Guests
More Guests will be announced soon!
Featured Guests
Vincent Price has long been a beloved actor in the horror genre, and starred in several very Lovecraftian films, including Roger Corman's The Haunted Palace(based on HPL's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward), Diary of a Madman (based on Guy De Maupassant's "The Horla"), and even portrayed the sorcerer John Carnby in Night Gallery's adaptation of Clark Ashton Smith's "The Return of The Sorcerer." This year, we welcome his daughter Victoria Price as our guest of honor. Victoria is an award-winning author and speaker in her own right; in additon to penning The Way of Being Lost: A Road Trip to My Truest Self and Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography, she is also an acclaimed inspirational speaker and interfaith minister. She'll be joining us to speak about growing up with the legendary Vincent Price, as we feature some of his more Lovecraftian cinematic works.
With hundreds of movies to his credit, Roger Corman is one of the most prolific producers in the history of the film medium and one of the most successful. Corman has been dubbed, among other things, "The King of the Cult Film" and "The Pope of Pop Cinema" and his filmography is packed with hundreds of remarkably entertaining films in addition to dozens of genuine cult classics. Corman has displayed an unrivaled eye for talent over the years and his influence on modern American cinema is almost incalculable. Born April 5, 1926, in Detroit, Michigan. Corman studied engineering at Stanford University but while in school, he began to lose interest in the profession and developed a growing passion for film. After a term spent studying modern English literature at England's Oxford University and a year spent bopping around Europe, Corman returned to the US, intent on becoming a screenwriter/producer. He sold his first script in 1953, "The House in the Sea," which was eventually filmed and released as Highway Dragnet (1954).
Horrified by the disconnect between his vision for the project and the film that eventually emerged, Corman took his salary from the picture, scraped together a little capital and set himself up as a producer, turning out Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954). Corman leveraged his next picture, The Fast and the Furious (1954), into a multi-picture deal with a fledgling company called American Releasing Corp. (ARC). It would soon change its name to American-International Pictures (AIP) and with Corman as its major talent behind the camera, would become one of the most successful independent studios in cinema history. With no formal training, Corman first took to the director's chair with Five Guns West (1955) and over the next 15 years directed 53 films, mostly for AIP. He proved himself a master of quick, inexpensive productions, turning out several movies as director and/or producer in each of those years--nine movies in 1957, and nine again in 1958. His personal speed record was set with The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), which he shot in two days and a night.
During the 1960s Corman directed eight lavish gothic horror films based on the stories of including House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), The Raven (1963), The Haunted Palace (1963), and The Masque of the Red Death (1964). All but one of the Poe films starred Vincent Price, and these films featured such other established actors as Boris Karloff, Ray Milland, and Peter Lorre.
In 1970 Corman left AIP and formed New World Pictures, an independent company that produced and distributed the work of such young artists as John Sayles, Martin Scorsese, Joe Dante, Jonathan Demme, and James Cameron.
An occasional actor, Corman typically appeared in the films of those whose careers he had helped. He had minor roles in Coppola’s The Godfather: Part II (1974) and in such Demme films as Philadelphia (1993), The Manchurian Candidate (2004), and Rachel Getting Married (2008). Other notable films included Apollo 13 (1995). Corman cowrote (with Jim Jerome) an autobiography, the aptly titled How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime (1971). In 2009 he was given an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement. Two years later he was the subject of the documentary Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel.
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.
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.
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. He co-created the HPLHS musical sensations "A Shoggoth on the Roof", two albums of Lovecraftian holiday music, "A Very Scary Solstice" and "An Even Scarier Solstice", "Ogham Waite: Live at the Gilman House", and "The Curious Sea Shanties of Innsmouth, Mass". 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.
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 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.
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.
Guests
Adam Bolivar is a dark poet, weird fiction writer and marionettist whose work has appeared on the pages of Black Wings, Spectral Realms, the Lovecraft eZine, and in anthologies published by Hippocampus Press, Chaosium and Eraserhead Press. His first book, The Fall of the House of Drake, was published by Dunhams Manor in 2015. His second book, The Lay of Old Hex, a collection of spectral balladry, is forthcoming from Hippocampus Press. Bolivar’s poetry has received acclaim from leading Lovecraftian scholar and critic S. T. Joshi, who has stated that it ”creates a sense of cumulative terror and strangeness easily rivaling the best work of contemporary weird fiction writers.”
