Guests
More Guests will be announced soon!
Featured Guests
Barbara Crampton, legendary horror icon and star of our favorite cult classics like Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator, and From Beyond will be our Guest of Honor for our 25th Anniversary streaming Festival!
Crampton made an indelible impression on the hearts of horror movie fans with memorable roles such as Meg Halsey in Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator, Suzie Lynn in Chopping Mall, Dr. Katherine McMichaels in From Beyond, and has appeared more recently in the chilling We Are Still Here, the slightly campy Beyond the Gates (which she also produced), the body horror film Replace, and the Lovecraft-inspired 2020 film Sacrifice. She has also added producing to her roster of impressive roles, and was the driving force behind the forthcoming Castle Freak reboot, written by Kathy Charles, directed by Tate Steinsiek.
Victor LaValle is the author of seven works of fiction and one comic book. His highly Lovecraftian novella, The Ballad of Black Tom, won the Shirley Jackson Award, and was a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Award. His novel, The Changeling, won the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award and the Dragon Award for best horror novel. His comic book, Destroyer, won a Bram Stoker Award for best graphic novel. He has also been a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, and the Key to Southeast Queens. He teaches writing at Columbia University and lives in New York City with his wife and two kids.
Photo by Teddy Wolff
Molly Tanzer is the author of the weird western Vermilion (Word Horde, 2015) and the forthcoming historical novel The Pleasure Merchant (Lazy Fascist, 2015). Her debut collection, the Lovecraftian mosaic novel A Pretty Mouth, was nominated Sydney J. Bounds and Wonderland Book Award. Her other Lovecraftian short fiction has appeared in Nightmare Magazine was well as on the Lovecraft eZine, and in such anthologies as the forthcoming Cthulhu Fthagn!, The Book(s) of Cthulhu, Future Lovecraft, and The Book of the Dead. Her forthcoming Lovecraftian stories include "The Thing on the Cheerleading Squad" (She Walks in Shadows) and "But Only Because I Love You" (Dreams From the Witch House). She is also the co-editor of the forthcoming Swords v. Cthulhu, with Jesse Bullington. Molly lives in Boulder, Colorado with her husband and a very bad cat. She tweets @molly_the_tanz, and blogs — infrequently — at http://mollytanzer.com.
Guests
Richard Stanley made his feature film directing debut with 1990's acclaimed Hardware, starring Dylan McDermott and Fields of the Nephilim's frontman, Carl McCoy. His second feature, Dust Devil, was an unconventional story of an otherworldly serial killer in South Africa, and has a rabid cult following due to its striking visuals and beautiful landscape photography, plus its decidedly Weird taint. He also has created a number of independent, award-winning documentaries, an adaptation of Clarke Ashton-Smith's "Mother of Toads," and wrote and directed H. P. Lovecraft's Color Out of Space feature, produced by Spectrevision, starring Nicolas Cage, Joely Richardson, and Q'orianka Kilcher.
Sheree Renée Thomas is an award-winning fiction writer, poet, and editor. Her work is inspired by myth and folklore, natural science, music, and conjure. Nine Bar Blues: Stories from an Ancient Future (Third Man Books, May 2020) is her fiction debut. She is also the author of two multigenre/hybrid collections, Sleeping Under the Tree of Life (Aqueduct Press July 2016), longlisted for the 2016 Otherwise Award and honored with a Publishers Weekly Starred Review and Shotgun Lullabies (Aqueduct January 2011). She edited the World Fantasy-winning groundbreaking black speculative fiction anthologies, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora and Dark Matter: Reading the Bones (Grand Central/Hachette 2000 and 2004) and is the first to introduce W.E.B. Du Bois’s science fiction short stories. She is the Associate Editor of the arts literary journal, Obsidian (Illinois State University, Normal). She was recently honored as a 2020 World Fantasy Award Finalist in the Special Award – Professional category for contributions to the genre. Visit http://www.shereereneethomas.com
Craig Laurance Gidney writes both contemporary and genre fiction. He is the author of the collections Sea, Swallow Me & Other Stories (Lethe Press, 2008), Skin Deep Magic (Rebel Satori Press, 2014), Bereft (Tiny Satchel Press, 2013) and A Spectral Hue (Word Horde, 2019).
Zin E. Rocklyn is a contributor to Bram Stoker-nominated and This is Horror Award-winning Nox Pareidolia, Kaiju Rising II: Reign of Monsters, Brigands: A Blackguards Anthology, and Forever Vacancy anthologies and Weird Luck Tales No. 7 zine. Their story "Summer Skin" in the Bram Stoker-nominated anthology Sycorax's Daughters received an honorable mention for Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year, Volume Ten. Zin contributed the nonfiction essay “My Genre Makes a Monster of Me” to Uncanny Magazine’s Hugo Award-winning Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction. Their short story "Night Sun" was published on Tor.com. Zin is a 2017 VONA and 2018 Viable Paradise graduate as well as a 2021 Clarion West candidate. You can find them on Twitter @intelligentwat.
