Dr Charlotte Baker is an author and associate lecturer, with an interest in crime, horror and dark romance. She has nearly 70 publications, ranging from micro fiction to novels to academic articles. Charlotte enjoys spending time with little boy, drinking coffee, walking, and conversing with the various monsters that float around her imagination. 

Richard Farren Barber was born in Nottingham After studying in London he returned to the East Midlands. He lives with his wife and son and works as a manager for a local university. He has over 80 short stories published, seven novellas: “The Power of Nothing”, “The Sleeping Dead”, “Odette”, “Perfect Darkness, Perfect Silence”, “Closer Still”, “All Hell.” , and “Twenty Years Dead.” His two novels are: “The Living and the Lost” and “The Screaming Dead” (Co-authored with Peter Mark May).

You can  follow him on twitter.com/rfarrenbarber and www.facebook.com/richardfarrenbarber. His website can be found at www.richardfarrenbarber.co.uk

Darrell Buxton is the editor of 'We Belong Dead' magazine, the presenter of QUAD's monthly 'Fright Club' horror movie screenings, and an experienced interviewer/q&a host at film and TV events around the UK. Darrell was a key contributor to the Indicator Blu-ray box set 'Magic, Myth & Mutilation: The Micro-Budget Cinema of Michael J. Murphy', and edited volumes 3-8 of 'The BHF Book of Horror Stories'. 

Imogen Edwards-Jones studied Russian at Bristol University. Her first book, The Taming of Eagles, was about the first 100 days of the collapse of communism. A writer and journalist, she has travelled extensively within the old Soviet Union, studying in Kyiv. She is the author of twenty books including the best-selling Babylon series. Married with two children, Imogen lives in London. She is also a member of the London College of Psychic Studies and an honorary Cossack. Her latest novel, The Witch's Daughter, is the sequel to The Witches of St Petersburg.

Photo: Dave Bennett

Sian Ellis is a Sheffield based illustrator inspired by ghost stories, folklore and all things weird and wonderful. Her work ranges from fine line illustrations to painted murals and as well as running a popular online shop of humourous ghost inspired artworks she also writes and illustrates the folklore zine ‘Tell the Bees’, sharing curious and supernatural stories from history and fiction.

Tracy Fahey is an Irish writer twice shortlisted for Best Collection at the British Fantasy Awards in 2017 and 2022. Her short fiction is published in over forty American, British, Australian and Irish anthologies. Fahey’s writing is supported by residencies in Ireland, Greece and Finland. In 2022 she was awarded a Saari Fellowship for 2023 by the Kone Foundation. She holds a PhD on the Gothic and is a lecturer and research lead at Limerick School of Art and Design where she teaches seminar programmes on folk horror and the Gothic.

Simon Fairbanks is an author of fantasy novels and short story collections. His stories have appeared in several literary magazines, including Popshot, Firewords, and Parakeet. Simon is a Chair of the Birmingham Writers' Group and enjoys giving talks at literary events. Beyond writing, he enjoys reading, running, and finding new ways to make his children laugh.  

Nick Freeman is a writer, critic, and editor who teaches English at Loughbrough University. He's published widely on gothic and supernatural fiction, most recently editing a collection of A.M. Burrage's stories,  The Little Blue Flames and Other Tales of the Uncanny,  for the British Library's 'Tales of the Weird' series in 2022. His ghost stories have been published by a number of small presses and he is currently working on a collection. He lived in a haunted house in  Bath  for some years and lived to tell the tale.

Kate Griffin studied English Literature at University and went on to work as an assistant to an antiques dealer, a journalist for local newspapers, in various senior communications roles and, until recently for The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. Her love of all things Victorian is apparent in the Kitty Peck Murder Mystery series published by Faber and Faber. The first book in the Kitty series, was the winner of the Faber/Stylist magazine competition to find a distinctive new voice in crime.

At university, Kate developed a healthy obsession with Gothic literature and ‘fat’ Victorian novels and all her books play with the recurring themes of the genres Her latest novel Fyneshade is a ‘ghost’s story’. Bridging the space between those classics of ‘Governess Gothic’, Jane Eyre and The Turn of the Screw, it’s an homage to Charlotte Bronte and Henry James, offering readers familiar tropes twisted into something darkly devious.

