes all in one story” according to Joe Lansdale. Partridge’s novel
Dark Harvest
was chosen by
Publishers Weekly
as one of the 100 Best Books of 2006, and two short-story collections were published in 2010—
Lesser Demons
from Subterranean Press and
Johnny Halloween
from Cemetery Dance. Other work includes the Jack Baddalach mysteries
Saguaro Riptide
and
The Ten-Ounce Siesta,
plus
The Crow: Wicked Prayer,
which was adapted for film. His work has received multiple Bram Stoker awards. He can be found on the web at NormanPartridge.com and americanfrankenstein.blogspot.com.

Tim Powers
is the author of twelve novels, including
The Anubis Gates,
Declare,
Hide Me AMong the Graves,
and
On Stranger Tides,
which was adapted for the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie of the same title. His novels have twice won the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award, twice won the World Fantasy Award, and three times won the Locus Poll Award. Powers has taught fiction writing classes at the University of Redlands, Chapman University, and the Orange County High School of the Arts. He has been an instructor at the Writers of the Future program and the Clarion Science Fiction Workshop at Michigan State University. Powers lives with his wife, Serena, in San Bernardino, California.

Norman Prentiss
recently won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Long Fiction for his first book,
Invisible Fences.
Previously he won a Stoker in the short fiction category for “In the Porches of My Ears,” which originally appeared in
Postscripts 18.
His fiction has also appeared in
Black Static,
Commutability,
Tales from the Gorezone,
Damned Nation,
Best Horror of the Year,
The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror,
and in three editions of the Shivers anthology series. His poetry has appeared in
Writer Online,
Southern Poetry Review,
Baltimore’s City Paper,
and
A Sea of Alone: Poems for Alfred Hitchcock.
His essays on gothic and sensation literature have appeared in
Victorian Poetry,
Colby Quarterly,
and T
he Thomas Hardy Review.
Visit him online at www.normanprentiss.com.

Alan Peter Ryan
(1943-2011) was the author of four novels and two collections of short fiction and the editor of five anthologies. He was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award and three times for the World Fantasy Award, and won a World Fantasy Award for
The Bones Wizard.
He also edited five anthologies of travel writing for which he won a Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award. As a journalist, he wrote for all the major newspapers of the United States and for many magazines, including
Smithsonian,
The American Scholar,
Islands,
Travel & Leisure,
and
Playgirl.

Priya Sharma
is a general practitioner in the UK, where she spends as much free time as she can devouring books and writing speculative fiction. She has a computer but prefers a fountain pen and a notebook. Her short stories have appeared in publications such as
Albedo One,
On Spec,
Alt Hist, Bourbon Penn, Fantasy,
and
Black Static.
She is currently working on a historical fantasy novel set in North Wales, not far from where she lives. More information can be found at www.priyasharmafiction.co.uk.

Angela Slatter
is a Brisbane-based writer of speculative fiction. She is the author of WFA-shortlisted
Sourdough and Other Stories
(Tartarus Press) and the Aurealius Award-winning
The Girl with No Hands and Other Stories
(Ticonderoga Publications). Her short stories have appeared in anthologies such as
Dreaming Again,
Strange Tales II
and
III,
2012,
and
A Book of Horrors
as well as journals such as
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet,
Shimmer,
and
On Spec.
Her work has had several Honorable Mentions in the Datlow, Link, and Grant-edited Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series; and six of her stories have been shortlisted for the Aurealis Awards in the Best Fantasy Short Story category, winning in 2011 with Lisa L Hannett for “The Febraury Dragon.” She blogs at www.angelaslatter.com.