Amanda Downum is the author the Necromancer Chronicles, published by Orbit Books, and Dreams of Shreds & Tatters, from Solaris. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons and Weird Tales, and is forthcoming in Dreams From The Witch House and The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu. She lives in Austin, TX, but one day she will return to the sea.
Andrew Gleason is a director and cinematographer who loves creating and watching horror movies. He is an active member making movies in his local Champaign film community, and volunteering with the Champaign-Urbana Film Society and Champaign Movie Makers. When he isn’t making movies, he is spending time sharing his love for movies with his two children, Eva and Liam.
Andrew S. Fuller writes and edits horror, fantasy, and science fiction. His work appears in magazines On Spec, Crossed Genres, The Pedestal, anthologies FISH, Swords v Cthulhu, and several short films, including an HPLFF award-winner "Effulgence." Since 1999, he's edited the fiction magazine Three-Lobed Burning Eye. Once from the Midwest, he dabbled in heavy metal and theater, and now lives in Portland, Oregon between a volcano and two rivers, where he commits archery, design, and cocktail quaffery. Visit him online at andrewsfuller.com and Twitter @andrewsfuller.
Anya Martin has always rooted for the monster and regrets abandoning her earliest career aspiration--paleontology. She's also half-Finnish, still likes punk rock though now with a heavy side of blues and experimental jazz, has a bachelor's degree in anthropology, cooks dangerously hot curries, earns her living as a journalist and abides in Atlanta. Her fiction appears in such anthologies and magazines as the upcoming Eternal Frankenstein, Cthulhu Fhtagn!, Giallo Fantastique, Cassilda's Song, Xnoybis #2, Borderlands 6, Resonator: New Lovecraftian Tales From Beyond, and Womanthology: Heroic. She is also associate producer of The Outer Dark podcast, which interviews weird fiction creators and was awarded Best Podcast for 2015 by This Is Horror. She grew up with Weird as the daughter of William C. Martin, First Fandom member and one of the world's most prominent H.P. Lovecraft collectors.
Ashley Dioses is a poet of dark fantasy and horror from southern California. She is currently working on her first book of dark traditional poetry to be out from Hippocampus Press, hopefully this year. Her poetry has appeared in Weird Fiction Review, Spectral Realms, Weirdbook Magazine, Omnium Gatherum Media, Eye to the Telescope, Xnoybis, Necronomicum, Gothic Blue Book, and elsewhere. Her poem, “Carathis”, published inSpectral Realms No. 1, is mentioned in Ellen Datlow's full recommended Best Horror of the Year Volume Seven list. She blogs at fiendlover.blogspot.com.
Award winning filmmaker and stop motion animator Benjamin Capps came to Chicago after receiving his degree in Theatre from the University of Missouri, Columbia. While an undergraduate, Benjamin founded The Inner Below in order to produce his own experimental theatre, with an emphasis on expanding on Antonin Artaud's theories of Theatre of Cruelty. Having written, directed, produced and acted in numerous stage-productions, Benjamin transitioned to film-making, now having made nine short-films. Through character-driven, retro futurism and painstaking stop motion Benjamin creates surreal netherworlds which drag the viewer into another realm to face horrific creatures.
Brian Hauser is a writer, filmmaker, and film scholar from Carter-era Rust Belt suburbia. His feature screenplay, Cult Flick, won the HPLFF script competition in 2010. His debut novel, Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows, is out this year from Word Horde. He lives in Central Pennsylvania with his partner and two cats.
Steeped in schlocky Italian gialli and the existential musings of Bergman and Tarkovsky, Bryan Hiltner makes the kind of movies he wants to watch: stylish slices of humanity crammed into genre packaging. When not slogging through post-production on his years-in-the-making sci-fi feature sLipPage, Bryan enjoys making his twin daughters laugh, going out for beers with his wife, and stressing out over the Portland Trail Blazers.
