The Best British Fantasy 2013

Steve Haynes is an editor whose subtle approach to his chosen profession has earned him the epithets "Hacker Haynes" and "The Butcher of Bodmin". He was born in Walsall in 1964. He read for a BA in English and Film Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, and was an English teacher at Secondary level for 25 years. He is a prolific and lifelong devourer of science fiction, fantasy, horror, science writing, contemporary philosophy and graphic novels.

Winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Newcomer, D'Lacey is best known for his shocking eco-horror novel MEAT. The book has been widely translated and prompted Stephen King to say "Joseph D'Lacey rocks!". A film adaptation is in progress. Joseph lives with his wife and daughter in Northamptonshire.

Carole Johnstone is a Scot living in Essex. Her short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Her work has been reprinted in Ellen Datlow's Best Of Horror Of The Year series and Salt Publishing's Best British Fantasy 2013. Her debut short story collection, The Bright Day Is Done, is forthcoming from Gray Friar Press, and she has two novellas in print: Frenzy, published by Damnation Books and Cold Turkey, which is part of TTA Press' novella series. She is presently at work on her second novel while seeking fame and fortune with the first - but just can't seem to kick the short story habit.

Alison Littlewood is the author of A Cold Season, Path of Needles and The Unquiet House, all published by Jo Fletcher Books. Her short stories have been picked for The Best Horror of the Year and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror anthologies, as well as The Best British Fantasy 2013 and The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10. Alison lives in Yorkshire. www.alisonlittlewood.co.uk.

Mark Morris has written over twenty-five novels, including Toady, Stitch, The Immaculate, The Secret of Anatomy, Fiddleback, The Deluge and four books in the popular Doctor Who range. He is also the author of two short story collections, Close to the Bone and Long Shadows, Nightmare Light, and several novellas. His short fiction, articles and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of anthologies and magazines, and he is editor of Cinema Macabre, a book of horror movie essays by genre luminaries for which he won the 2007 British Fantasy Award, its follow-up Cinema Futura, and The Spectral Book of Horror Stories.

E. J. Swift is an English writer who lives and works in London. Her short fiction has previously been published in Interzone magazine. Her debut novel OSIRIS was published by Night Shade Books and Del Rey UK, and is the first in a trilogy, The Osiris Project. Book 2 - Cataveiro - was also published this year and Book 3 is forthcoming in 2015. Saga's Children was shortlisted for this year's BSFA short fiction award.

Lisa Tuttle has been writing strange, weird and fantastic fiction nearly all her life. Her first short story collection was A Nest of Nightmares (1986); her first novel, a collaboration with George R R Martin, Windhaven, first published in 1981, has been widely translated and is still in print. She is a past winner of the John W Campbell Award, the British Science Fiction Award and the International Horror Guild Award. Most recently she has written the first two volumes of a supernaturally tinged detective series: The Curious Affair of the Somnambulist and the Psychic Thief and The Curious Affair of the Witch at Wayside Cross.

Simon Kurt Unsworth lives in an old farmhouse in the north of England with his wife Rosie and various children and animals. His stories have been published in critically acclaimed and award-winning anthologies, including six volumes of The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror and also The Very Best of Best New Horror. His first novel, The Devil's Detective, came out in March 2015.