Kate is the co-author (with Marcia Hutchinson) of the forthcoming historical novel The Blackbirds of St Giles to be published by Simon & Schuster under the pseudonym Lila Cain in 2025.

Kerry Hadley-Pryce is a British writer and academic. Her first novel 'The Black Country', published by Salt Publishing in 2015, was part of her MA Creative Writing at Manchester Writing School. Her second novel, 'Gamble', (Salt Publishing, 2018) was shortlisted for the Encore Second Novel Award 2019. Her third novel, 'God's Country' was published by Salt Publishing in February 2023. She has had short stories published in various anthologies and online by Fictive Dream and The Incubator, read by Brum Radio, and her short story, 'Chimera' is included in the Best British Short Stories 2023 anthology. She has a creative writing PhD in 'Psychogeographic Flow in Black Country Fiction' from Manchester Metropolitan University, is a creative writing mentor, and teaches creative & professional writing at the University of Wolverhampton. Her fourth novel, 'Lie of the Land' is to be published by Salt Publishing in 2025 and she is working on her fifth novel now.

Elizabeth Hand is the author of twenty genre-spanning novels and five collections of short fiction and essays. Her work has received multiple Shirley Jackson, World Fantasy and Nebula Awards, among other honors, and have been chosen as Notable Books by the New York Times and Washington Post. Her critically acclaimed novels featuring Cass Neary, “one of literature’s great noir anti-heroes” [Katherine Dunn] is being developed as a UK streaming series, and several of her other works have been optioned for film and TV. She is a longtime reviewer for the Washington Post Book World, and has written for numerous publications, including the L.A. Times, Salon, the Boston Review, and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Much of her work focuses on artists and performers, particularly those outside the mainstream, as well as on the impacts of climate change. She is on the faculty of the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing, and for over thirty years has led myriad writing workshops, including Clarion West, Clarion, Odyssey, the Yale Writer's Conference, Pike’s Peak Writer's Conference, The Writer’s Hotel, and recently, the debut Salam Writer's Workshop in Lahore, Pakistan and a futurist workshop at Wytham Abbey, Oxford, UK.  She divides her time between the Maine coast and North London. You can find her on Twitter @liz_hand and on Facebook @ElizabethHandAuthor.

Photo by Judith Clute

Sally Harris writes supernatural fiction as S.A. Harris, and her first novel, Haverscroft, was published by Salt Publishing in May 2019. Haverscroft was a semi-finalist for The Book Bloggers Novel of the Year Award 2020, a Den of Geek Top Ten Read 2019 and a recommended read for Halloween 2020 in Prima Magazine.

Sally’s second novel, Seahurst, was published in May 2023 and is set on the Suffolk coast, where she spent much of her time growing up. She now lives in Norwich with her husband and three children and works as a prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service.

Sally was runner-up in the Brixton Bookjam Debut Novelist Competition and won the Retreat West Crime Writer Competition 2018. She was shortlisted for The Fresher Prize First 500 Words of a Novel Competition and published in their anthology, Monsters in November 2018.

Sally can be contacted on the following Social media links.

Twitter https://twitter.com/home

Instagram https://www.instagram.com
Author website https://www.saharrisauthor.com 

Emilia Hart is a British-Australian writer. She was born in Sydney and studied English Literature and Law at the University of New South Wales before working as a lawyer in Sydney and London.

Emilia is a graduate of Curtis Brown Creative’s Three Month Online Novel Writing Course and was Highly Commended in the 2021 Caledonia Novel Award. Her short fiction has been published in Australia and the UK. "Weyward" is her debut novel. She lives in London, England. 

Andrew Michael Hurley’s first novel, The Loney, was originally published in 2014 by Tartarus Press and then John Murray a year later, after which it won the 2015 Costa First Novel Award and the 2016 British Book Industry awards for Debut Novel and Book of the Year. Devil’s Day was published in 2017 and went on to jointly win the 2018 Royal Society of Literature Encore Award for best second novel. The folk horror novel, Starve Acre was published in 2019, and has been recently adapted into a feature film, starring Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark. His BBC Radio 4 series, Voices in the Valley, which aired in autumn 2022, won bronze at this year's Aria Awards for audio and radio broadcasts. The author lives in Lancashire and teaches Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University’s Writing School.  

