Mary Wilkins-Freeman was born in Randolph, Massachusetts in 1852. Freeman’s parents were orthodox Congregationalists, causing her to have a very strict childhood. Religious constraints play a key role in some of her works. She passed the greater part of her life in Massachusetts and Vermont. Freeman began writing stories and verse for children while still a teenager to help support her family and was quickly successful. Her best known work was written in the 1880s and 1890s while she lived in Randolph. She produced more than two dozen volumes of published short stories and novels and is best known for two collections of stories, A HUMBLE ROMANCE AND OTHER STORIES (1887) and A NEW ENGLAND NUN AND OTHER STORIES (1891). Her stories deal mostly with New England life and she wrote a small but noteworthy number of supernatural & weird stories. In April 1926, Freeman became the first recipient of the William Dean Howells Medal for Distinction in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She died in 1930.

Find more by Mary Wilkins-Freeman

STEPHEN WILLCOTT‘s work has appeared in Arcane Anthologies and Silver Blade Magazine. He is interested in Old English and has been attempting to translate Beowulf.

Find more by Stephen Willcott

In 2007 CONRAD WILLIAMS won the International Horror Guild Award for Best Novel for The Unblemished. In 2008 he won the British Fantasy Award for Best Novella for The Scalding Rooms. In 2010 he won the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel for One.

Find more by Conrad Williams

Donna Glee Williams is a writer, seminar leader, and creative coach. A sort of Swiss Army knife of the page, Donna Glee has seen her work published in anthologies, newsstand glossies, literary magazines, academic journals, reference books, big-city dailies, online venues, and spoken-word podcasts, as well as on stage and CD recordings. These days, her focus is on speculative fiction, aka fantasy and science fiction. Check out her blog at the link under her name above.

Find more by Donna Glee Williams

Jen Williams lives in London with her partner and their cat. A fan of pirates and dragons from an early age, these days she writes character-driven sword and sorcery novels with plenty of banter and magic, and in 2015 she was nominated for Best Newcomer in the British Fantasy Awards. The Copper Cat trilogy consists of The Copper Promise, The Iron Ghost and The Silver Tide – all published by Headline in the UK – and the first two books in the trilogy are now available in the US and Canada, published by Angry Robot. Both The Iron Ghost and The Silver Tide have been nominated for British Fantasy Awards, and she is also partly responsible for Super Relaxed Fantasy Club. The Ninth Rain, the first book in the Winnowing Flame trilogy, was published by Headline in February 2017, and she is partial to mead, if you’re buying.

The cat’s name is Pyra.

Find more by Jen Williams

When not inhabiting cyberspace or various fantastic fictional worlds Joe exists in South London. A nerd by trade and geek by nature they spend their days in disguise as a mild-mannered IT greybeard. Their evenings, when not diverted by a remarkable wife or manipulative dog, are spent gaming, reading comics, and definitely writing something soon.

Find more by Joe Williams

Justin A. Williams has also had work appear in NECROTIC TISSUE and TWISTED FAIRYTALES Volume 2.

Find more by Justin A. Williams

Thomas Lanier Williams III (1911–1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter, considered one of the foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama. “The Vengeance Of Nitocris” is his first professional story, published when he was 17. His success arrived at age 33 with The Glass Menagerie becoming a hit, followed by A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), and The Night of the Iguana (1961). His success made him one of the most notable homosexual men in the public eye in mid-century America, and he battled alcoholism and dependence on various combinations of amphetamines and barbiturates. In 1979, four years before his death, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. Despite his last will and testament’s specific request that he be buried at sea “like Hart Crane,” his body was interred in Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri near his mother’s.

Find more by Tennessee Williams