Authors | Swan River Press

Peter Bell

Peter Bell has written articles and stories for All Hallows, The Ghosts & Scholars M. R. James Newsletter, Wormwood, Faunus, and Supernatural Tales; his work has also been published by Ash-Tree Press, Gray Friar Press, Side Real Press, The Scarecrow Press and Hippocampus Press. He is a historian, a native of Liverpool, an inhabitant of York, and likes to wander the hidden places of Scotland and the North of England.

Algernon Blackwood

Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951)—journalist, novelist, broadcaster—is best remembered for his occult detective John Silence and, in particular, two terrifying tales of otherworldly encounters: “The Willows” and “The Wendigo”. The intensity of Blackwood’s stories often arose from personal experiences: his days struggling to survive in the hell of 1890s New York, his travels down the Danube, across the Caucasus, into the depths of Egypt, or the remote mountain passes in Switzerland—all fed his fascination with Nature. More on Algernon Blackwood can be found in various issues of The Green Book

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 …

B. Catling

B. Catling, RA, was born in London in 1948. He was a poet, sculptor, filmmaker, performance artist, painter, and writer. He held solo exhibitions and performances in the United Kingdom, Spain, Japan, Iceland, Israel, Holland, Norway, Germany, Greenland, USA, and Australia. His Vorrh trilogy and novel Earwig have drawn much critical acclaim. He was also Emeritus Professor of Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. Brian Catling passed away on 26 September 2022. Watch the documentary B. Catling: Where Does It All Come From? And another: Brian Catling: The Cast Squid of a Lost Character

Conall Cearnach

“Conall Cearnach” (1876-1929)—F. W. O’Connell—was a polyglot and scholar born in Clifden, Co. Galway. After serving as an Anglican priest, he became the first lecturer of Celtic Languages and Literature at Queen’s University, Belfast. Interested in strange literature, O’Connell made the first translation into Irish of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Cas aduain an Dr Jekyll agus Mhr Hyde in 1929. O’Connell died tragically when he was struck by a bus in October of that year. More on Conall Cearnach can be found in various issues of The Green Book

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.

B. M. Croker

B. M. Croker was born in Co. Roscommon in 1849. She married John Stokes Croker, an officer in the Royal Scots Fusiliers, in 1870, and accompanied him to India, there commencing a long literary career. Authoring some fifty-two books, her novel The Road to Mandalay was filmed in 1926. Mrs. Croker died at a nursing home in London, after a short and sudden illness, on 20 October 1920. More on B. M. Croker can be found in various issues of The Green Book

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.” A lifelong fan of the ghost story writer M. R. James, she has spoken at two M. R. James conferences and appeared at the Dublin Ghost Story Festival. Helen’s most recent novels are Ghost (2018) and Too Near The Dead (2021) both published by Fledgling Press. She lives in Perthshire with her family, and when not writing, she likes to explore abandoned …

Clotilde Graves

Clotilde Graves (1863-1932) was born in Co. Cork on 3 June 1863. Often unconventional and uncompromising, she not only adopted a male pseudonym, but male dress and manners as well. Under the name “Richard Dehan”, she wrote historical novels as well as several collections of short stories. Her popular novel The Dop Doctor found success on the screen in 1915. Graves retired in 1928 to a convent in Hatch End, Middlesex, where she died on 3 December 1932. More on Cloilde Graves can be found in various issues of The Green Book

Lafcadio Hearn

Born on the Greek island of Lefkada, Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) was brought up in both Ireland and England. At nineteen he emigrated to the United States where he became a journalist. After a sojourn in the French West Indies, he sailed for Japan in 1890. Hearn wrote extensively about his new homeland, its tales, customs, and religions, acting as a bridge between Japan and the Western world. He died in Tokyo where he is buried under his Japanese name, Koizumi Yakumo. More on Lafcadio Hearn can be found in various issues of The Green Book

William Hope Hodgson

William Hope Hodgson was born in Blackmore End, Essex on 15 November 1877. Though distinguished as a sailor, body builder, photographer, and soldier, Hodgson is now remembered as a writer of the fantastic and macabre: The Boats of the “Glen Carrig” (1907), The Ghost Pirates (1909), The Night Land (1912), and the occult detective stories in Carnacki, the Ghost Finder (1913). Hodgson’s literary career was tragically cut short by an artillery shell at the Battle of Ypres in late April 1918.

John Howard

John Howard was born in London. His books include The Silver Voices, Written by Daylight, Buried Shadows, A Flowering Wound, and The Voice of the Air. With Mark Valentine has written the joint collections Secret Europe, Inner Europe, Powers and Presences, and This World and That Other. His stories have appeared in many anthologies. He has published essays on various aspects of the science fiction and horror fields, including such iconic authors as Fritz Leiber, Arthur Machen, and August Derleth. He has also written about many now lesser-known and unfairly obscure authors and their work.