Photo by Hal Shinnie

Sarah Jackson (she/they) writes speculative fiction and poetry which has appeared in Strange Horizons, Tales From Between, and Wyldblood Magazine. She is also editor of Inner Worlds magazine. Sarah is a certified Write Your Self trauma-sensitive writing guide, and sits on the board of writing for wellbeing organisation Lapidus International. She offers friendly and supportive writing workshops and courses on a range of topics from fairies to feelings, and of course ghosts.

Her website is https://sarah-i-jackson@ghost.io and you can find her on mastodon as sarahijackson@wandering.shop

Amy Jeffs is a Somerset-based author & artist. In 2019, she has a PhD in Art History from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and specialises in medieval art and culture.

Her writing is often accompanied by her own linocut & wood-engraved prints.

Jeffs' first book, STORYLAND: A New Mythology of Britain, was Sunday Times bestseller, shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year & named a Times Historical Fiction Book of the Year.

Her second book, WILD: Tales from Early Medieval Britain, explores an old idea of the wilderness through medieval stories of outcasts, monsters and the natural, supernatural world. The audiobook, illustrated with song, was named audiobook of the week by the Times and the Guardian.

Naomi Kelsey is the winner of two Northern Writers’ Awards and of the HWA Dorothy Dunnett Competition 2021. Her fiction has been published in Mslexia magazine and shortlisted for several further awards including the Bridport Prize and the Bristol Prize. She also writes book reviews for ‘On the Tudor Trail’. By day she is an English teacher in Newcastle, where she lives with her husband, their two children and their dog. The Burnings is her first novel. 

Alison Littlewood’s most recent novel, published as A. J. Elwood, is The Other Lives of Miss Emily White, a spooky tale of dark academia. Her first book, A Cold Season, was selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club and described as ‘perfect reading for a dark winter’s night.’ Other titles include Mistletoe, The Hidden People, The Crow Garden and The Unquiet House. Her short stories have been selected for several Best Of anthologies and published in her new collection, A Curious Cartography. She has also won the Shirley Jackson Award for short fiction. Alison lives in a house of creaking doors and crooked walls in deepest darkest Yorkshire, England.   

Her website is at www.alisonlittlewood.co.uk.

Tim Major is a writer and freelance editor from York. His books include Snakeskins and Hope Island, three Sherlock Holmes novels, short story collection And the House Lights Dim and a monograph about the 1915 silent crime film, Les Vampires. His upcoming novel Jekyll & Hyde: Consulting Detectives will be published by Titan Books in September 2024. Tim’s short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, and has been selected for Best of British Science Fiction, Best of British Fantasy and Best Horror of the Year. Find out more at www.timjmajor.com 

Julie Malone wrote her first story, ‘Silver Linings’, a fantasy adventure set in Somerset in 2006 intending it to be a one-only book. However, her characters demanded she continue, and the series now has five volumes in The Winterne series, plus a historical prequel. She has also written a series of six animal stories for younger children.

Julie went on to create an annual Notts countywide writing competition for children in 2009, which continued for thirteen years. Julie now works with local community art groups and play organisers, gives creative writing workshops on several topics, including ‘How to Write Ghost Stories’ and is involved with the Sherwood Arts Week, as the Press Officer.

To contact Julie, please email her at jaemalone.author@gmail.com, visit her website www.jaemalone.co.uk, or visit Jae Malone Facebook page

Julie is a member of the Society of Authors (SoA) and the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE) and has a current, Enhanced DBS Certificate.