Cem Karayakas was born in 1995 and grew up in Cologne. During his childhood, he was an actor on stage and television. He developed his great interest in Animation and Film through acting, but also animated movies. From 2015 to 2018 he studied and graduated from ifs internationale filmschule koeln in Digital Film Arts. During his studies, he was an animator for several projects and specialized in emotional expressions.
After watching Invaders from Mars at the age of three, Chris has been a lifelong horror/scifi/fantasy fan. In 2010, he started The Shadow Over Portland, a blog with reviews, opinion pieces and news concerning events in the Pacific Northwest. He's appeared at Wonder Northwest, the Living Dead Horror Convention and past H.P. Lovecraft Film Festivals, as been a frequent guest on the Monster Kid Radio podcast. Currently, he continues writing on his blog and is expanding into fiction writing.
Michelle had been making costumes for herself and for friends for a few years when she had the crazy idea to try to create for herself a Cthulhu costume. After a journey to the fabric temple with only a vague idea she returned home with some green, mottled, scaled stretch velour and a bodysuit pattern. After reusing some old fairy wings and some stuffing she managed to create a costume that was looked upon with horror when Cthulhu Girl ventured out into Portland one Halloween. A brief appearance at Orycon won her some awards and much more favorable looks than the previous appearance but Cthulhu Girl went back into the closet soon after. Michelle has been attending the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival since some students took her along shortly after she moved to Portland, OR to work at Reed College in 2000. But it was a few years and festivals before she was brave enough to don the costume at the HPLFF and once again become Cthulhu Girl. She has since made many appearances at the HPLFF, welcoming the crowds, posing for pictures, and handing out awards. The first year Cthulhu Girl appeared at the festival was immortalized in the documentary Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown.
DB Spitzer is a Podcaster and Portland native. Co host, editor and producer of 'People's Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos'. Spitzer's podcast focuses on small press weird fiction and information about the Cthulhu Mythos including writers and creatures.
D. L. Myers is a writer of Weird poetry in the vein of H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard. His work has appeared in Spectral Realms, Halloween Howlings and K. A. Opperman's The Crimson Tome. He also is an accomplished reader of poetry, and he does a weekly video poetry reading of contemporary and classic Weird poets, as well as his own work, which he posts on his blog vulravin.blogspot.com. He also had his debut live poetry reading at the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival, San Pedro. He lives in the mist-shrouded Skagit Valley of the Pacific Northwest.
Born in New Orleans and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Dave Correia has been drawing his entire life. Fascinated by comic books, horror films, and video games as a child, the subjects of Dave’s earliest artistic endeavors were often strange, demonic creatures. Disturbing, yet grotesquely appealing, these characters and their fictional worlds fueled his imagination and had a strong, significant influence on Dave’s creative style today. Dave’s illustrations have appeared in commercials, magazines, print ads, and posters across the United States and Europe. His work was widely seen on billboards and vehicle wraps for Scion’s 2007 XD “Little Deviant” advertising campaign and his art graces the album cover of Swedish metal band In Flames’ certified-gold record, Sounds of a Playground Fading. Aside from his freelance artwork, Dave also self-publishes and exhibits his personal work at various comic shows and art galleries across the country.
David has published a blog for seven years called Dave’s Corner of the Universe. Where he covers, comics, Lovecraft and pulp culture. He has been a frequent guest on several podcast including The People’s Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos and Monster Kid Radio. He lives with his extended family in Estacada Oregon on a goat farm.
