OUT NOW: Coffin Bell, Vol. 7, No. 3

A new issue of online journal Coffin Bell, featuring my story ‘The Third Uncle George’…

Coffin Bell is an online journal of dark literature edited by Tamara Burross Grisanti and a staff of volunteer editors. They publish poetry, flash fiction, short stories, creative nonfiction, essay, short criticism, and art exploring dark themes.

Contents:

Flash Fiction

'The Night Watcher' and 'I look in the mirror and she looks back' by Emmanuelle Knappenberger
'There’s No Such Thing as a Free Meal' by T. L. Sherwood
'Hope' by James Haig
'Vu Ahin Zol Ikh Geyn' by Cor de Wulf
'The Last Days' by Martin Andrew

Short Story

'Jamais Vu' by Maureen Mancini Amaturo
'The Besom' by Linda Boroff
'Itchy Trigger Finger' by Steve Levandoski
'The Third Uncle George' by Hannah Kate
'Explorations in the Waste Quarter' by James Owens
'Rat Trap' by Valerie E. Polichar
'Sympathetic Magick' by Bradford Gyori
'Tunnel' by Wes Blake
'We’ll Be Together Forever' by Ken Derry
'Trophies' by Melissa Pleckham
'Abimelech' by Jude Dexter
'The Creep' by Sian Jones
'The Station' by Raven Burnett
'Blackout' by Bailey Bujnosek
'Cool, Dark Stranger' by Katie Nickas
'Gertrude 1896 – 1927' by Jessalyn LeBlanc
'Soft News Night' by Jeanne Dickey
'The King of Spit' by Phil Keeling

Poetry

'Winter Commute' by Elisabeth Horan
'How Your Body Was Found', 'Nika' and 'A Calling Closer' by Leila Farjami
'Ghazal of the Cimmerians' by Christian Chase Garner
'My Husband, Ted Bundy', 'My Uncle, John Wayne Gacy, Visits Me', 'My First and Only Date with Herb Baumeister' and 'Potential Victim of David Berkowitz' by Sarah Lilius
'sod' by Leyla Guirand

For to read this issue, please visit the Coffin Bell website.

OUT NOW: Penny Dreadfuls and the Gothic: Investigations of Pernicious Tales of Terror, edited by Nicole C. Dittmer and Sophie Raine (University of Wales Press, 2023)

A new academic collection of essays exploring penny dreadfuls, including my chapter on Wagner the Wehr-Wolf and the work of George Reynolds...

Penny Dreadfuls and the Gothic breaks new ground in uncovering penny titles which have been hitherto largely neglected from literary discourse revealing the cultural, social and literary significance of these working-class texts. The present volume is a reappraisal of penny dreadfuls, demonstrating their cruciality in both our understanding of working-class Victorian Literature and the Gothic mode. This edited collection of essays provides new insights into the fields of Victorian literature, popular culture and Gothic fiction more broadly; it is divided into three sections, whose titles replicate the dual titles offered by penny publications during the nineteenth century. Sections one and two consist of three chapters, while section three consists of four essays, all of which intertwine to create an in-depth and intertextual exposition of Victorian society, literature, and gothic representations.

Contents:

- Introduction: Dreadful Beginnings by Nicole C. Dittmer and Sophie Raine

Section One: The Progression of Pennys; or, Adaptations and Legacies of the Dreadful

- Penny Pinching: Reassessing the Gothic Canon Through Nineteenth-Century Reprinting by Hannah-Freya Blake and Marie Léger-St-Jean
- “As long as you are industrious, you will get on very well”: Adapting The String of Pearls’ Economies of Horror by Brontë Schiltz
- “Your lot is wretched, old man”: Anxieties of Industry, Empire and England in George Reynolds’s Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf by Hannah Priest

Section Two: Victorian Medical Sciences and Penny fiction; or, Dreadful Discourses of the Gothic

- ‘Embalmed pestilence’, ‘intoxicating poisons’: Rhetoric of Contamination, Contagion, and the Gothic Marginalisation of Penny Dreadfuls by their Contemporary Critics by Manon Burz-Labrande
- “A Tale of the Plague”: Anti-Medical Sentiment and Epidemic Disease in Early Victorian Popular Gothic Fiction by Joseph Crawford
- “Mistress of the broomstick”: Biology, Ecosemiotics, and Monstrous Women in Wizard’s The Wild Witch of the Heath; or the Demon of the Glen by Nicole C. Dittmer

Section Three: Mode, Genre, and Style; or, Gothic Storytelling and Ideologies

- A Ventriloquist and a Highwayman Walk into an Inn... Early Penny Bloods and the Politics of Humour in Jack Rann and Valentine Vaux by Celine Frohn
- Gothic Ideology and Religious Politics in James Malcolm Rymer’s Penny Fiction by Rebecca Nesvet
- “Muddling about among the dead”: Found Manuscripts and Metafictional Storytelling in James Malcolm Rymer’s Newgate: A Romance by Sophie Raine

For more information, please visit the University of Wales website.

