Best British Horror 2015

Award winning editor, author and horror historian. Has written for SFX Magazine, Illustrators Quarterly and The Paperback Fanatic. Project editor to Pan Macmillan's 2010 re-issue of The Pan Book of Horror Stories. Co-editing Dead Funny with multi-award winning comedian Robin Ince. Has written introduction to Stephen King's 30th Anniversary edition of Thinner. Author of two short story collections and editor of five horror anthologies.

Steven J Dines' fiction has appeared in numerous publications including Black Static, Not One of Us, Crimewave, Fireside, and Interzone. Originally from Aberdeen, Scotland, he now lives south of the border in Salisbury with his wife and son. He is currently seeking a publisher for his first novel and putting together his debut collection of short stories. www.stevenjdines.com

Helen Grant read classics at St. Hugh's College, Oxford, worked in marketing for ten years before beginning a career as an author. She is the author of the novels The Vanishing of Katharine Linden, The Glass Demon, Wish Me Dead and Silent Saturday.

Christopher Harman lives in Preston in the UK and is a librarian. His stories have appeared in various magazines and in the anthologies Acquainted with the Night, Shades of Darkness, Strange Tales, Unfit for Eden, The Ghosts and Scholars Book of Shadows, Rustblind and Silverbright and in the Terror Tales series. The Heaven Tree and Other Stories is a collection of his stories published by Sarob Press.

Andrew Hook is a much published short story writer with a number of works in print. Books to be published in 2015 will include the novel, Church of Wire, a short story collection Human Maps, and - as editor - the anthology, punkPunk! He co-edits the surreal Fur-Lined Ghettos magazine. www.andrew-hook.com.

Jane Jakeman is Welsh by birth and education. She lives in Oxford with her Egyptologist husband. Jane is an art historian as well as a novelist, and a reviewer for respected publications such as The Independent and The Times Literary Supplement. Her novels include the `Lord Ambrose Mysteries'.

Graham Joyce was the multi award-winning author of numerous short story collections and novels, which include The Tooth Fairy, Smoking Poppy, The Facts of Life, The Limits of Enchantment, The Silent Land, Some Kind of Fairy Tale and The Year of the Ladybird. He won the British Fantasy Award six times, and the World Fantasy Award for `Best Novel' in 2003 for The Facts of Life. He also won the O Henry Award. He died in September 2014.

Stephen Laws is a full-time novelist, born in Newcastle upon Tyne. Married, with three children, he lives and works in his birthplace. The author of 11 novels, numerous short stories, (collected in The Midnight Man) columnist, reviewer, film-festival interviewer, pianist and recipient of a number of awards, Stephen Laws recently wrote and starred in the short horror movie The Secret. stephen-laws.blogspot.co.uk.

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.

Rebecca Lloyd writes short stories and the occasional novel. Some of her writing has been recognised in literary contests and has been published in anthologies and magazines. In many of her stories, elements of the fantastical are blended into the mundane - as in real life. She is interested in the inventive ways people deal with what life throws at them. She is the author of the novel, Halfling and two collections of short stories, Mercy and The View from Endless Street.

Helen Marshall is an author, editor, and doctor of medieval studies. Her debut collection, Hair Side, Flesh Side (ChiZine Publications, 2012), won the 2013 British Fantasy Award for Best Newcomer. Her second collection, Gifts for the One Who Comes After, was released in September 2014. Born and raised in Canada, she lives in Oxford and holds joint Canadian/UK citizenship.

Gary McMahon is the author of two `Thomas Usher' novels, Pretty Little Dead Things and Dead Bad Things and three `Concrete Grove' novels - The Concrete Grove, Silent Voices and Beyond Here Lies Nothing. He has edited several anthologies, has had many anthology appearances and has several short stories collections to his name. His latest novella is The Bones of You.

Alison Moore's first novel, The Lighthouse, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Awards (New Writer of the Year), winning the McKitterick Prize. Both The Lighthouse and her second novel, He Wants, were Observer Books of the Year. Her short fiction has been included in Best British Short Stories and Best British Horror anthologies, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra and collected in The Pre-War House and Other Stories. Born in Manchester in 1971, she lives near Nottingham with her husband Dan and son Arthur.

Rosalie Parker writes short stories and screenplays as well as co-running independent publishing firm Tartarus Press with R.B. Russell. Before that she worked as an archaeologist. Rosalie won a World Fantasy Award in 2004 for editing Strange Tales. Her collection, The Old Knowledge and Other Strange Stories was published by Swan River Press in 2010, and reprinted in 2012. `In the Garden' was included in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 21, and subsequent stories have appeared in Morpheus Tales Rural Horror Special, Supernatural Tales, Faunus, Terror Tales of London and Yorkshire.

Sara Pascoe is a comedienne, writer and actress who has been performing stand-up since 2007. She co-wrote Channel 4's Girl Friday, has starred in Twenty Twelve and its spiritual follow-up W1A. Sara is also the winner of the 2014 Chortle Breakthrough Award.

John Llewellyn Probert won the 2013 British Fantasy Award for his novella The Nine Deaths of Dr Valentine. Its sequel, The Hammer of Dr Valentine, has just been published (both are available from Spectral Press). He is the author of over a hundred published short stories, six novellas and a novel, The House That Death Built. His second novel, Unnatural Acts, is forthcoming from the same publisher, Atomic Fez. His first short story collection, The Faculty of Terror, won the 2006 Children of the Night award for best work of Gothic Fiction. www.johnlprobert.com.

R.B. Russell is a writer and publisher living in the Yorkshire Dales. He runs Tartarus Press with his partner, Rosalie Parker. He has had three short story collections published: Putting the Pieces in Place, Ex Occidente Press, 2009, Literary Remains, PS Publishing, 2010, and Leave Your Sleep, PS Publishing, 2012. Russell has also had published two novellas, Bloody Baudelaire, Ex Occidente Press, 2009 and The Dark Return of Time, Swan River Press, 2014. A collected edition, Ghosts, was published by Swan River Press in 2012.

Mark Samuels (born 1967) is the author of five short story collections: The White Hands and Other Weird Tales (Tartarus Press 2003), Black Altars (Rainfall Books 2003), Glyphotech & Other Macabre Processes (PS Publishing 2008), The Man who Collected Machen & Other Stories (Chomu Press 2011) and Written In Darkness (Egaeus Press 2014) as well as the short novel The Face of Twilight (PS Publishing 2006). His tales have appeared in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, The Weird, and A Mountain Walks.

Priya Sharma is a doctor in the UK who writes speculative fiction. Her work has appeared in Interzone, Black Static, Albedo One, Alt Hist and on Tor.com, amongst others. She has been reprinted in various Best of anthologies.

Reece Shearsmith is an actor and writer. He starred in and co-wrote The League of Gentlemen, Psychoville and Inside No 9 all for BBC2. He is equally at home on stage, screen or radio. But he is mostly at home at home.

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.

Conrad Williams is the author of nine novels: Head Injuries, London Revenant, The Unblemished, One, Decay Inevitable, Loss of Separation, Dust and Desire, Sonata of the Dead and Hell is Empty. His short fiction is collected in Use Once Then Destroy, Born With Teeth and I Will Surround You. He has won the British Fantasy award, the International Guild award and the Littlewood Arc prize. He lives in Manchester with his wife and three sons.