Guests
Guests for the 2023 Festival will be announced here.
Featured Guests
Clay McLeod Chapman is the author of novels Ghost Eaters, Whisper Down the Lane, The Remaking, and miss corpus, story collections nothing untoward, commencement and rest area, as well as The Tribe middlegrade series: Homeroom Headhunters, Camp Cannibal and Academic Assassins. His new novel, What Kind of Mother, was released on September 12, 2023.
Chapman is the creator of the rigorous storytelling session The Pumpkin Pie Show. In the twenty years of its existence, it has performed internationally at numerous festival including the Romanian Theatre Festival of Sibiu, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, New York International Fringe Festival, and many many more.
Other projects include writing for comics, podcasting, and performing. You can listen to Quiet Part Loud, a 12-part horror podcast series from Jordan Peele and Monkeypaw Productions, written by Chapman and Mac Rogers, on Spotify. Chapman’s story "Late Bloomer" was adapted into a short film, directed by Craig William Macneill. An official selection at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, the short won Best Short at the Lake Placid Film Festival and the Brown Jenkin Award at the 12th Annual H .P. Lovecraft Film Festival.
Chapman was educated at the North Carolina School of the Arts for Drama, the Burren College of Art, and Sarah Lawrence College. He currently teaches writing at The Actors Studio MFA Program at Pace University.
Rebekah McKendry is an award-winning director, writer, and podcaster. Her most recent horror feature, GLORIOUS (starring JK Simmons), premiered at Fantasia Film Festival and after receiving top honors from critics was certified as “fresh” on Rotten Tomato. Rebekah began her film and writing career working for Fangoria Entertainment and went on to become Editor-in-Chief for Blumhouse Productions, as well as writing for media companies like Shudder, Universal, AMP, AMC and more. Additionally, Rebekah has written multiple books including PRETTY EVIL, coming soon from Simon and Schuster, and several volumes of the HELLRAISER comic book series. She is an award-winning podcaster currently hosting Fangoria’s Colors of the Dark Podcast. She also has a PhD focused on the Horror genre and is currently a professor in the Cinematic Arts Department at the University of Southern California.
Guests
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.
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.
Chris Bozzone is a soundtrack composer, songwriter and filmmaker. In the fall of 2017, he began working with Jonathan Dennison, the founder of Cadabra Records on his first soundtrack for the label, Thomas Ligotti's "The Bungalow House,'' a vinyl-and-cassette release that came out in 2018. His soundtrack work for Cadabra Records covers a wide array of weird, fantastical and macabre fiction. Bozzone also works with film and concert hall composer Peter Scartabello and his Yuggoth Records label. In October of 2022, Yuggoth Records released Bozzone’s first album for the label, “Phantom Flowers,” as a vinyl record and digitally. Bozzone and Scartabello released their debut collaborative album, “Glimpsing Into Oblivion” under the project name Seer in April of 2023. Singular for his ability to fuse together different musical styles, Bozzone's scores and songs encompass evocative electronic music, arresting folk melodies, classical piano compositions, and boundary-pushing experimental soundscapes.
CODY GOODFELLOW has written five novels, and co-wrote three more with New York Times bestselling author John Skipp. His first two collections Silent Weapons For Quiet Wars and All-Monster Action, each received the Wonderland Book Award. His latest, Rapture Of The Deep & Other Lovecraftian Tales, is out now from Hippocampus Press. He wrote, co-produced and scored the short Lovecraftian hygiene film "Stay At Home Dad," which can be viewed on YouTube. As a bishop of the Esoteric Order of Dagon (San Pedro Chapter), he presides over several Cthulhu Prayer Breakfasts each year, from Comic-Con to the Queen Mary. He is also a cofounder of Perilous Press, an occasional micropublisher of modern cosmic horror, which recently published Mystery Meat, an underground horror graphic novel drawn by Mike Dubisch.
Kenneth Hite has designed, written, or co-authored 100+ roleplaying works, including Trail of Cthulhu, Bookhounds of London, The Dracula Dossier, the Delta Green RPG, Night’s Black Agents, The Fall of Delta Green, and Vampire: the Masquerade 5th Edition. His other works include the two-volume Tour de Lovecraft, Cthulhu 101, The Cthulhu Wars for Osprey, the “Lost in Lovecraft” column for Weird Tales, an annotated edition of Chambers’ The King in Yellow, and four Lovecraftian children’s books. Half of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff podcast and an Artistic Associate at Chicago’s WildClaw Theatre, he lives in Chicago with two Lovecraftian cats and his non-Lovecraftian wife, Sheila.
Robert Lloyd Parry is an actor and writer who specializes in literary storytelling: theatrical performances based upon texts from the golden age of the short story in English, approx 1880 - 1930. Since 2005 he has been touring the UK with the The M R James Project, a series of solo performances which bring to life the masterpieces of the father of the English Ghost Story. In 2015 he appeared as M R James in Mark Gatiss’s BBC documentary M R James: Ghost Writer. He has himself produced, written and presented two documentaries based on James’s work: “Wits in Felixstowe” and “Dim Presences.” Between 2013 – 16 he toured his adaptation of H G Wells’s The Time Machine around the UK, with the support of Arts Council England. He regularly performs short stories in pubs and libraries throughout the land, works by the likes of H G Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Saki, Arthur Machen, Kenneth Graham and E F Benson.
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.
Heather Humpleman is the director of “Whisper in the Static”, and the Co-Founder of Midnight Hour Studios, a Los Angeles-based production company. She graduated from the USC School of Cinematic Arts, and has been fortunate to serve and support their alumni as both the President of the Women of Cinematic Arts and the Director of Membership for the Trojan Entertainment Network. Heather is also a member of LA’s Asian Business Association, a graduate of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program, and a US-UK dual-citizen.
Kasie Heister is a Southern California native, and received her undergraduate degree from the University of Southern California and her Masters of Business Administration, specializing in Entertainment Management, from the University of California, Los Angeles. "Whisper in the Static" is her inaugural film, and she is currently in development on the feature version.
Nathan Carter is a writer, cinematographer and eclectic. He was raised in the wilds of East Texas — primarily by books and movies — and moved to Los Angeles to study creative writing and animation at the University of Southern California. He never left. He currently serves as the creative director at Midnight Hour Studios, where he brings a cinematic approach to the stories of educational, non-profit and public-minded institutions. Nathan is the Writer & Cinematographer of "Whisper in the Static."
Nick Harrington is a producer and editor who was born and raised in Los Angeles. His early fascination with movies inspired him to collaborate with friends on backyard ‘epics’ - modest but formative ventures into visual storytelling. This passion compelled him to study film production at Occidental College. Currently he works as the lead editor at Midnight Hour Studios. Nick is the Line Producer for "Whisper in the Static".