Some say Derek M. Koch was born 30 years too late. Some say he spends too much time watching classic monster and science fiction movie trailers on YouTube. And some just want him to take off his luchador mask and stop talking about fighting monsters. Since 2013, Derek has been producing Monster Kid Radio, the weekly podcast devoted to the classic, and sometimes not-so-classic, genre cinema of yesteryear. After nearly 400 episodes, Derek has interviewed classic monster icons like Julie Adams and scions like Victoria Price and Sara Karloff, horror hosts like Dr. Gangrene, and indie filmmakers like Christopher R. Mihm. Derek loves his classic monster movies so much that in 2016, he launched MonsterKidWriter.com as his home for all his writing in the classic and retro monster vein. As far as he's concerned, vampires, aliens, mutants, mad scientists, and monsters of all kinds all look better in black and white. (Unless it's a color movie is by Hammer Films . . . or American International . . . or Toho . . . or Universal . . . or . . . )
Dominique Lamssies is obsessed with Batman, dead people and The King In Yellow (in that order). She was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, but has traveled throughout the United States, including stints in New Orleans and Boston, where she spent a lot of time roaming cemeteries. She has also lived abroad in places such as Ukraine and Japan, where she developed a deep and abiding love for Japanese ghosts and monsters. She strives constantly to have every story she writes involve some form of dead person and sound like it was written a hundred years ago. Her work has been featured in The Horror Zine, Non Binary Review, and Women in Horror Annual. She hopes to someday write a story worthy of having Peter Cushing star in the movie version, were he still with us. She hopes Sir Christopher Lee blesses and keeps all of you.
The principal creative force behind Hellbender Media, Edward is an award-winning writer and filmmaker. His latest movies include adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft’s stories “The Statement of Randolph Carter,” and “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath,” the only complete adaptation of Tolkein’s “The Lord of the Rings,” and “Flesh of my Flesh,” a live-action horror/thriller. He also wrote and directed “The Cosmic Horror Fun-Pak,” a sci-fi/horror movie anthology. He’s currently developing a sci-fi series, finishing a couple of animated shorts, and shopping around a script that recently placed for the prestigious Nicholl Fellowship, the Silver Screenwriting Competition, and the Austin Film Festival.
Edward Morris is a 2011 nominee for the Pushcart Prize in Literature, also nominated for the 2009 Rhysling Award and the 2005 British Science Fiction Association Award. His Cosmic Horror fiction has appeared in Dark Regions' THE CHILDREN OF GLA'AKI: TRIBUTE STORIES TO RAMSEY CAMPBELL and RETURN OF THE OLD ONES, as well as PS Publishing's THE STARRY WISDOM LIBRARY and Chaosium's LEGACY OF THE REANIMATOR, among many other fine and horrific collections.Mr. Morris also runs a local spoken-word event called The Hour That Stretches at the Clinton St. Theatre: http://the.hourthatstretches.com
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.
FuFu is a German-American comic book artist and illustrator. He studied Visual Communication in Germany and "la Bande Dessinée“ (comics) in Angoulême, France.
Since around 2000 FuFu has worked as a freelance illustrator in various fields. He has done countless illustrations for role playing games, but has also worked on books, stage productions, computer games, and animation. In 2013 he created the Zombie-card game Zombory. His personal comics have appeared in many anthologies and zines in several countries and typically revolve around the surreal adventures of Ray Murphy – Detective of Dreams and his assistant Molluskhead.
Today he lives in Portland, Oregon and Berlin, Germany, with his partner Susanna, who is a painter and a modelmaker for the film industry and their son Rocco.
Garrett Cook is an author with Deadite Press and an editor with Eraserhead Press. His work has appeared in A Breath from the Sky, DOA III, Giallo Fantastique, Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade and more. His next book Crisis Boy comes out October 15th.
Gordon B. White has lived in North Carolina, New York, and the Pacific Northwest. His debut fiction collection, As Summer's Mask Slips and Other Disruptions (Trepedatio Press), is forthcoming in January 2020. A graduate of the Clarion West Writing Workshop (2017), his fiction has appeared in venues such as Pseudopod, Daily Science Fiction, and the Bram Stoker Award® winning anthology Borderlands 6. Gordon also contributes reviews and interviews to outlets including The Outer Dark podcast, Nightmare Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, and Hellnotes. You can find him online at www.gordonbwhite.com.
Henrik Möller is a Swedish underground filmmaker with over a hundred satirical short films to his credit. In the world of horror films he is mostly known for the Philip K Dick film festival winner "Inviting the Demon" and the H.P. Lovecraft film festival best feature winner "Feed the Light".