OUT NOW: Nightmare Fuel: Objects of Horror (Cloaked Press, 2022)

A new collection of short stories, featuring my story ‘Wireless’…

Sometimes it’s not what goes bump in the night, but what lurks in plain sight that is the true horror. Come along for the chills and thrills as these Cloaked Press authors explore the terrors of such seemingly mundane items as an antique desk, a television, or a cute little stuffed elephant. Find out the terrible truth of a macabre store for the wronged and a ‘magical’ elixir. These and many more frights await you. Not everything is as ordinary as it seems in Nightmare Fuel – Objects of Horror.

Contents:

'The Apparition' by Teel James Glenn
'Wireless' by Hannah Kate
'Heebie-Jeebies' by Gina Easton
'The Shrunken Head' by Derek Muk
'Mr Mongo’s Fanciful Elixir' by Glenn Dungan
'Tattie Bogle' by M.J. McClymont
'Jessica' by Elizabeth Guilt
'The Alternative-To-Candy Halloween House' by Nancy Pica Renken
'The Chimes' by Jim Mountfield
'Dead Man’s Crown' by Barend Nieuwstraten III
'Sacrasenia' by Eowen Valk
'And Good Dreams Will Come To You' by Cheryl Zaidan
'The Mirror of Bokor' by Sarah Lapalme
'The Cost' by Victory Witherkeigh
'Jo-Jo' by Frederick Pangbourne

For more information, or to buy a copy of the book, please visit the Cloaked Press website.

OUT NOW: Face in the Mirror: A Students' Guide, ed. by Judy Morris (ZunTold, 2022)

A new student anthology of poetry, featuring my poems 'Isti Mirant Stella', 'table', 'Your Poem Here' and 'Delaunay's Dye'...

Who am I? Is it okay for me to be different? Just what is my place in the world?

Life can be a difficult path to walk. But poetry can be a powerful and loyal friend, bringing light and joy when things seem dark, helping us find our way.

This book is a unique collection of classical and modern poetry for young people, covering a vast range of human experience. You will find the voices of young people in these pages as well as poets who lived many years ago. Their words can touch our minds and hearts, unlock our emotions and help us maintain good mental health.

A poem can help you to say, 'This is how I feel: this is my reality.' And that can be the start of a journey towards personal happiness, inner peace and wellbeing.

Poetry by:

Paul Morris, Emily Dickinson, Peter Kalu, Edgar Albert Guest, Abbie Farwell Brown, Hannah Kate, William Blake, William Shakespeare, Rosie Garland, Judy Morris, Tesni Penney, Mojisola Oladiti, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, George Eliot, Mary Frye, Aya Ahmad, Marian Allen, Wilfred Owen, Elaine Bousfield, Emily Jane, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Christian D. Larson, Emily Brontë, Robert Louis Stevenson, Wang Zhihuan, Rudyard Kipling, Charlotte Brontë, Robert Frost, Sara Teasdale and William Ernest Henley.

This text accompanies Face in the Mirror: A Teachers’ Guide for using poetry to support good mental health in the classroom and beyond.

For more information, or to buy a copy of the book, please visit the ZunTold website.

OUT NOW: Fantastika Journal 5:1 (May 2021)

The May 2021 issue of Fantastika Journal is out now.

Editorials:

The Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic at the University of Glasgow: Practising the Impossible
Rob Maslen

Articles:

'All of her made part of […] the Wood': Consumption, Transformation, and the Limits of Subversion in Naomi Novik’s Uprooted
Eilis Lee

'White is Not My Colour': Penny Dreadful, the Postcolonial, and the Changing Gothic Heroine
Carey Millsap-Spears

Conscripts from Birth: War and Soldiery in the Grim Darkness of the Far Future
Mike Ryder

Prepping for the Latourian Apocalypse, from Doomsday Preppers to Broken Earth
Derek J. Thiess

Non-Fiction Reviews:

Emily Alder, Weird Fiction and Science at the Fin de Siècle (2020)
Fredrik Blanc

Mike Ashley, Science-Fiction Rebels: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazines from 1981 to 1990 (2020)
Derek Johnston

Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora, Surrogate Humanity: Race, Robots, and the Politics of Technological Futures (2019)
Chase Ledin

Nivedita Bagchi, Human Nature and Politics in Utopian and Anti-Utopian Fiction (2018)
Peter J. Maurits

Francesca T. Barbini (ed.), A Shadow Within: The Evolution of Evil in Science Fiction and Fantasy (2019)
Taylor Driggers

Eleanor Beal and Jonathan Greenaway (eds), Horror and Religion: New Literary Approaches to Theology, Race and Sexuality (2019)
Chloe Campbell

Catherine Belsey, Tales of the Troubled Dead: Ghost Stories in Cultural History (2019)
Lucy Hall

Mark O’Connell, Notes From An Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back (2020)
Oliver Rendle

Carys Crossen, The Nature of the Beast: Transformations of the Werewolf from the 1970s to the Twenty-First Century (2019)
Hannah Priest

Dan Dinello, Children of Men (2020)
Ezekiel Crago

Paul Dobraszczyk, Future Cities: Architecture and the Imagination (2019)
Thomas Kelly

Charul Palmer-Patel and Glyn Morgan (eds), Sideways in Time: Critical Essays on Alternate History Fiction (2019)
Paul March-Russell

Dawn Stobbart, Videogames and Horror: From Amnesia to Zombies, Run! (2019)
Matt Coward-Gibbs