Leeman Kessler is a Nigerian-born actor living in Gambier, OH with his wife Rachel and daughter Amanda. Since 2010, he has been performing as HP Lovecraft on stage as well as online with his web-series Ask Lovecraft. He has performed at NecronomiCon-Providence and at Cthulhucon. You can hear him and his wife on their podcast Geekually Yoked.
In 1998 Scott Glancy left a perfectly functional career as an attorney to join up with the role-playing game publisher Pagan Publishing, the nerd equivalent of running away to join the Foreign Legion. Today Scott is the man in charge of Pagan Publishing (much in the same sense that the last surviving legionnaire can be said to be in command of Fort Zinderhoff). Pagan’s most recent project is “Horrors of War,” an anthology of scenarios set during the Great War for the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. Scott is a contributing author on the award-winning Delta Green series of Call of Cthulhu rpg supplements and has had Lovecraftian fiction published in several short story collections including the recent "Book of Cthulhu II," "Shotguns v. Cthulhu," and the upcoming “Swords v. Cthulhu.” You can hear his recorded games sessions on Role-Playing Public Radio, and listen to him bloviate on the Unspeakable Podcast and Podcast at Ground Zero.
Amanda Downum is the author of the Necromancer Chronicles, Dreams of Shreds & Tatters, and The Poison Court. Her short fiction has appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, and Weird Tales, and in the anthologies Lovecraft Unbound and Dreams From the Witch House. Unsatisfied with only writing about necromancy, she recently began a new career as a mortician. She lives in Austin, Texas for the time being.
Andrew Leman is one of the founding members of the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, and has produced a number of literary, film, theatrical, music, prop and gaming projects there over the decades with his longtime friend and collaborator Sean Branney. He has written and produced more than 20 live-action Lovecraftian role-playing games. He wrote and directed the first HPLHS film, "The Testimony of Randolph Carter", directed "The Call of Cthulhu", and co-wrote and co-produced The Whisperer in Darkness. He co-wrote, produced, and appears in the "Dark Adventure Radio Theatre" series of Lovecraft adaptations. Leman earned his MFA in acting from the University of Illinois, and has been seen on professional stages in Chicago and Los Angeles. He greatly enjoys reading for The H. P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast and being an occasional guest host. When not pursuing any of these many other occupations, Leman is a graphic and type designer, and his typographical work has been seen in books and on movie screens, Trader Joe’s products, and billboards nationwide.
Andrew John Migliore (born 1966 in Washington D.C., United States) is the founder and original director of the annual H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland Oregon. Andrew is the co-author of Lurker in the Lobby: The Guide to the Cinema of H. P. Lovecraft published by Night Shade Books and was founder and producer at Lurker Films where he launched The H. P. Lovecraft Collection, The Weird Tale Collection, and The Edgar Allan Poe Collection on DVD.
Ariel has played games her entire life, and is experienced across the range of mediums in which they are found. An only child, her adventures with imaginary friends set the stage for the acting she would do through college and the roleplaying games she would find later in life. A long time Scrabble enthusiast and one-time competitive Unreal Tournament savage, she is drawn to the math of Caverna and is ever ready to bring her best Nero Wolfe impression to the suicidal madness of Delta Green. You can find her on Twitter @ArielContessa and occasionally on FB https://www.facebook.com/ariel.celeste.9047 or at cons running games for ConTessa.
ConTessa is a gaming organization dedicated to making tabletop gaming spaces more diverse by bringing marginalized-led events to conventions all around the United States. We run innovative and unique tracks featuring games, panels, workshops, and seminars led entirely by historically marginalized people, yet open to attendance by anyone. Our event runners are volunteers who pick their own games and content, making every ConTessa event as unique as the ConTessans who run them.
Cassandra Khaw is an award-winning game writer, whose fiction work has been nominated for several awards. You can find her fiction in places like F&SF, Year's Best of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and Tor.com. Her next book Nothing But Blackened Teeth is coming out in 2021.
Follow her on Twitter: twitter.com/casskhaw
Christine Morgan works the overnight shift in a psychiatric facility, which plays havoc with her sleep schedule but allows her a lot of writing time. A lifelong reader, she also reviews, beta-reads, occasionally edits and dabbles in self-publishing. Her other interests include gaming, history, superheroes, crafts, cheesy disaster movies and training to be a crazy cat lady.
Danielle Trussoni is a New York Times, USA Today and internationally bestselling author whose books have been translated into more than thirty languages. She has written five books. Her latest, The Ancestor was selected as an Editor’s Choice by The New York Times. She served as jury chair of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, and is the Horror Columnist for The New York Times Book Review. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her family.
Evan J. Peterson is the author of Drag Star! (Choice of Games), the world’s first drag RPG, as well as The PrEP Diaries: A Safe(r) Sex Memoir (Lethe Press). He is a Clarion West alum and author of the horror poetry chapbooks Skin Job and The Midnight Channel as well as editor of the Lambda Literary finalist Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam: Gay City 5. His writing has also appeared in Weird Tales, Unspeakable Horror 2, Queers Destroy Horror, Boing Boing, and Best Gay Stories 2015. He is the founder of the now-concluded Seattle programs Minor Arcana Press and SHRIEK: Women of Horror Film. Evanjpeterson.com can tell you more.
