Nat Cassidy is an award-winning actor, novelist, playwright, and director, and a sandwich-winning musician. He lives in New York City.

Andrew K. Clark is a writer from Western North Carolina where his people settled before the Revolutionary War. His debut novel, Where Dark Things Grow (Cowboy Jamboree Press) was a finalist for the Manly Wade Wellman Award, shortlisted for the Sir Walter Raleigh Fiction Award, and won an IPPY from the Independent Book Publishers Awards. The sequel, Where Dark Things Rise (Quill & Crow Publishing House) won an IPPY, an IndieReader Discovery Award, and was a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Award. Hollow Folk, his third novel, received a Kirkus Indie "Get It" verdict (Quill & Crow, September 2026). He is co-host of the Dark Forms podcast and received his MFA from Converse University. 

John Collins has spent his life convinced that the voice coming from the closet is very real. Raised on a steady of late night horror films, paperback nightmares, and loud music, he is the author of The Leeds Point Horror and the collection Altars in Abandoned Houses. He lives in Long Island and is currently working on his next book.

Chris DiLeo is the author of numerous novels, including Empty Devils and What Ever Happened to Jo Rose? He is a high school English teacher in New York's Hudson Valley. He is a lover of cats and all things macabre, and a crusader for freedom of speech and human creativity. 

J.K. Divia is an indie author renowned for their unique blend of dark fantasy, contemporary paranormal themes, and mythological horror. With a focus on emotionally resonant storytelling, J.K. creates narratives that captivate readers, inviting them into worlds filled with depth and lyrical beauty.

C.J. DOTSON possesses the statistically average number of body parts for a human being to have. She and her husband, stepson, and children (all of whom also appear human) share a cabin in the woods with more bugs than she would ever like to see. In her limited spare time she enjoys reading, roguelite video games, painting (with…questionable success), and petting her dog and six cats. Visit her at cjdotsonauthor.com or say hi at https://www.instagram.com/cj_dots/

JONATHAN EDWARD DURHAM was born outside of Philadelphia where he read voraciously throughout his youth and beyond. After attending William and Mary, where he received a degree in neuroscience while also studying literature, Jonathan waded into the professional world before deciding he was better suited for more artistic pursuits.

He still lives in Pennsylvania with his husband and a house full of animals. There, he writes novels that bridge the wonder of his favorite childhood stories with the thrilling pop sensibilities of his early adult obsessions. He's also occasionally funny on social media, and the second edition of his debut novel, Winterset Hollow, is coming from Hachette/Union Square this October!

S.K. Ehra is an author of fantasy, horror, and all that lies between. When not reading or writing, she can be found wandering the woods and, while skittish, is friendly when approached.

PHILIP FRACASSI is the USA Today bestselling, Bram Stoker

and British Fantasy Award nominated author of eight novels,

including Sarafina, The Autumn Springs Retirement Home

Massacre, Gothic, Boys in the Valley, The Third Rule of Time

Travel, and A Child Alone with Strangers.

His award-winning story collections include Behold the Void,

Beneath a Pale Sky, and No One is Safe! 

His work has been published in numerous languages, and his

short fiction has been featured in dozens of magazines and

anthologies, including Best Horror of the Year, Nightmare

Magazine, Southwest Review, and Interzone.

You can follow Philip on Facebook, Instagram, and Bluesky, or

visit his website at pfracassi.com.

Alex Gonzalez is a genre author and WGA screenwriter. His short stories have appeared in Death's Head Press & Catapult Mag. He's taught writing for Catapult, Write or Die, WritersWorkshop, and the Long Island University MFA program. His debut novel "Rekt" was published in 2025 via Erewhon Press. His second novel will come out in September 2026.

Rikki lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she owns a tattoo and piercing studio with her husband. She scares people every day as a professional body piercer, so it’s only natural she’s also an author of horror. She’s constantly bringing home potentially haunted home decor, but alas, there’s no ghosts in the house, just two very bad dogs.

S. M. Hallow is a speculative fiction author who loves history, fairytales, and Frankenstein. Her short fiction has received various award nominations, and her longer fiction includes her novella How to Survive This Fairytale and debut novel The Halls of the Dead (Harper Voyager, 2026). Find out more at www.smhallow.com.

