Reading 2 with Guest of Honor F. Paul Wilson
Are you a fan of weird poetry and fiction? Looking to expand your library? Join us for a live reading session from these talented authors!
Paul was born and raised in New Jersey where he misspent his youth playing with matches, poring over Uncle Scrooge and E.C. comics, reading Lovecraft, Matheson, Bradbury, and Heinlein, listening to Chuck Berry and Alan Freed on the radio, and watching Soupy Sales and Shock Theatre with Zacherley.
He is the author of more than fifty books: science fiction (HEALER, WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS, AN ENEMY OF THE STATE, DYDEETOWN WORLD, THE TERY, SIMS), horror thrillers (THE KEEP, THE TOMB, THE TOUCH, REBORN, REPRISAL, NIGHTWORLD, BLACK WIND, SIBS, MIDNIGHT MASS), contemporary thrillers (THE SELECT, IMPLANT, DEEP AS THE MARROW), novels that defy categorization (THE FIFTH HARMONIC, VIRGIN) and a number of collaborations. In 1998 he resurrected his popular antihero, Repairman Jack, and has chronicled his adventures in twenty-three novels, following him to the near destruction of human civilization in NIGHTWORLD.
He has peeked into Jack’s teenage life in the young adult novels, JACK: SECRET HISTORIES, JACK: SECRET CIRCLES and JACK: SECRET VENGEANCE. THE EARLY YEARS TRILOGY recounts a young Jack’s efforts to establish himself in NYC.
Most of Paul’s short stories are collected in SOFT & OTHERS (1989), THE BARRENS & OTHERS (1998), and AFTERSHOCK & OTHERS, Plus, a collection of Repairman Jack short FICTION in QUICK FIXES. He has edited two anthologies: FREAK SHOW (1992) and DIAGNOSIS: TERMINAL (1996). He has written for stage, screen, and interactive media as well.
THE KEEP, THE TOMB, HARBINGERS, and BY THE SWORD, and NIGHTWORLD all appeared on the New York Times Bestsellers List. WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS won the first Prometheus Award in 1979; SIMS won another, THE TOMB received the Porgie Award from The West Coast Review of Books. His novelette “Aftershock” won the 1999 Bram Stoker Award for short fiction. DYDEETOWN WORLD was on the young adult recommended reading lists of the American Library Association and the New York Public Library, among others. He was awarded the prestigious Inkpot Award from the San Diego ComiCon and the Pioneer Award from the RT Booklovers Convention. He is listed in the 50th anniversary edition of Who’s Who in America.
His novel THE KEEP was made into a visually striking but otherwise incomprehensible movie (screenplay and direction by Michael Mann) by Paramount in 1983. THE TOMB is in development as “Repairman Jack” by Beacon Films and (we hope) will not suffer a similar fate. His original teleplay “Glim-Glim” aired on Monsters in 1989. An adaptation of his short story “Menage a Trois” was part of the pilot for The Hunger series that debuted on Showtime in July 1997. “Pelts” was adapted by Dario Argento for Masters of Horror.
Orrin Grey is a skeleton who likes monsters, not to mention a writer, editor, and amateur film scholar who was born on the night before Halloween. His stories have appeared in dozens of anthologies, including Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year, and he's the author of Never Bet the Devil & Other Warnings and Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts, as well as Monsters from the Vault, a collection of columns on vintage horror films. As a freelancer, he has worked extensively with Privateer Press on their Warmachine and Hordes gaming universe, including the release of his first licensed novel earlier this year.
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.
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