Chris Matson writes fiction and screenplays, and has worked in film/television production for companies including Magnolia Pictures, HBO and Netflix. He grew up in New Zealand, has lived in London and New York, and currently splits his time between Los Angeles and a section of regenerating native forest in New Zealand, where he tries not to get too involved with the local insect community
Charles Robert Maturin, also known as C. R. Maturin (1780–1824) was an Irish Protestant clergyman and a writer of Gothic plays and novels, and was married to the acclaimed singer of the time, Henrietta Kingsbury. His best known work is the novel Melmoth the Wanderer. His first three works were Gothic novels published under the pseudonym Dennis Jasper Murphy, and were critical and commercial failures. They did, however, catch the attention of Sir Walter Scott, who recommended Maturin’s work to Lord Byron. With their help, Maturin’s play Bertram was staged in 1816 at the Drury Lane for 22 nights (Samuel Taylor Coleridge publicly denounced the play as dull and loathsome, and “melancholy proof of the depravation of the public mind”). The Church of Ireland took note of these and earlier criticisms and, having discovered the identity of Bertram‘s author (Maturin had shed his nom de plume to collect the profits from the play), subsequently barred Maturin’s further clerical advancement. Forced to support his wife and four children by writing, he switched back from playwright to novelist after a string of his plays met with failure. The exaggerated effectiveness of Maturin’s preaching can be gauged from the two series of sermons that he published. On the occasion of the death of Princess Charlotte, he declared: “Life is full of death; the steps of the living cannot press the earth without disturbing the ashes of the dead – we walk upon our ancestors – the globe itself is one vast churchyard.” In his obituary it was said that, ‘did he leave no other monument whereon to rest his fame, these sermons alone would be sufficient’.” Maturin died in Dublin on 30 October 1824. A writer in the University Magazine was later to sum up his character as “eccentric almost to insanity and compounded of opposites – an insatiable reader of novels; an elegant preacher; an incessant dancer; a coxcomb in dress and manners.” Charles Baudelaire was also an admirer of Maturin’s novel, equating it with the poetry of Byron and Edgar Allan Poe.
Donald McCarthy currently lives on Long Island in New York. He is a graduate of City College of New York’s MFA program and tutors and teaches at SUNY Old Westbury. His writing has appeared in Salon, Alternet, Pseudopod, The Progressive Populist, Screen Spy, KZine, The Washington Pastime, and more. He is currently an ongoing writer for the website Drunk Monkeys where he writes about all sorts of topics from politics to television to the films of David Lynch.
Because everyone loves to hear about favorites, here are his: his favorite film is Mulholland Drive, favorite book is Duma Key, favorite poem is Richard Cory, favorite album is The Rising, and favorite television show is The Sopranos.
Oddly enough, he has an extreme dislike of cheese and doesn’t see what’s so special about the beach.
J.A.W. McCarthy is a two-time Bram Stoker Award and two-time Shirley Jackson Award finalist and author of Sometimes We’re Cruel and Other Stories (Cemetery Gates Media, 2021) and Sleep Alone (Off Limits Press, 2023). Her short fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including Vastarien, PseudoPod, Split Scream Vol. 3, Apparition Lit, Tales to Terrify, and The Best Horror of the Year Vol 13. She is a second generation immigrant of Thai and Slovak descent and lives with her spouse and assistant cats in the Pacific Northwest. You can call her Jen on most platforms @JAWMcCarthy, and find out more at www.jawmccarthy.com.
KEITH McCLEARY is an MFA student at UCSD, and received his BFA in Film at NYU. His work has or is due to appear in Heavy Metal magazine, Weave, Flash, Short Fast and Deadly, the San Diego Poetry Annual, and in comic books he has written and illustrated for Terminal Press. He has also served as a copyeditor for Kill Screen Magazine. Keith maintains a semi-regular presence at his flash fiction tumblr, Gchatus and his website, Weird Things I Have Done.
Lucy lives on a horse farm in Ireland for some reason, with her girlfriend and their two dogs. When she was a child, she received a lightly damaged tape recorder as a gift. When it didn’t immediately explode in her hands, her journey into voice work began. A lifelong horror aficionado, Lucy spends much of her free time writing and listening to short horror stories.
Writer Angel Leigh McCoy (SFWA & HWA member) creates horror and dark fantasy fiction. Her fiction has appeared in numerous media, and her novelette “Charlie Darwin, or the Trine of 1809” was published by Nevermet Press. She also had stories appear in Strange Aeons, Necrotic Tissue, Beast Within 2, Fear of the Dark, and Growing Dread: Biopunk Visions, among others.
Nathan McCullough was afraid of everything as a child, but he faced and then embraced his fears, developing a love for all things dark and frightening. As a grownup, Nathan is an award-winning journalist, writer and editor. His work has appeared in various newspapers, magazines and digital outlets, and his novella/short story collection, Drag You Down, is available from Amazon. Connect with him on Twitter and Instagram @bulldawgnate or online at nathanmccullough.com.