Peter Swirski, Stanislaw Lem: Philosopher of the Future (2019)
Joe Howsin

Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games (2019)
Alison Baker

Toby Widdicombe, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Guide for the Perplexed (2019)
Mariana Rios Maldonado

Conference Reports:

The Gothic 1980s: The Decade that Scared Us (June 8, 2019)
Thomas Brassington

Science Fiction Research Association Conference 2019 (June 21-24, 2019)
Alexandria Nunn

Queer Fears (June 28, 2019)
Daniel Sheppard

Religioni fantastiche e dove trovarle (July 3-6, 2019)
Chiara Crosignani

15th International Gothic Association Conference – Gothic Terror, Gothic Horror (July 30-August 2, 2019)
Alissa Burger

Gothflix: A Conference Celebrating Netflix and the Gothic (February 1-2, 2020)
Kat Humphries

Beyond Borders: Empires, Bodies, Science Fictions (September 10-12, 2020)
Beatriz Herrera Corado

Fiction Reviews:

The Terror of the Transcendental
A Review of Roarings from Further Out: Four Weird Novellas by Algernon Blackwood (2019)
Michael Wheatley

For a Wider Weird
A Review of Women’s Weird 2: More Strange Stories by Women, 1891-1937 (2020)
Steen Ledet Christiansen

'Trespassers will be persecuted'
A Review of Weird Woods: Tales from the Haunted Forests of Britain (2020)
Stuart Spear

Do Androids Dream of Electric Nirvana?
A Review of Readymade Bodhisattva (2019)
Lauren Nixon

S is for Superhero, H is for Heart: Shazam! and the Magic of an Inclusive Family
A Review of Shazam! (2019)
Zvonimir Prtenjača

'Nothing is Everything is Really Quite Something'
A Review of Nothing is Everything (2018) by Simon Strantzas
Oliver Rendle

'Politics can wait until the Khan is dead'
A Review of Ghost of Tsushima (2020)
Charlotte Gislam

Tales of Two Tagores: Fantasy between Folklore and Children’s Literature
A Review of Fantasy Fictions from the Bengal Renaissance: Abanindranath Tagore’s The Make-Believe Prince and Gaganendranath Tagore’s Toddy-Cat the Bold (2018)
Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay

'I’m the Devil, and I’m here to [Re]do the Devil’s Business': Alternative History as Political Commentary
A Review of Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood (2019)
Trae Toler

For more information, or to subscribe to the journal, please visit the Fantastika Journal website.

OUT NOW: The Fourth BHF Book of Horror Stories, ed. by Darrell Buxton (BHF Book of Horror Stories, 2021)

A new collection of short stories inspired by British horror films, including 'Delivery' by yours truly...

The moon is full... the witching hour approaches... time to devour sacrificial offerings anew!

Drug-induced paranoia brings familiar television figures to sinister life...

Something nasty dwells beneath the floorboards of a country cottage, awaiting the new tenants...

An unexpected postal delivery leads to the uncovering of an ancient vampire's legacy...

Strange surgical practces are employed to remove a deadly tumour - with post-op consequences...

Over thirty new tales of terror emerge from the tomb! The weird world of British horror cinema inspires this latest collection of distrubing fiction, putting fresh spins on a cornucopia of chilling characters last glimpsed through the haze of late night television or encountered at menacing midnight movie marathons. Dare you venture beyond the silver screen, into a nightmarish new dimension bringing all your frightening favourites to the printed page? Be brave, be bold... or be buried!

Contents:

Night Thoughts by Sam Dawson
Carrion Screaming by Samantha Jayne Crosby
Hard Core by Darrell Buxton
Starr Student by Ken Shinn
The Night Bus by Franklin Marsh
Protein by Tony Earnshaw
The Phoenix for the Flame by Ken Shinn
Vultura is Dead... and Well and Living in London by Simon J. Ballard
Paging Doctor Death by Ian Taylor
Tea with Mrs Hindley by Jez Connolly
Good Boy by Adam J. Marsh
By Dawn's Early Light by Tony Earnshaw
Delivery by Hannah Kate
Gentry in the Country by Sam Dawson
The Little Red-Haired Girl by Ken Shinn
The Endless Depths Above Us by Paul Newman
The Making of Lord Courtley by Simon J. Ballard
The Making of Johnny Alucard by Simon J. Ballard
Frankenstein's Tortoise by Wayne Mook
Calhoun Despairs by Martin Parsons
Glad It's All Over by Ken Shinn
Tansy's Poppets by Selene Paxton-Brooks
The Interview by Jason D. Brawn
Luxuriate Effervescently by Darrell Buxton
Just a Click and the Agony by James Stanger
A Bloody Nuisance by Ken Shinn
A Voodoo Favour by Ian Taylor
Telling Stories by Lawrence Gordon Clark

Proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to Angelman UK. For more information, or to buy a copy, please visit the book's webpage.

OUT NOW: Nothing (Hic Dragones, 2019)

Bleak landscapes, empty hearts, insignificant lives, dystopian futures, extinction, limbo, uncertainty, death. A beautiful void or a horrific state of being. The simple complexity of nothingness.

A new anthology of short stories, edited by Hannah Kate, that take place when everything has gone, in the empty spaces that are left, and with the people that cling to a last deceptive semblance of something—anything—in the face of the void. Embark on a journey to nowhere, with no one, meaning nothing.