Timothy J. Jarvis

Timothy J. Jarvis is a writer and scholar with an interest in the antic, the weird, the strange. His first novel, The Wanderer, was published by Perfect Edge Books in 2014. His short fiction has appeared in The Flower Book, The Shadow Booth Volume 1, The Scarlet Soul, Murder Ballads, and Uncertainties I, among other places. He also writes criticism and reviews, and is co-editor of Faunus, the journal of the Friends of Arthur Machen.

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.

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was born in Dublin on 28 August 1814. Though he worked as a journalist and owned several newspapers, he is now best remembered for his pioneering tales of the psychological and supernatural such as “Schalken the Painter”, “Sir Dominick’s Bargain”, and “Carmilla”. His notable novels include The House by the Churchyard (1863) and Uncle Silas (1864). Le Fanu’s seminal short story collection In a Glass Darkly was published in late 1872, less than a year before his death on 7 February 1873. More on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu can be found in various issues of The …

Fritz Leiber

Fritz Leiber was born in Chicago on 24 December 1910. Although trained as an actor, he made his name among the pages of the pulp magazines of the 1930s and ’40s. After a brief correspondence with H.P. Lovecraft, Leiber began writing in earnest, penning classics of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, including Conjure Wife, the Hugo Award-winning Ill Met in Lankhmar, and the pioneering tale of urban supernaturalism “Smoke Ghost”. Leiber passed away in San Francisco in 1992 at the age of eighty-one.

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

Robert Lloyd Parry

Robert Lloyd Parry is a performance storyteller and writer. In 2005 he began what he now refers to as “The M. R. James Project”, with a solo performance of “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book” and “The Mezzotint” in James’s old office in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. The Project has since encompassed five more one-man theatre shows, several films and audiobooks, two documentaries, a guided walk, and numerous magazine articles.

Dorothy Macardle

Dorothy Macardle (1889-1958)—historian, playwright, journalist, and novelist—was born in Dundalk, Co. Louth. She was educated at Alexandra College in Dublin where she later lectured in English literature. She is best remembered for her seminal treatise on Ireland’s struggle for independence, The Irish Republic (1937), but also wrote novels of the uncanny, including Uneasy Freehold/The Uninvited (1941), Fantastic Summer/The Unforeseen (1946), and Dark Enchantment (1953). She died in Drogheda and is buried in St. Fintan’s Cemetery, Sutton. More on Dorothy Macardle can be found in various issues of The Green Book

Ethel Mannin

Ethel Mannin (1900-1984) was a best-selling author born and bred in South London. Her first novel, Martha, was published in 1923, having first been entered in a writing competition. She continued to write at an astonishing pace, producing over fifty novels during her long career, plus multiple volumes of short stories, autobiographies, travel and political writing. Mannin was also a lifelong socialist, feminist, and anti-fascist. She died in Devon at the age of 84.

L. T. Meade

L. T. Meade (1844-1914) was born in Bandon, Co. Cork and started writing at an early age before establishing herself as one of the most prolific and bestselling authors of the day. In addition to her popular girls’ fiction, she also penned mystery stories, sensational fiction, romances, historical fiction, and adventure novels. Her notable works include A Master of Mysteries (1898), The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings (1899), and The Sorceress of the Strand (1903). She died in Oxford on 26 October 1914. More on L. T. Meade can be found in various issues of The Green Book

Henry C. Mercer

Dreamer, castle builder, archaeologist, and anthropologist, Henry Chapman Mercer (1856-1930) inherited a fortune that fuelled his wanderlust. Mercer was a tireless creative genius who spent his life fulfilling his family motto, Plus ultra—“More Beyond”. He earned a law degree, mastered five languages, supervised archaeological digs around the world, and became a beloved philanthropist in his ancestral home of Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Overshadowed by his many accomplishments is the wonderful but nearly forgotten collection of stories, November Night Tales.

Rosa Mulholland

Rosa Mulholland was born in Belfast on 19 March 1841. In 1891 she married the eminent Irish historian Sir John T. Gilbert (1829-1898). In addition to her two-volume Life of Sir John T. Gilbert (1905), Mulholland produced a long line of novels mostly set in rural Ireland, and featuring strong female characters, including The Wicked Woods of Tobereevil (1872) and Banshee Castle (1895). Many of her supernatural tales were collected in The Haunted Organist of Hurly Burly (1880). Mulholland died at her home Villa Nova on 21 April 1921. More on Rosa Mulholland can be found in various issues of …

Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is the author of a number of collections of tales of the “uncanny” and “macabre”. These include Night-Gaunts, Dis mem ber, The Doll-Master, and the novellas Jack of Spades and A Fair Maiden. Her work has been included in the Best Fantasy and Horror and the Best American Mysteries anthologies. She is the recipient of the Bram Stoker Award for Horror Fiction as well as the National Book Award (US) and the National Medal for the Humanities. She lives and teaches in Princeton, New Jersey.