Jamie Gower is an award winning writer, filmmaker, and podcaster, who strives to tell stories using unique narrative techniques and technologies. See more of his work at onenewmess.com and jamiegower.com.
JEFF BURK is the cult favorite author of SHATNERQUAKE, SUPER GIANT MONSTER TIME, CRIPPLE WOLF, and SHATNERQUEST. Like the literary equivalent to a cult B-Horror movie, Burk writes violent, absurd, and funny stories about punks, monsters, gore, and trash culture. Everyone normally dies at the end. He is also the the Head Editor of ERASERHEAD PRESS’ horror imprint, DEADITE PRESS and the host of the JEFF ATTACKS podcast. Born in the Pennsylvania backwoods, he was raised on a steady diet of Godzilla, Star Trek, and EC Comics. He now resides in Portland, Oregon. His influences include: Sleep deprivation, comic books, drugs, magick, and kittens.
After spending his first decade of adult life alternately working and bumming around the world, from Phnom Penh to Ouagadougou, Jesse Keller decided he wanted to be a filmmaker. He got his MFA at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, and then made his first feature film, Blood Will Have Blood, which is now streaming on Amazon Prime. His short films have also played at festivals around the USA. When not shooting, he teaches filmmaking at San Diego Mesa College.
John Shirley is an author, screenwriter, television writer, comics writer, singer, and songwriter. He is the author of more than forty novels and eight story collections. He won the Bram Stoker Award for the horror collection Black Butterflies: A Flock on the Dark Side. His novels include DEMONS, CELLARS, IN DARKNESS WAITING, CRAWLERS, BLEAK HISTORY, A SONG CALLED YOUTH, and CITY COME A-WALKIN'. He wrote the first four drafts of the screenplay for the movie THE CROW, and is co-writer with David Schow. He has written TV scripts for Poltergeist: The Legacy, Deep Space Nine, Sinbad, VR5 and other shows. He has written animation for Iron Man Armored Adventures and was nominated an Emmy for a recent episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He is a former Guest of Honor at the World Horror Convention. His most recent story collections are Living Shadows, In Extremis, and Lovecraft Alive (his Lovecraftian stories collected by Hippocampus Press). He also wrote the first novel based on the TV show GRIMM entitled GRIMM: THE ICY TOUCH, and the game tie-in novels Bioshock: Rapture and Halo: Broken Circle. Black October Records has brought out an album of John Shirley's own recordings, BROKEN MIRROR GLASS. He performs with his band, THE SCREAMING GEEZERS.
A native southern Californian, K. A. Opperman is a poet of horror and fantasy writing in the Weird tradition of H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. His work has appeared in such notable publications as Spectral Realms, Weird Fiction Review, Weirdbook, Skelos, Gothic Blue Book, the Horror Writers Association's Horror Poetry Showcase, and many other magazines. His debut book-length verse collection The Crimson Tome was released by Hippocampus Press in August 2015, and he has a second collection well underway. Against the fashion of the times, he writes solely in careful rhyme and meter, whether it be for a magazine, or for a wine label for Lovecraft Wines.
Kevin is originally from Bolton, England. He’s been acting professionally and teaching in the United States for over 20 years. Some of his recent TV credits include LA to Vegas, The Kominsky Method, Raven's Home and Shameless His work with The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society includes masking as their “Shipping Shoggoth” and lending his voice to 13 Dark Adventure Radio Theatre (DART) productions and counting.
Kola Krauze is an English actor working professionally out of London and Stockholm since 2003. His film and TV credits include The Bridge, Outlander, 24: Live Another Day, and Wallander. In his twenties he was the lead singer of cult death metal band Dark Heresy. An avid fan of fantasy and science fiction he is an expert in the field of Tolkien’s Middle-earth, as well as having devoured the writings of H. P. Lovecraft as well as other legends such as Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard and Jorge Luis Borges. Kola is fluent in English, French, Swedish and Polish, and can survive in Latin and Sindarin.