Contents:

'Four Blank Pages' by Daisy Black
'Nobody' by K. Bannerman
'Nothing but Darkness' by Patrick Lacey
'A Banquet of Stars' by Anthony Cowin
'The Empty People' by Amanda Steel
'Ashes' by C.V. Leedham
'State of You' by Jeanette Greaves
'Projection' by Ackley Lewis
'The Experiment' by Sally Davies
'Mrs Frankenstein's Void' by Valentine George
'The Forever Sea' by Melanie Stott
'The House Lights Dim' by Tim Major
'Trap Street' by Hannah Kate
'White Stone' by Rue Karney
'The March' by M. Raymond
'The Sum of our Memories' by Sara L. Uckelman
'Traps' by David Turnbull
'The Hole is Waiting' by Tony Rabig
'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Square' by Nancy Schumann
'Blisters' by Sarah Peploe

For more information, or to get a copy of the book, please visit the Hic Dragones website.

OUT NOW: The Black Room Manuscripts Volume Four, ed. by J.R. Park and Tracy Fahey (The Sinister Horror Company, 2018)

A new collection of tales of terror, including 'Planning Permission', a story of municipal horror from yours truly...

Some words are born in shadows.

Some tales told only in whispers.

Under the paper thin veneer of our sanity is a world that exists. Hidden just beyond in plain sight, waiting to consume you should you dare stray from the street-lit paths that sedate our fears.

For centuries the Black Room has stored stories of these encounters, suppressing the knowledge of the rarely seen. Protecting the civilised world from its own dark realities.

The door to the Black Room has once again swung open to unleash twenty four masterful tales of the macabre from the twisted minds of a new breed of horror author.

The Black Room holds many secrets.

Dare you enter… one final time?

Contents:

Foreword by Michael David Wilson
Prologue by Tracy Fahey and J.R. Park
That Thing I Did by Tracy Fahey
Eating the Dream by K.A. Laity
A Clear Day in a Season of Storms by Simon Avery
The Hanging Boy by Gary McMahon
Mam's Girl by J.L. George
Tears of Honey by John McNee
Deciper by Daniel Marc Chant
Tap, Tap... by Marie O'Regan
Black Silk by Benedict J. Jones
Dragged Down by Ramsey Campbell
Palace of the Damned by C.L. Raven
Brooks Pond by Mark West
Planning Permission by Hannah Kate
Shrivelled Tongues of Dead Horses by Erik Hofstatter
Death Wish by Margrét Helgadóttir
Size Isn't Everything by James Everington
Pain Has a Voice by Stephen Bacon
Swimming Out to Sea by Penny Jones
Reanimation Channel by Mark Cassell
Craft Ail by Duncan P. Bradshaw
Dr Zwigli's Last Paper by Elizabeth Davis
Laurel by Terry Grimwood
Tide Will Tell by V.H. Leslie
The Last Horror Story by Tracy Fahey and J.R. Park
Epilogue by Tracy Fahey and J.R. Park
Afterword by Jim Mcleod

All proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to Refuge. For more information, or to buy a copy, please visit the Sinister Horror Company website.

OUT NOW: The Spooky Isles Book of Horror, edited by Andrew Garvey and David Saunderson (Dark Sheep Books, 2018)

A new collection of stories and articles about the UK and Ireland's horror and folklore, including a short story and essay about Hannah Beswick, the Manchester Mummy, by yours truly...

From The Spooky Isles, the UK and Ireland's favourite horror and paranormal website, this first volume of the Spooky Isles Book of Horror features 20 stories and essays from 18 different authors. Well-established dark literary voices and new writers explore the UK and Ireland's darkest horror and folklore, from long-dead serial killers to malignant fairies, evil cults, spontaneous human combustion, vengeful ghosts and black dogs...

... welcome to the Spooky Isles!

Contents:

Sparks by Michael Connon
The Black Dog by Tracy Fahey
Letters from a Toxic Heart by Ed Burkley
Lambs to the Slaughter by Chris Rush Havergill's Fetch by Catherine Shingler
Hunger by Ann O'Regan
Jackfest by Phil Davies
Dust to Dust by Hannah Kate
Am Fear Liath, the Grey Man of Ben Macdui by Kevin Williams
The Handfast Wife by Áine King
Ring Around the Rosie by Barry McCann
Churchgoing by Kevin Patrick McCann
The Ear by Jaki McCarrick
Creatures of Rath and Bone by Rachel Steiner
The Final Answer by Will Graham
Camp 46 by Petula Mitchell
Stranger than Before by Barry McCann
The Pied Piper of Essex by Ra Goli
Spoor by DC Merryweather
Come Away by Tracy Fahey

For more information, or to buy a copy of the book, please visit the Spooky Isles website.

OUT NOW: Twenty-First-Century Popular Fiction, edited by Bernice M. Murphy and Stephen Matterson (Edinburgh University Press, 2017)

Contains a chapter by me on Stephenie Meyer's fiction (including The Host and the anniversary edition of Twilight)...