Anna Mazzola is the award-winning and bestselling author of five Gothic historical novels. Her debut novel, The Unseeing, won an Edgar Allan Poe award. Her third novel, The Clockwork Girl, set in 18th century Paris, was shortlisted for two CWA Dagger awards and a Fingerprint Award, and nominated for the Dublin Literary award. Her fourth novel, The House of Whispers, a ghost story set in Fascist Italy, reached number 7 in the Saturday Times Chart and is a Sunday Times historical fiction pick for 2023. Her fifth historical novel, The Book of Secrets, is based on a real case from 17th century Rome and will be out in March 2024. Her first legal thriller will be published in 2025 under the name Anna Sharpe.

She is also a human rights and criminal justice solicitor providing training to other advocates. She lives in South London, with one husband, two children, a black cat and a snake.

http://annamazzola.com

https://twitter.com/Anna_Mazz

https://www.facebook.com/AnnaMazzolaWriter/
https://www.instagram.com/annamazzolawriter/

Mark Norman is an author and folklorist based in Devon. He is the curator of The Folklore Library and Archive and the creator and host of The Folklore Podcast, which has been running for 8 years and is ranked in the top 0.5% of podcasts in its genre worldwide, with almost 2 million downloads to date.

Mark's books include the full-length study of ghostly dogs, Black Dog Folklore, Telling the Bees and other Customs, Amazon #1 bestselling Dark Folklore (with his wife Tracey), The Folklore of Devon and The Folklore of Wales: Ghosts (with Dr Delyth Badder). His eagerly-anticipated book Zoinks: The Spooky Folklore of Scooby-Doo will be published later in 2024 with Chinbeard Books. 

Tracey Norman has written fiction for as long as she can remember, covering a variety of genres. She is currently enjoying success with her first stage play WITCH, a historical drama based on original English witch trial transcripts, which premiered in 2016 and has been performed continuously ever since. It has been used as Theatre In Education for Years 8 and 9 and for Exeter University undergrads, and has been included as a formal seminar in two Bristol University undergrad degree courses – “Witchcraft” and “History Outside the Box”. Its 75th performance was also its London premiere.

In 2017, Tracey’s Lovecraftian short story Dark Words was accepted in Fairy Tales and Folklore Reimagined, an anthology of prose and poetry from Between The Lines Publishing, Minnesota. As well as the dramatic and scary, she has also written ‘Sammy’s Saturday Job’, a story about a dragon for young children (2016) and ‘The Septillion of Hheserakh’, a collection of fictional creation myths and legends with a strong Norse flavour (2018). This is the companion book for one of her current works-in-progress, the first in The Fire-Eyes Chronicles. She and her husband Mark co-wrote Dark Folklore, published in 2021 by The History Press. Her first full-length fantasy novel, Who Is Anna Stenberg? is published on 31st October 2023, by Between The Lines Publishing.

Currently, Tracey is working on several projects as well as the fantasy novel. A new non-fiction title extends the research she undertook when writing WITCH. She is looking forward to sharing the story of the Lyme Regis housewife whose 1687 trial inspired her, as well as exploring the themes and issues raised in the play. A sequel to Who Is Anna Stenberg? is also in progress.

When she is not writing, Tracey can be found behind a microphone, as one of the voices behind Devon-based indie audio production house and theatre company Circle of Spears Productions. She is a freelance narrator on Audible and has a sizeable list of stage, TV and film credits. She gives talks to a variety of groups on historical subjects such as witchcraft and early modern medicine. She doesn’t relax often, but when she does, it generally involves reading, coffee and her slightly unhealthy obsession with sock yarn. She lives near the edge of a forest in mid Devon with her husband Mark, her daughter, and a feline trip hazard.

Laura Purcell is a former bookseller living in Colchester, Essex with her husband. She is the author of six novels, including Gothic novel The Silent Companions, which was a Radio 2 Book Club pick, was selected for the Zoe Ball ITV Book Club and was the winner of the Thumping Good Read Award. Her short story ‘The Chillingham Chair’ was included in The Haunting Season anthology, which was an instant Sunday Times bestseller. She also wrote Roanoake Falls, a dramatic podcast for Realm, working with John Carpenter and Sandy King Carpenter. @spookypurcell 

E. Saxey is a queer Londoner and recidivist goth who works in universities and libraries. Their first novel, Unquiet, is a folk horror set in Victorian England inspired by The Unquiet Grave.