Lindsay Morrison is a Denver-based filmmaker and a Los Angeles ex-pat with a passion for horror and deep love of all things beautifully bizarre. She has 10+ years experience working on the LA Film Scene, both on and off set. She edited two indie features and a slew of web content before taking the bold step toward focusing on her own projects. Now in the process of building her very own production company, WOLF LUV FILMS, with her partner in life and in crime, Michael La Breche, she's gearing up to write and direct her first feature film, entitled LATEX.
Ludvig Gür is an award-winning Swedish filmmaker whose most recent film, The Outsider, is an adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft story of the same name and will be shown at the festival. Apart from short films, Ludvig has mainly directed documentaries, in both short and feature-format. He has spent the last two years directing a skateboarding documentary starring Tony Hawk, entitled Pretending I'm a Superman. It is set to be released later this year. His most recent work includes short-documentary starring the legendary punk band Bad Religion which tells the story of their latest album.
Michael Entler is the creative force behind The Amelus, which has existed in some form or other since about 1989. First starting with hybrid music multimedia projects, and later moving into live private events that focused on narrative science fiction and philosophical horror that could be described roughly as artsy haunted house type shenanigans.
Its current array and arrangement is to be the more sinister sibling to the collective known as Monsieur Soeur, and work on projects that require a more unsettling touch and tone.
The Amelus is not available for weddings, birthdays, bachelor parties, or Bat Mitzvahs.
Michael Griffin has released a novel, Hieroglyphs of Blood and Bone (Journalstone, 2017), and a short fiction collection, The Lure of Devouring Light (Word Horde, 2016), and the novella "An Ideal Retreat" (Dim Shores, 2016). His short stories have appeared in magazines like Apex, Black Static, Lovecraft eZine and Strange Aeons, and the anthologies The Madness of Dr. Caligari, Autumn Cthulhu, the Shirley Jackson Award winner The Grimscribe's Puppets, The Children of Old Leech and Eternal Frankenstein. He's an ambient musician and founder of Hypnos Recordings, an ambient record label he operates with his wife in Portland, Oregon. Michael blogs at griffinwords.com. On Twitter, he posts as @mgsoundvisions.
Michael La Breche is a filmmaker, born and raised in Colorado, who grew up obsessed with all things horror, sci-fi, and fantasy. He studied animation before heading to Los Angeles where he earned an MFA in film production at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. After graduating, Michael dove into the film industry and over the past decade he has worked on numerous projects in a variety roles. In 2019 Michael returned home to Denver with the love of his life, Lindsay Morrison, to start a new production company: WOLF LUV FILMS. He is focused on creating original content such as the horror series RELIQUARY and his in-progress documentary which explores the lives of indie comic book creators.
Michael Shlain knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. Born in Odessa, Ukraine, he is a writer-director and partner at Butcher Bird Studios, an award-winning creative media company in Los Angeles. Trained as an actor, he began his career as a literary agent before heeding the persistent cries of his soul and returning to his roots as a filmmaker. Recently, Shlain’s multi-format TV horror anthology IN A FOREIGN TOWN was an official selection at the 2019 MIPTV “In Development" forum at the Canneseries festival. He’s directed commercial and narrative content for clients including Twitch, Nat Geo, BBC America and Merck. He also dances Argentine Tango and can mix one hell of a Manhattan.
Monstark is a creative entity interacting with your world as a frequently humanoid shapeshifter living in Portland, Oregon. He hates raisins but loves fake fur and polyester, and his two cats believe him to be a monstrous bipedal feline who can somehow open cans but needs a grooming. Monstark makes everything from ink drawings and paintings to masks and puppet films.
Noah is an escapee from Hollywood, where he worked on films you've all seen but which he isn't supposed to talk about. Noah also made a number of films he'd be happy to talk about but which you've never seen -- including a feature-length Georgia noir that no one involved is permitted to show you. He is no longer an active Private Investigator and fervently denies creating an underground filmmaking cult that worships Pixelvision. Noah works in a cigar shop in San Francisco.
Patience Glenn is Vice President of Compendia Pictures, and in 2018 she produced her first short film, Ens Rationis, which has been selected to play at festivals all over North America. In addition to filmmaking, Patience works full time as a nurse auditor.