Justin C. Key is a speculative fiction writer, psychiatrist, and a graduate of Clarion West 2015. His short stories have appeared and are forthcoming in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, and Crossed Genres. He is currently working on a near-future novel inspired by his medical training. When Justin isn't writing, working in the hospital, or exploring Los Angeles with his wife, he's chasing after his three young (and energetic!) sons. His latest novelette, The Perfection of Theresa Watkins, is available now from Tor.com. You can follow his journey at justinckey.com and @JustinKey_MD on Twitter.
K.L. Young is a writer and the Editor of Strange Aeons Magazine. He is also the screenwriter of several short and feature films.
Kenneth Hite has designed, written, or co-authored over 80 roleplaying games and supplements, including GURPS Horror, The Day After Ragnarok, Trail of Cthulhu, Bookhounds of London, Qelong, The Dracula Dossier, The Delta Green RPG and Night’s Black Agents. Outside gaming, his works include Tour de Lovecraft: the Tales, Cthulhu 101, The Nazi Occult and The Cthulhu Wars for Osprey Publishing, and a series of Lovecraftian children’s books. He has several published Cthulhu Mythos short stories, writes the “Lost in Lovecraft” column for Weird Tales, and covered the High Strangeness for ten years in his “Suppressed Transmission” column in Pyramid. Half the podcasting team behind Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff and an Artistic Associate at Chicago’s WildClaw Theatre, he lives in Chicago with two Lovecraftian cats and his non-Lovecraftian wife, Sheila.
Leslie S. Klinger is the editor of the highly-acclaimed New Annotated Dracula, New Annotated Frankenstein, and the two-volume New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft. He also edited the anthologies In the Shadow of Dracula and In the Shadow of Edgar Allen Poe, featuring 19th- century supernatural fiction. Together with Lisa Morton, he’s also edited the anthologies Ghost Stories and Weird Women, both with extensive selections of Victorian horror. Klinger’s annotated editions include the four-volume Annotated Sandman (with Neil Gaiman), Watchmen Annotated (with Dave Gibbons), and Annotated American Gods (again with Neil Gaiman). He serves as Treasurer of the Horror Writers Association and lives in Malibu with his wife Sharon, dog Jenny Calendar, and cat Rupert Giles.
Matt Ruff was born in New York City in 1965. He is the award-winning author of seven novels, including 88 Names, The Mirage, Bad Monkeys, Set This House in Order, Fool on the Hill, and Sewer, Gas & Electric. His novel Lovecraft Country has been adapted as an HBO series by Misha Green, Jordan Peele, and J.J. Abrams.
Photo credit: Lisa Gold
Nisi Shawl is the winner of the 2019 Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award and two 2020 Locus Awards--one for co-creating and co-teaching the inclusivity-focused Writing the Other workshops, and one for editing the groundbreaking anthology New Suns. They wrote the 2016 Nebula finalist Everfair (Tor) and the 2008 Tiptree/Otherwise-winning collection Filter House (Aqueduct). Their stories are also collected in PM Press’s 2019 Talk like a Man and Dark Moon’s 2018 Primer to Nisi Shawl. Currently they’re drafting a sequel to Everfair with the working title “Kinning.” They live in Seattle and take frequent walks with their cat.
Peter Rawlik is a prolific author of Lovecraftian Fiction including the novels Reanimators and The Weird Company. His fiction often focuses on characters and events forgotten by Lovecraft and his successors. His latest novel is the Lovecraftian noir Reanimatrix, which tells the story of both Robert Peaslee and Megan Halsey, the second generation of Lovecraftian Heroes.
Rose O'Keefe is the owner/ publisher of Eraserhead Press, the leading publishing house of Bizarro Fiction since 1999. Eraserhead Press is comprised of one main line of books and four imprints: Deadite Press, Fungasm Press, Lazy Fascist Press and The New Bizarro Author Series. Under O’Keefe’s direction, Eraserhead Press has released over three hundred titles and developed an international cult following for its cutting-edge weird fiction which has been praised by The Guardian, Chuck Palahniuk, Jack Ketchum, Boing Boing, and Cracked.com, among others. As a leader in the Bizarro Fiction community, she hosts monthly writer's gatherings, writer's retreats on the Oregon Coast, and the annual convention/art event, BizarroCon. In addition to being a full-time publisher and editor, she’s also an avid homebrewer and Argentine tango dancer. She lives in Portland, OR.
Sean is a producer, actor, director and writer with the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society which he runs with his nefarious colleague, Andrew Leman. He was intimately involved in the creation of the motion pictures The Call of Cthulhu and The Whisperer in Darkness, nineteen episodes of Dark Adventure Radio Theatre, and many other Lovecraftian projects. With his work at the HPLHS, he's created many other Lovecraftian entertainments. Sean also produces and directs live theatre in Los Angeles. He plays ice hockey and has four chinchillas.