The short weird fiction is available in a collection, Lost in the Archives (Lethe Press) and has more recently appeared in Giganotosaurus and Unspeakable: A Queer Gothic Anthology (Haunt Publishing).

They're on Twitter and Bluesky at @ESaxey, and at thelightningbook.co.uk.

Brontë Schiltz is a PhD candidate at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her work has appeared in SFRA Review, The Sibyl, Fantastika Journal, Aeternum Journal, SIC Journal and Revenant Journal, and is forthcoming in Nigel Kneale and Horror. She has also spoken on podcasts Victorian Legacies, The Ghost Story Book Club and BERGCAST, and given two online lectures with Romancing the Gothic.

Teika Marija Smits is a UK-based writer and freelance editor. She writes poetry, fiction and non-fiction, and is the author of the poetry pamphlet, Russian Doll, and the speculative short story collections Umbilical (NewCon Press) and Waterlore (Black Shuck Books), both published in 2023. A fan of all things fae, she is delighted by the fact that Teika means fairy tale in Latvian. Teika is on Twitter/X @MarijaSmits and her website is: https://teikamarijasmits.com/ 

Anna Stuart is a Derbyshire author who writes bestselling WW2 fiction with strong, female protagonists. She specialises in finding the nooks and crannies of the era, from the people battling to keep Berlin zoo running as Nazi Germany crumbles, to the women ferrying planes between bases in both the UK and the US, to the midwife battling to bring babies into Auschwitz, she loves individual stories of courage and love in the face of the toughest odds.

She also writes medieval fiction as Joanna Courtney, again following the lesser-known stories of female enterprise and daring in times past. 

Megan Taylor is the author of four novels, How We Were Lost, The Dawning, The Lives of Ghosts and We Wait. Her fifth, a dark thriller, is due out from Bloodhound Books in 2024. She also writes short stories, some of which are included in her collection, The Woman Under the Ground. She is currently in the process of putting together a second collection, as well as working on her next novel. When Megan isn’t busy with her own stories, she enjoys running creative writing workshops and courses in Nottingham and beyond. For more information, please visit www.megantaylor.info 

Angeline Trevena was born and bred in a rural corner of Devon, but now lives among the breweries and canals of central England. She writes dystopian urban fantasy and post-apocalyptic fiction, and is the author of a series of bestselling fantasy worldbuilding guides. Her new lockdown hobby was drawing fantasy maps and, after a few years honing her skills, she now takes on map-drawing commissions and has become a popular cartographer on TikTok.

worldbuilding: stepbystepworldbuilding.com
fiction: angelinetrevena.co.uk 

Menna van Praag has lived in Cambridge all her life, except when she was studying at Oxford University. She has worked as a reader for BBC Films & TV and as a script editor for a number of independent production companies. Menna is the author of five successful novels of magical realism, including The House at the End of Hope Street, which have been translated into 26 languages. The acclaimed The Sisters Grimm marked her first foray into dark, contemporary fantasy.

Photo by Rafal Lapszanski

Kit Whitfield was born in West London and brought up in Wiltshire and London, where she now lives with her husband and son in a neurodiverse family. She is the author of Bareback (published in the US as Benighted), which was shortlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award and longlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award, and In Great Waters, which was nominated for the World Fantasy Award. Her fantasy duology In the Heart of Hidden Things and the sequel , All the Hollow of the Sky, are published by Jo Fletcher Books. You will find her on Twitter @KitWhitfield. 

Ally Wilkes grew up in a succession of isolated—possibly haunted—country houses and boarding schools. After studying law at Oxford, she went on to spend eleven years as a criminal barrister. Her debut novel, All The White Spaces, was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award, and her second novel, Where The Dead Wait, will be released in the UK in January 2024. Her short fiction has appeared in several magazines and anthologies (most recently Darkness Beckons from Flame Tree Press) and she has also published a novella with Cemetery Gates Media as AV Wilkes. Ally now lives in Greenwich, London, with an anatomical human skeleton and far too many books about Polar exploration. You can follow Ally on Twitter @UnheimlichManvr or on Instagram @av_wilkes.

Photo by Sophie Davidson