Patrick Murphy is a high-school psychology teacher and adjunct communication professor at Weber State University. He has a Master's of Arts in English and a Master's of Professional Communication. Murphy incorporates comic books, science fiction (including Lovecraft) and all things nerdy into his curriculum. He has participated in numerous pop-culture conventions and academic conferences discussing his approach to education. Murphy founded Chupacabra Productions with Mike Terrell, Blaine Taggart, and the elusive Midnight Vanburen; they have spent the past two decades making comedy shorts and entering festivals.
Paul Christian Glenn is a filmmaker based in Omaha, Nebraska. In 2018 he formed Compendia Pictures, a boutique production company for which he wrote and directed Ens Rationis, a short film inspired by the works of Rod Serling and John Carpenter. In addition to filmmaking, Paul is a semi-professional photographer, and works full-time as a graphic designer and web developer.
As composer for the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s Dark Adventure Radio Theatre Reber, Clark has composed music for Dagon: War of Worlds, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and Herbert West: Reanimator. His movie, Lovecraft Paragraphs, premiered at the 2009 H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival. His music is featured on The H. P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast. His music for wind ensemble is published worldwide by C. Alan Publications, Columbia Pictures Publications and Warner Brothers Music Publications.
Most recent work includes music for Chris Lackey and Greig Johnson’s Lovecraft video trilogy of The Ordeal of Randolph Carter, From Beyond the Beyond, and Pickman’s Guest, The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s Dark Adventure Radio Theatre production of Dagon: War of Worlds, Hassan & Lavender’s film productions of Walk Away and Dark Chocolate, Christoph Angehrn’s animated short INVASION! Robert Cappelletto’s film The Last Man After the War, original music and orchestrations for the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s The Curious Sea Shanties of Innsmouth, Mass., reorchestrating the prelude to Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antartica for wind ensemble, fulfilling a commission for the Concordia University of Chicago Wind Symphony. He has many music and movie projects in active development.
He currently resides in suburban Chicago.
Rion Smith is a ER nurse at an inner city hospital in Denver. When not working, he's filming and stumbled upon H.P. Lovecraft's work a few years ago and has been hooked ever since.
ROSS E. LOCKHART is an author, anthologist, editor, and publisher. A lifelong fan of supernatural, fantastic, speculative, and weird fiction, Lockhart is a veteran of small-press publishing, having edited scores of well-regarded novels of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. He edited the anthologies The Book of Cthulhu I and II, Tales of Jack the Ripper, The Children of Old Leech (with Justin Steele), Giallo Fantastique, Cthulhu Fhtagn!, Eternal Frankenstein, and the forthcoming Tales from a Talking Board (October 2017). He is the author of Chick Bassist. Lockhart lives in Petaluma, California, with his wife Jennifer, hundreds of books, and Elinor Phantom, a Shih Tzu moonlighting as his editorial assistant.
S. T. Joshi is the author of such critical studies as The Weird Tale (Univ. of Texas Press, 1990), H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West (Starmont House, 1990), The Modern Weird Tale (McFarland, 2001), and Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction (PS Publishing, 2012). He has edited a corrected edition of H. P. Lovecraft’s fiction (Collected Fiction: A Variorum Edition [Hippocampus Press, 2015–16]) as well as The Ancient Track: Complete Poetical Works (Night Shade Books, 2001; rev. ed. Hippocampus Press, 2013) and Collected Essays (Hippocampus Press, 2004–06; 5 vols.). He has prepared three annotated editions of Lovecraft’s tales for Penguin (1999–2004). His exhaustive biography, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (Necronomicon Press, 1996), won the British Fantasy Award and the Bram Stoker Award; a revised and expanded edition has appeared as I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft (Hippocampus Press, 2010).
Joshi has done scholarly work on other authors of supernatural fiction. He is the author of a bibliography (Scarecrow Press, 1993) and critical study of Lord Dunsany (Lord Dunsany: Master of the Anglo-Irish Imagination [Greenwood Press, 1995]), and a critical study of Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey Campbell and Modern Horror Fiction [Liverpool Univ. Press, 2001]). He has prepared editions of the work of Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, M. R. James, Ambrose Bierce, and other writers. He is the coeditor (with Stefan Dziemianowicz) of Supernatural Literature of the World: An Encyclopedia (Greenwood Press, 2005).