Blurb:
This groundbreaking collection captures the state of popular fiction in present day. It features twenty new essays on key authors associated with a wide range of genres and sub-genres, providing chapter-length discussions of major post-2000 works of contemporary popular fiction. The lively, accessible and academically rigorous essays presented here cover a wider range of established popular fiction genres such as fantasy, horror and the romance, as well as more niche areas such as Domestic Noir, Steampunk, the New Weird, Nordic Noir and Zombie Lit. The collection will primarily appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students but general readers may also find the focus on many of today’s most prominent and influential authors to be of interest.

Contents:
- Introduction: ‘Changing the story’: Popular Fiction Today
Bernice M. Murphy and Stephen Matterson

- Larry McMurtry’s Vanishing Breeds
Stephen Matterson

- ‘Time to Open the Door’: Stephen King’s Legacy
Rebecca Janicker

- Terry Pratchett: Mostly Human
Jim Shanahan

- From Westeros to HBO: George R.R. Martin and the Mainstreaming of Fantasy
Gerard Hynes

- Nora Roberts: The Power of Love
Jarlath Killeen

- The King of Stories: Neil Gaiman’s Twenty-first Century Fiction
Tara Prescott

- Jo Nesbø: Murder in the Folkhemmet
Clare Clarke

- ‘It’s a trap! Don’t turn the page.’ Metafiction and the Multiverse in the Comics of Grant Morrison
Kate Roddy

- Panoptic and Synoptic Surveillance in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games Series
Keith O’Sullivan

- E.L. James and the Fifty Shades of Grey Phenomenon
Dara Downey

- Fact, Fiction, Fabrication: The Popular Appeal of Dan Brown’s Global Bestsellers
Ian Kinane

- ‘I Need to Disillusion You’: J.K. Rowling and Twenty-First-Century Young Adult Fantasy

Kate Harvey
- Jodi Picoult: Good Grief
Clare Hayes-Brady

- ‘We Will Have a Happy Marriage If It Kills Him’: Gillian Flynn and the Rise of Domestic Noir
Bernice M. Murphy

- ‘The Bastard Zone’: China Miéville, Perdido Street Station and the New Weird
Kirsten Tranter

- Sparkly Vampires and Shimmering Aliens: The Paranormal Romance of Stephanie Meyer
Hannah Priest

- ‘We needed to get a lot of white collars dirty’: The Apocalypse as Opportunity in Max Brooks’ World War Z
Bernice M. Murphy

- Genre and Uncertainty in Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad Mysteries
Brian Cliff
- ‘You Get What You Ask For’: Hugh Howey, SF, and Authorial Agency
Stephen Kenneally

- Cherie Priest: At the Intersection of History and Technology
Catherine Siemann

For more information, or to buy a copy, please see the publisher's website.

OUT NOW: The Darkest Midnight in December, edited by Storm Constantine (Immanion Press, 2017)

A new collection of seasonal ghost stories, including 'Log', a tale of festive foliage by yours truly...

The ghost story is a Christmas tradition; shadows looming over the brightly-lit tree in a room where logs crackle in the hearth, and the smell of spice and brandy fill the air. Outside the weather is chill; perhaps snow is falling. The house is far from town – lights twinkle in the distance. And over the festive season, as people gather to celebrate and welcome in the New Year, eerie breath might be heard in a dark corridor, hurrying footsteps overhead, a sigh in the depths of a stairwell. When all are supposed to be happy and secure, the intrusion of fear, grief or sadness are alien, and yet bizarrely integral to a time of celebration whose roots lie in ancient, pagan festivals. What stirs in the darkness?

Contents:

An Eye for an Eye by Rosie Garland
On the Loop Line by Misha Herwin
Holly and Ivy by Fiona Lane
The House with the Gable by Nerine Dorman
When He Comes Home Through the Snow by Storm Constantine
Bethany's Visit by Jessica Gilling
The Supernatural Stocking by Rhys Hughes
Log by Hannah Kate
Driving Home for Christmas by Fiona McGavin
Gift from the Sea by Adele Marie Park
Kindred Spirit by J.E. Bryant
A Midwinter Nightmare by Suzanne Gyseman
Spirit of the Season by Rick Hudson
The Shadow by Wendy Darling
Jay's Ghost by Louise Coquio

For more information, or to buy a copy of the book, please visit the Immanion Press website.

OUT NOW: TransGothic in Literature and Culture, ed. Jolene Zigarovich (Routledge, 2017)

A new academic edited collection on the Gothic, with a chapter from me on Horace Walpole, Twilight, Black Mirror, 17th-century politics and the meaning of romance...

This book contributes to an emerging field of study and provides new perspectives on the ways in which Gothic literature, visual media, and other cultural forms explicitly engage gender, sexuality, form, and genre. The collection is a forum in which the ideas of several well-respected critics converge, producing a breadth of knowledge and a diversity of subject areas and methodologies. It is concerned with several questions, including: How can we discuss Gothic as a genre that crosses over boundaries constructed by a culture to define and contain gender and sexuality? How do transgender bodies specifically mark or disrupt this boundary crossing? In what ways does the Gothic open up a plural narrative space for transgenre explorations, encounters, and experimentation? With this, the volume’s chapters explore expected categories such as transgenders, transbodies, and transembodiments, but also broader concepts that move through and beyond the limits of gender identity and sexuality, such as transhistories, transpolitics, transmodalities, and transgenres. Illuminating such areas as the appropriation of the trans body in Gothic literature and film, the function of trans rhetorics in memoir, textual markers of transgenderism, and the Gothic’s transgeneric qualities, the chapters offer innovative, but not limited, ways to interpret the Gothic. In addition, the book intersects with but also troubles non-trans feminist and queer readings of the Gothic. Together, these diverse approaches engage the Gothic as a definitively trans subject, and offer new and exciting connections and insights into Gothic, Media, Film, Narrative, and Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Contents