Rosalie Parker

Rosalie Parker runs the independent UK publishing house Tartarus Press with R. B. Russell. Her previous collections include The Old Knowledge (Swan River Press 2010) and Damage (PS Publishing 2016). In 2020 her collection Through the Storm was published by PS Publishing. Rosalie lives in Coverdale, North Yorkshire, the magnificent landscape of which inspires and sometimes provides the settings for her writing.

Nicholas Royle

Nicholas Royle is the author of five short story collections—Mortality, Ornithology, The Dummy, London Gothic, and Manchester Uncanny—and seven novels, including Counterparts, Antwerp, and First Novel. He has edited more than twenty-five anthologies and is series editor of Best British Short Stories. He runs Nightjar Press, which publishes original short stories as signed, numbered chapbooks. His English translation of Vincent de Swarte’s 1998 novel Pharricide was published by Confingo Publishing in 2019. In 2021 his first book of non-fiction, White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collecter, was published by Salt.

Lynda E. Rucker

Lynda E. Rucker has written more than fifty stories for various magazines and anthologies. She contributed a segment to The Ghost Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, an anthology of horror plays produced on London’s West End, won the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story in 2015, and edited Uncertainties III for Swan River Press. Her previous collections include The Moon Will Look Strange and You’ll Know When You Get There.

R. B. Russell

R. B. Russell is the author of three novels, three novellas and four short story collections, along with a few books of non-fiction. With his partner, Rosalie Parker, he publishes classic works of curious and macabre fiction under the Tartarus Press imprint.

George William Russell

George William Russell (1867-1935)—who published as “A.E.”—was a poet, painter, economist, and mystic. In 1897 he started work with Sir Horace Plunkett’s Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, editing their journal The Irish Homestead. In addition to numerous volumes of poetry, essays, and mystical writings, A.E. also nurtured the careers of Ireland’s most important writers, including Patrick Kavanagh, James Stephens, and James Joyce. Highly regarded in life, on his death A.E.’s funeral cortège was over a mile long. More on George William Russell (A.E.) can be found in various issues of The Green Book

Brian J. Showers

Brian J. Showers is originally from Madison, Wisconsin. He has written short stories, articles, and reviews for magazines such as Rue Morgue, Ghosts & Scholars, and Supernatural Tales. His short story collection, The Bleeding Horse, won the Children of the Night Award in 2008. He is also the author of Literary Walking Tours of Gothic Dublin (2006), the co-editor of Reflections in a Glass Darkly: Essays on J. Sheridan Le Fanu (2011), and the editor of The Green Book. Showers also edited four volumes of Uncertainties anthology series, and co-edited with Jim Rockhill, the Ghost Story Award-winning anthology Dreams of …

Bram Stoker

Bram Stoker (1847-1912) was born in Dublin and educated at Trinity College. As a young man he worked as a civil servant at Dublin Castle, and as an unpaid theatre critic for local newspapers. He is best remembered today for his classic novel Dracula (1897), but during his lifetime he was known as the personal assistant of actor Henry Irving, and business manager of Irving’s Lyceum Theatre in London. Other notable works include The Jewel of Seven Stars and The Lair of the White Worm. More on Bram Stoker can be found in various issues of The Green Book

Steve Rasnic Tem

Steve Rasnic Tem is the author of over 400 published short stories and is a past winner of the Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy Awards. His collections include Ugly Behavior (2012), Onion Songs (2013), Celestial Inventories (2013), and Twember (2013). His novels include Daughters (2001) and The Man in the Ceiling (2010, both with Melanie Tem); The Book of Days (2003), Deadfall Hotel (2013), and Blood Kin (2014).

Katharine Tynan

Katharine Tynan (1859-1931) was born in Dublin and raised at Whitehall, the family home in Clondalkin. Her literary salon there attracted notables such as W. B. Yeats, with whom she formed a lifelong friendship. Tynan became a prolific writer, authoring more than a hundred novels in addition to memoirs and numerous volumes of poetry. Her works deal with feminism, Catholicism, and nationalism—Yeats declared of her early collection Shamrocks (1887) that “in finding her nationality, she has also found herself”. More on Katharine Tynan can be found in various issues of The Green Book

Mark Valentine

Mark Valentine is the author of about twenty books, mostly of ghost stories or of essays on book collecting and obscure authors. He also edited The Scarlet Soul: Stories for Dorian Gray for Swan River Press. His fiction collections include The Uncertainty of All Earthly Things (Zagava) and, with John Howard, Secret Europe and Inner Europe (Tartarus). He also edits Wormwood, a journal of the literature of the fantastic and supernatural.

Mervyn Wall

Mervyn Wall (1908-1997) was born in Dublin. He was educated in both Ireland and Germany, and obtained his B.A. from the National University of Ireland in 1928. After fourteen years in the Civil Service, he joined Radio Éireann as Programme Officer. In 1957 he became Secretary of the Arts Council of Ireland, retiring in 1975. Known during his lifetime as a broadcaster and critic, he is best remembered for his two satirical fantasies set in medieval Ireland, The Unfortunate Fursey (1946) and The Return of Fursey (1948). More on Mervyn Wall can be found in various issues of The Green …