Joshi has edited such anthologies as American Supernatural Tales (Penguin, 2007), the Black Wings series (PS Publishing, 2010f.), Searchers After Horror (Fedogan & Bremer, 2014), A Mountain Walked: Great Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (Centipede Press, 2014), and The Madness of Cthulhu (Titan Books, 2014–15).
Sarah Walker is a Portland-based author and glass artist. Her work has appeared in Lovecraft Ezine Press, Audient Void, Test Patterns Anthology, and Ladies and Gentlemen of Fantasy.
Scott Connors is an independent scholar living in northern California who specializes in the life and work of Clark Ashton Smith, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and other writers of weird fiction. Recently his five volume edition of Smith's Collected Fantasies was reprinted in trade paperback by Night Shade Books. His latest book, In the Realm of Mystery and Wonder, a collection of Smith's artwork and prose poems, was published this year by Centipede Press. Connors has twice been nominated for the International Horror Guild Award, and he received the Founders Award at the 2015 HPLFF. His work has been translated into both French and German. Les Editions Mnémos, the foremost publisher of fantasy works in France, asked him to write the introductions to their three volume set of Smith's work. His work has been published in Skelos, Lovecraft Annual, Weird Tales, Weird Fiction Review, All Hallows, Studies in Weird Fiction, Publishers Weekly, The Explicator, and academic books published by Rowman and Littlefield and Greenwood Press.
Fascinated by storytelling since he was a child, Thomas Chrétien studied 2D and 3D animation in Montréal. Over the years he worked as a director, VFX artist, editor, CG generalist. He was one of the three co-directors who made Le Gouffre, an independent, award-winning animated short film that was released in 2014. Red Moon is his first live action short film.
Thomas Nicol is an indie filmmaking enthusiast from the flyover zone; when he's not making movies, he develops power grid simulation software. He heads up the local filmmakers networking group, Champaign Movie Makers, serves on the board of the Champaign Urbana Film Society, and helps program late night shenanigans at the local Art Theater Co-op. Past HPLFF offerings include "The Window Into Time" and "Bedtime For Timmy", and he's excited to bring a small share of madness to the screen again this year with "Irreparable".
Tim Troemner is a writer, filmmaker, writing instructor, and film festival programmer who enjoys making absurd/cute horror films. He’s here this year with short Lovecraft adaptation “The Pickman Model,” which updates the classic story to the modern day—a really weird version of the modern day...
His mother is proud of him but wishes he’d make something without so much blood one day.
When Trevor isn’t finding the magic in the film footage from other film projects, he’s filming his own. His award winning short horror films "The Freeze" and "Exhibit Man" (he’s made five) have screened at festivals across North America and Europe. Whatever the project, Trevor relishes his role in shaping the final product. Among his many career highlights Trevor has worked with editor Dede Allen (Breakfast Club, Dog Day Afternoon, Bonnie and Clyde)
Currently Trevor is showcasing his latest comedy/horror short film called Exhibit Man.
Since he was six years old Woodruff Laputka wanted to be a filmmaker. He attended the University of Alaska. The spirit of adventure in such a vast, empty place as Alaska is a hard thing for any young man to ignore. These were the forests where Blackwood’s fabled Wendigo could be roaming. He learned about how to rely on creativity, and how to collaborate with others, with different ideas and interpretations. His experience there shaped him as a person and as a filmmaker, and though he has moved on from the Great Frozen North, he could never thank it enough for the opportunity it gave him.
Zeshaan Younus is a writer/director/producer based in Orange County, CA. As a life-long cinephile, he has a true passion for all things horror, science fiction, and paranormal. His first short film, Grey Canyon, follows a couple as they experience an otherworldly presence in the wilderness. He would say that the best movie of all-time is Ridley Scott’s 1979 masterpiece, ALIEN (not the Director’s Cut and not up for discussion). Outside of filmmaking, Zeshaan has a career in government relations and serves in a leadership role for a few local non-profit organizations.