Ryan La Sala is a bestselling and award winning author, who writes about surreal things happening to queer people. His debut horror novel, THE HONEYS, is in development to become a major motion picture. He is the author of BEHOLDER, REVERIE, and BE DAZZLED, and THE DEAD OF SUMMER duology.

John Langan is the author of two novels and six collections of stories.  For his work, he has received the Bram Stoker and This Is Horror Awards.  He is one of the founders of the Shirley Jackson Awards, for which he remains on the Board of Advisors.  He lives in New York's Mid-Hudson Valley with his wife, younger son, and no more than one samurai sword.

Ronald Malfi is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of horror novels and thrillers. He is the recipient of two Independent Publisher Book Awards, the Beverly Hills Book Award, the Vincent Preis Horror Award, the Benjamin Franklin Award for Popular Fiction, and his novel Floating Staircase was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award. In 2024, the Maryland Library Association presented Malfi with the prestigious William G. Wilson Award for Adult Fiction. Most recognized for his haunting, literary style and memorable characters, Malfi’s dark fiction has gained acceptance among readers of all genres. When he’s not writing, he’s fronting the rock band VEER.

Lucas is a dark fiction author and host of The Suspense is Killing Me Podcast. He is the author of The Haunting of the Whispering House series, including titles Bury the Child, Burn the Girls, Bless the Mother, and Banish the Dead as well as the post-apocalyptic survival thriller series Only Darkness Remains. He is also cofounder of Sobelo Books publishing company, and owner of the Spineless Reads indie bookstore in Williamsburg, VA. Lucas is a retired veteran of the US Coast Guard and earned his Doctor of Engineering degree from The George Washington University. He now lives in a pile of trees in Virginia.

Victor Manibo is a Filipino speculative fiction writer and Lambda Literary Fellow. His latest novel, THE VILLA, ONCE BELOVED, is a Gothic horror of family, homecoming, and postcolonial vengeance set in the Leyte province of the Philippines.  Victor—who has been a featured author at BookCon, Awesome Con, Bay Area Book Festival, and more—is a superb speaker and would be a great author for any upcoming events.

Michelle McGill-Vargas is a writer of speculative and historical fiction whose work has appeared in Splickety Magazine,‌ The Copperfield Review, Typehouse Literary, and Short Fiction Break. McGill-Vargas serves as a board member of Midwest Writers Workshop and the Historical Novel Society-North America, and as a writing coach for Writing Day Workshop. By day, she’s a teacher for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. A lifelong Midwesterner, McGill-Vargas lives in northwest Indiana with her family and fur babies. American Ghoul (Blackstone, 2024) is her debut novel. 

Allison Mick (she/they) is a Los Angeles-based horror/comedy writer and the author of HUMBOLDT CUT (Erewhon Books), an eco-gothic horror novel about a suicidal psych nurse’s return to her hometown in the redwoods, and DIVE (Tenebrous Press), a speculative horror collection centered around a legendary punk bar and its clientele of musicians, comedians, fans, and vampires. Mick’s humor writing appears in Trailer Park Boys: Big A$$ Comic Collection (Devil’s Due Comics) and The Hard Times: The First 40 Years (Mariner Books).

Robert P. Ottone is a two-time Bram Stoker Award winning author from Long Island. He is the author of the novels Amityville Awakens, The Vile Thing We Created, The Triangle, There’s Something Sinister in Centerfield and the collections Tear Me Open: Fears Unwrapped and Her Infernal Name & Other Nightmares.

He lives in upstate New York with his wife, where he enjoys cigars, video games, film and a good cocktail.

Chris writes fun, scary novels, and strange short stories. He's also an artist and illustrator! Lives on Earth.

Kailee Pedersen writes haunted, unsettling speculative fiction. She graduated with a BA in classics from Columbia University, specializing in ancient Greek. Kailee was adopted from Nanning, China and grew up in Nebraska, where her family owns a farm. She is the author of the queer poetry chapbook Pastorale and the novel Sacrificial Animals, which was named one of the New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2024 and a finalist for Best Horror at the 2025 Libby Book Awards.