- Foreword, Susan Stryker
- Introduction: 'Transing the Gothic', Jolene Zigarovich
- Chapter 1: 'Beyond Queer Gothic: Charting the Gothic History of the Trans Subject in Beckford, Lewis, Byron', Nowell Marshall
- Chapter 2: 'Go to Hell: William Beckford’s Skewed Heaven and Hell', Jeremy Chow
- Chapter 3: 'Transgothic Desire in Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya', Jolene Zigarovich
- Chapter 4: 'That Dreadful Thing That Looked Like A Beautiful Girl: Trans Anxiety/Trans Possibility in Three Late Victorian Werewolf Tales', Ardel Haefele-Thomas
- Chapter 5: 'Monster Trans: Diffracting Affect, Reading Rage', Harlan Weaver
- Chapter 6: 'More Than Skin Deep: Aliens, Fembots, and Trans-Monstrosities in Techno-Gothic Space', April Miller
- Chapter 7: 'Gothic Gender in Skin Suits, or The (Transgender) Skin I Live In', Anson Koch-Rein
- Chapter 8: 'The Media of Madness: Gothic transmedia and the Cthulhu mythos', Jason Whittaker
- Chapter 9: 'Black Weddings and Black Mirrors: Gothic as Transgeneric Mode', Hannah Priest
- Chapter 10: 'The State of Play: Transgressive Caricature and Transnational Enlightenment', Ian McCormick

For more information, please visit the publisher's website.

OUT NOW: Werewolves, Wolves and the Gothic, ed. Robert McKay and John Miller (University of Wales Press, 2017)

A new academic edited collection on werewolves from University of Wales Press, featuring a chapter by me on bad dads, painful transformations and the embarrassment of morning-after nudity...

Wolves lope across Gothic imagination. Signs of a pure animality opposed to humanity, in the figure of the werewolf they become liminal creatures that move between the human and the animal. Werewolves function as a site for exploring complex anxieties of difference – of gender, class, race, space, nation or sexuality – but the imaginative and ideological uses of wolves also reflect back on the lives of material animals, long persecuted in their declining habitats across the world. Werewolves therefore raise unsettling questions about the intersection of the real and the imaginary, the instability of human identities and the worldliness and political weight of the Gothic.

This is the first volume concerned with the appearance of werewolves and wolves in literary and cultural texts from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Drawing on representations of werewolves and wolves in literature, film, television and visual culture, the essays investigate the key texts of the lycanthropic canon alongside lesser-known works from the 1890s to the present. The result is an innovative study that is both theoretically aware and historically nuanced, featuring an international list of established and emerging scholars based in Britain, Europe, North America and Australia.

Contents

- Introduction, Robert McKay and John Miller
- Like Father Like Son: Wolf-Men, Paternity and the Male Gothic, Hannah Priest
- Wicked Wolf-Women and Shaggy Suffragettes: Lycanthropic Femme Fatales in the Victorian and Edwardian Eras, Jazmina Cininas
- Postcolonial Vanishings: Wolves, American Indians, and Contemporary Werewolves, Michelle Nicole Boyer
- The Good, the Bad, and the Ubernatural: The Other(ed) Werewolf in Twilight, Roman Bartosch and Celestine Caruso
- ‘Becoming woman’/Becoming Wolf: Girl Power and the Monstrous Feminine in the Ginger Snaps Trilogy, Batia Boe Stolar
- ‘Something that is either werewolf or vampire’: Interrogating the Lupine Nature of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Kaja Franck
- Saki, Nietzsche and the Superwolf, John Miller
- A Vegetarian Diet for the Were-wolf Hunger of Capital: Leftist and Pro-animal Thought in Guy Endore’s The Werewolf of Paris, Robert McKay
- Everybody Eats Somebody: Angela Carter’s Wolfish Ecology, Margot Young
- ‘But by Blood No Wolf Am I’: Language and Agency, Instinct and Essence – Transcending Antinomies in Maggie Steifvater’s Shiver Trilogy, Bill Hughes
- Transforming the Big Bad Wolf: Redefining the Werewolf through Grimm and Fables, Matthew Lerberg

For more information, please visit the publisher's website.

OUT NOW: She-Wolf: A Cultural History of Female Werewolves (Paperback Edition)

My edited collection She-Wolf: A Cultural History of Female Werewolves is now available in paperback from Manchester University Press! Essays on lady-lycanthropes in folklore, history, witchcraft trials, literature, cinema, television and gaming, by Merili Metsvahi, Rolf Schulte, Jay Cate, Jazmina Cininas, Shannon Scott, Carys Crossen, Willem de Blécourt, Peter Hutchings, Barbara Creed, Laura Wilson, and me!

