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Beatrice Grimshaw

Beatrice Grimshaw was born in Dunmurry, Co. Antrim in 1870. Though raised in Ireland, and educated in France, Grimshaw is primarily associated with Australia and the South Seas, which she wrote about in her fiction and travel journalism. In 1904 Grimshaw was commissioned by London’s Daily Graphic to report on the Pacific islands, around which she purportedly sailed her own cutter, never to return to Europe again. After living much of her life in New Guinea, Grimshaw retired to New South Wales, where she died in 1953.

  • More on Beatrice Grimshaw can be found in various issues of The Green Book

Jim Rockhill

Jim Rockhill has edited volumes collecting Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Bob Leman, and E.T.A. Hoffmann; he is also the co-editor of Jane Rice’s collected fiction, the essay collection Reflections in a Glass Darkly, and the anthology Dreams of Shadow and Smoke; and has contributed essays and reviews to Supernatural Literature of the World, The Freedom of Fantastic Things, Warnings to the Curious, The Green Book, Dead Reckonings, and a variety of other encyclopaedias and journals.

Fitz-James O’Brien

Fitz-James O’Brien (1826/8-1862) was born in Co. Cork, Ireland, and spent his teenage years in Limerick after his mother remarried. Early in life, he published poetry, but soon turned to short fiction, the mode defining his legacy. At twenty-one, he inherited family wealth and moved to London in 1849, where he honed his craft. After squandering his inheritance in three years, he emigrated to America in 1852. There, O’Brien flourished as a writer, following Edgar Allan Poe’s influence. He enlisted in the Union Army during the Civil War and died in 1862 after being wounded in battle.

Iain Sinclair

Iain Sinclair has lived in Hackney since 1968, working at a variously titled London project.  He has published widely through mainstream and independent presses. These crimes have been comprehensively collected in a three-volume bibliography/biography by Jeff Johnson. Now published by Test Centre Books. An early prose-poetry trilogy was followed by the novels Downriver and Radon Daughters. The short-story collection, Slow Chocolate Autopsy, was a first collaboration with Dave McKean. Sinclair was formerly a used-book dealer and never quite got over it.

Lucy M. Boston

Lucy M. Boston (1892–1990) was born in Southport, Lancashire. She studied English at Oxford and served as a nurse in France, before settling in Cheshire towards the end of the First World War. After her marriage broke down in 1935 she trained as a painter in Europe, eventually returning to England on the eve of the Second World War. In 1939 she bought the eleventh century Manor in Hemingford Grey, Cambridgeshire, which was her home and literary inspiration until her death. It is the setting of her much-loved series of Green Knowe novels for children, and is now open to visitors.

Helen Grant

Helen Grant has a passion for the Gothic and for ghost stories. Joyce Carol Oates has described her as “a brilliant chronicler of the uncanny as only those who dwell in places of dripping, graylit beauty can be”. She lives in Perthshire with her family, and when not writing, she likes to explore abandoned country houses and swim in freezing lochs. Her novels include the Dracula Society’s Children of the Night Award-winning Too Near The Dead (2021) and Jump Cut (2023) about a notorious lost movie.

Thomas Leland

Thomas Leland (1722-1785) was born in Dublin. Ordained to ministry in the Church of Ireland, his works include History of Philip, King of Macedon (1758), History of Ireland (1773), and a posthumous collection of sermons (1788). His only work of fiction, Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, was published in 1762. It was adapted for stage in 1765 as The Countess of Salisbury by fellow Dubliner Hall Hartson. The play remained popular into the early nineteenth century.

  • More on Thomas Leland can be found in various issues of The Green Book

Steve Rasnic Tem

Steve Rasnic Tem’s writing career spans over forty-five years, including more than 500 published short stories, seventeen collections, eight novels, and miscellaneous poetry and plays. His collaborative novella with his late wife Melanie, The Man On The Ceiling, won the World Fantasy, Bram Stoker, and International Horror Guild awards in 2001. He has also won the Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, and British Fantasy Awards for his solo work, including Blood Kin, winner of 2014’s Bram Stoker for novel. In 2024 he received the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award.

Stephen J. Clark

Stephen J. Clark was born in County Durham. His work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, having been published by Egaeus Press, Side Real Press, and Fulgur Press, among others. Regular collaborations with Tartarus Press have notably featured his cover illustrations for a complete series of Robert Aickman’s strange tales. His debut novel In Delirium’s Circle was released by Egaeus Press in 2012, followed in 2018 by The Feathered Bough, a fully illustrated second novel published by Zagava.

Joel Lane

Joel Lane (1963-2013) was born in Exeter, but lived most of his life in Birmingham, where many of his stories are set. In addition to two novels, From Blue to Black (2000) and The Blue Mask (2003), Lane was the author of numerous collections, including the British Fantasy Award-winning The Earth Wire (1994), The Lost District (2006), and The Terrible Changes (2009). Where Furnaces Burn won the World Fantasy Award for best collection in 2013.

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