When not scribbling down her next book, you can catch her studying opera performance at the Mozarteum University, playing video games, or working as a software engineer in New York City. The Minimalist, a USA Today bestseller, is her second novel. 

Tanya Pell is a narcoleptic horror author who drinks bougie coffee and lives in the American South. She is the Bram Stoker Award–nominated author of This B Just Won't Die!, Her Wicked Roots, Cicada, and several short stories featured in anthologies like Fever Dreams and Mother Knows Best.

Sam Rebelein writes and teaches in Poughkeepsie, NY. His short fiction has appeared in PseudoPod, The Deadlands, Press Pause Press, Ellen Datlow's prestigious Best Horror of the Year, and elsewhere. His first three books (THE POORLY MADE AND OTHER THINGS, GALLOWAY'S GOSPEL, and the Bram Stoker award-nominated novel EDENVILLE) are all set in upstate New York, in fictional Renfield County. For more about Sam's work, and pictures of his scruffy pooch Frodo, follow him on Instagram @rebelsam94.

Meg Ripley was born in Ontario and raised in Newfoundland, Canada, surrounded by whales and icebergs. After an MFA in illustration from SVA, NYC, she worked as an illustrator for a decade before realizing her love of writing fiction could no longer be ignored. Her first novel, Necrology, was a Foreword INDIES Award Winner. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.

Rebecca Rowland is a Shirley Jackson and Bram Stoker Award-nominated author and editor whose third fiction collection, Unsettled Score: A Mixtape of Arthouse Horror, released from Lethe Press this summer. Cemetery Dance states that her work “reeks of The Twilight Zone in all the best ways” and that she is “one of the best short story writers today.” Stalk her at RowlandBooks.com.

Saratoga Schaefer (they/them) is the author of Serial Killer Support Group, Trad Wife, The Last Time We Drowned, and A Thousand Monstrous Forms. Their debut Serial Killer Support Group was a “Best Pick of the Month” by Barnes & Noble and Amazon and was named one of 2025's biggest thrillers by Goodreads. Originally from Brooklyn, Saratoga now lives upstate with several needy animals and a haunted clown table.

Maria Tureaud is the author of THIS HOUSE WILL FEED, a Gothic horror set at the height of Ireland’s Great Hunger. Maria hails from County Clare, Ireland—the region hit hardest by the Hunger—and THIS HOUSE WILL FEED is a haunting tale of generational trauma, colonialism, and Celtic folklore. It was given a given a STARRED review in Publishers Weekly (“The politics prove just as harrowing as the haunting”) and we are very excited about Maria’s next book, BENEATH, IT SLEEPS, coming out early next year. It’s about 18th century devil worshippers! Additionally, Maria is an excellent speaker and loves chatting with readers and fellow horror writers. If you ever take a HWR trip to Ireland I’m sure Maria would love to be involved.

Sara van Os lives in New York City with her wife and two very spoiled cats. She has a bachelor’s degree in English and German from NYU. No MFA, just vibes. DECOMPOSITION BOOK is her debut novel. 

Neena Viel is a horror writer who lives in a cabin in the woods in the Puget Sound. Her debut novel, LISTEN TO YOUR SISTER (St. Martin’s 2025), was nominated for a Bram Stoker and has been featured by USA Today, People, Screen Rant, Book Riot, Goodreads, Polygon, Locus, and more. Her second novel, I’LL WATCH YOUR BABY, a supernatural reimagining of America's most notorious welfare queen, is out May 26, 2026! When she's not writing weird, messed up books, she's taking a bunch of wackadoo classes with her dog. 

Chuck Wendig is the New York Times bestselling author of Wanderers, The Book of Accidents, Wayward, Black River Orchard, and more than two dozen other books for adults and young adults. A finalist for the Astounding Award and an alumnus of the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, he has also written for comics, games, film, and television. He’s known for his popular blog, terribleminds, and books about writing such as Damn Fine Story. He lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with his family.

Emily Zinnikas is the author of an upcoming 2026 horror debut with St. Martin's Press. She has a BS in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University and lives in New York. Emily loves all things spooky – and considers a ghost tour the highlight of any vacation.