She-Wolf: A Cultural History of Female Werewolves
Edited by Hannah Priest
Price: £14.99

She-Wolf explores the cultural history of the female werewolf, from her first appearance in medieval literature to recent incarnations in film, television and popular literature. The book includes contributors from various disciplines, and offers a cross-period, interdisciplinary exploration of a perennially popular cultural production. The book covers material from the Middle Ages to the present day with chapters on folklore, history, witch trials, Victorian literature, young adult literature, film and gaming. Considering issues such as religious and social contexts, colonialism, constructions of racial and gendered identities, corporeality and subjectivity - as well as female body hair, sexuality and violence - She-wolf reveals the varied ways in which the female werewolf is a manifestation of complex cultural anxieties, as well as a site of continued fascination.

Contents:

- Introduction: A History of Female Werewolves - Hannah Priest

- Estonian Werewolf Legends Collected from the Island of Saaremaa - Merili Metsvahi

- 'She transformed into a werewolf, devouring and killing two children': Trials of She-Werewolves in Early Modern French Burgundy - Rolf Schulte

- Participatory Lycanthropy: Female Werewolves in Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Jay Cate

- Fur Girls and Wolf Women: Fur, Hair and Subversive Female Lycanthropy - Jazmina Cininas

- Female Werewolf as Monstrous Other in Honoré Beaugrand's 'The Werewolves' - Shannon Scott

- 'The complex and antagonistic forces that constitute one soul': Conflict Between Societal Expectations and Individual Desires in Clemence Housman's 'The Werewolf' and Rosamund Marriott Watson's 'A Ballad of the Were-wolf' - Carys Crossen

- I was a Teenage She-Wolf: Boobs, Blood and Sacrifice - Hannah Priest

- The Case of the Cut Off Hand: Angela Carter's Werewolves in Historical Perspective - Willem de Blécourt

- The She-Wolves of Horror Cinema - Peter Hutchings

- Ginger Snaps: The Monstrous Feminine as Femme Animale - Barbara Creed

- Dans Ma Peau: Shape-shifting and Subjectivity - Laura Wilson

For more information, or to buy a copy, please visit the publisher's website.

OUT NOW: Into the Woods (Hic Dragones, 2017)

A new collection of eighteen sinister sylvan tales, edited by Hannah Kate. Available now in paperback and eBook.

“They were only trees, after all. Only trees.”

A magical place steeped in mysticism. A foreboding place of unspeakable terror. The forest is a place of secrets, a place of knowledge, a place of death, and a place of life. What resides within its shadows? Demons, fair folk, that man the adults warned you about… and the trees. The trees are everywhere. Is it safer to stay at home? Or are you ready to take a journey… into the woods.

Contents:

'In the Dirt, Under the Trees' by Megan Taylor
'The Collectors' by Jaki McCarrick
'Forgotten Falls' by Cameron Trost
'The Crying Tree' by Patrick Lacey
'The Trees on Bundam Hill' by Rachel Halsall
'What's Mine is Yours' by Magda Knight
'The Green Road' by Tracy Fahey
'Dear Hearts' by Jessica George
'In the Trees' by Ramsey Campbell
'Long Stay' by S.A. Rennie
'In the Hidden Hollow' by Ross Smeltzer
'Where You End and I Begin' by Martin Cornwell
'A Winter's Tale' by Nancy Schumann
'Cord' by Jan M. Flynn
'Guests' by James Tawton
'Knotweed' by Hannah Kate
'St Erth' by Tim Major
'I Bury my Bones' by Jane Bradley

For more information, or to buy a copy, please visit the Hic Dragones website.

Victorian Gothic Faust Penny Dreadful – OUT NOW

Issue 1 of the Digital Periodicals edition of George Reynolds's Faust is available now - and it only costs £1! The next issue will be out on Friday, but there's still plenty of time to catch up with Issue 1 before then... and it's pretty wild stuff too...

The year is 1493, and a penniless young student has made a momentous bargain to save himself from the noose. He says he did it for love... but will the lure of power and vengeance be too great?

Elsewhere, another young man is summoned by the Vehm - a secret tribunal that takes the law into its own hands and conducts clandestine trials and punishments. What do they want with Charles Hamel? And does this have anything to do with Count Manfred's dubious claim to Linsdorf Castle?

On top of all this, Manfred has attacked Rosenthal Castle! And Theresa has been abducted! Has she bought herself enough time? Or will the dastardly Manfred force her into marriage? And just why does that old portrait look so much like Theresa's handmaiden?

This is the first modern edition of the classic penny dreadful version of Faust, and it's fully illustrated and compatible with all e-readers. Issues will be released fortnightly and are available exclusively from the publisher's website. Check out the video trailer here:

OUT NOW: Gothic Studies 18:1 (May 2016)

The May 2016 issue of Gothic Studies is now out.

Articles:

Playing the Man: Manliness and Mesmerism in Richard Marsh's The Beetle
Natasha Rebry

'Your Girls That You All Love Are Mine Already': Criminal Female Sexuality in Bram Stoker's Dracula
Beth Shane

'Mensonge': The Rejection of Enlightenment in the Unreliable 'Souvenirs' of Charles Nodier
Matthew Gibson

The Mirror and the Window: The Seduction of Innocence and Gothic Coming of Age in Låt Den Rätte Komma In/Let The Right One In
Amanda Howell

Labyrinths of Conjecture: The Gothic Elsewhere in Jane Austen's Emma
Andrew McInnes

Gothic Stagings: Surfaces and Subtexts in the Popular Modernism of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot Series
Taryn Norman

Reviews:

Roger Luckhurst, Zombies: A Cultural History (London, 2015)
Deborah G. Christie

Minna Vuohelainen, Richard Marsh (Cardiff, 2015); Stephan Karshay, Degeneration, Normativity and the Gothic at the Fin de Siècle (Basingstoke, 2015)
Emma Liggins

Wickham Clayton (ed.), Style and Form in the Hollywood Slasher Film (London, 2015)
Shellie McMurdo

Lorna Piatti-Farnell and Maria Beville (eds), The Gothic and the Everyday: Living Gothic (London, 2015)
Hannah Priest

Cristina Artenie, Dracula Invades England: the Text, the Context and the Readers (Montreal, 2015)
Jillian Wingfield

For more information, or to subscribe to the journal, please visit the Manchester University Press website. As part of their Halloween special offer, online access to this issue of Gothic Studies is free throughout October.

OUT NOW: Werewolves Versus the 1990s

A full-colour, mind-warping, 80+ page collection of werewolf art, stories, poetry and comics. Inspired by the decade of skateboards, clam digger shorts, AOL disks and the colour aqua.

Edited, designed and produced by A. Quinton
Cover art by Tandye

Contents:

Art: Kathy Lea Moyou, Joe Williamson, Ludovic, Tandye, HamsterToybox

Comics: Mike Roukas, Todd A. McCullough

Poetry and stories:
Dial-Up by Tah the Trickster
Wasco by Laura Cuthbert
My Hazy Recollections Of Project: Metalbeast by Craig J. Clark
The Werewolves Of Brainerd by Dan Wallbank
Beasts Pay Their Dues by Slay
Heat Wave by Joey Liverwurst
Ill Will by Hannah Kate
FBI Warning by A. Quinton
'N Amerikaanse Weerwolf in Kaapstad by Lew “Viergacht” Delport

To get a copy of the zine (pay whatever amount you think is fair), please click here.

To find out more about this and future issues of Werewolves Versus, please click here.

OUT NOW: She-Wolf: A Cultural History of Female Werewolves (Manchester University Press, 2015)

edited by Hannah Priest

She-Wolf explores the cultural history of the female werewolf, from her first appearance in medieval literature to recent incarnations in film, television and popular literature. The book includes contributors from various disciplines, and offers a cross-period, interdisciplinary exploration of a perennially popular cultural production. The book covers material from the Middle Ages to the present day with chapters on folklore, history, witch trials, Victorian literature, young adult literature, film and gaming. Considering issues such as religious and social contexts, colonialism, constructions of racial and gendered identities, corporeality and subjectivity – as well as female body hair, sexuality and violence – She-Wolf reveals the varied ways in which the female werewolf is a manifestation of complex cultural anxieties, as well as a site of continued fascination.

Contents:

Introduction: a history of female werewolves
Hannah Priest

Estonian werewolf legends collected from the island of Saaremaa
Merili Metsvahi

‘She transformed into a werewolf, devouring and killing two children’: trials of she-werewolves in early modern French Burgundy
Rolf Schulte

Participatory lycanthropy: female werewolves in Werewolf: The Apocalypse
Jay Cate

Fur girls and wolf women: fur, hair and subversive female lycanthropy
Jazmina Cininas

Female werewolf as monstrous other in Honoré Beaugrand’s ‘The Werewolves’
Shannon Scott

‘The complex and antagonistic forces that constitute one soul’: conflict between societal expectations and individual desires in Clemence Housman’s ‘The Werewolf’ and Rosamund Marriott Watson’s ‘A Ballad of the Were-wolf’
Carys Crossen

I was a teenage she-wolf: boobs, blood and sacrifice
Hannah Priest

The case of the cut off hand: Angela Carter’s werewolves in historical perspective
Willem de Blécourt

The she-wolves of horror cinema
Peter Hutchings

Ginger Snaps: the monstrous feminine as femme animale
Barbara Creed

Dans Ma Peau: shape-shifting and subjectivity
Laura Wilson

For more information, please see the publisher's website.

OUT NOW: Psychic Spiders! by Toby Stone (Hic Dragones, 2015)

Really pleased to announce the release of the latest title from Hic Dragones...

From the mad genius that brought you Aimee and the Bear comes the tale of the ultimate arachnid anti-hero…

George is an unusual spider. Born with the ability to control human thoughts, he has a unique insight into the human psyche. And he doesn’t like what he sees. It’s time to deal with the problem.

George’s crusade to save arachnidkind takes him on warped journey through the city, to the one place where he can make his voice heard – the local television station. But George’s quest for media domination brings him up against an array of unlikely opponents: Igor, a troubled man long abandoned to a nursing home by his angry daughter; Tobias, a sensitive spider with a fondness for Countdown; Captain Ahab, a man with no past (that he can remember, anyway). And it’s only a matter of time before George’s activities catch the attention of The Web – a shadowy organisation whose furry legs stretch around the globe.

Will George succeed? Will humanity survive? Will television ever be the same again?

Available now in paperback and eBook formats from Hic Dragones and all good retailers.

Watch the trailer (featuring music by the amazing Digital Front):