Guests of Honor
Tim Waggoner
Tim Waggoner's first novel came out in 2001, and since then he's published nearly sixty novels and eight collections of short stories. He writes original dark fantasy and horror, as well as media tie-ins. He's written tie-in fiction based on Supernatural, Grimm, The X-Files, Alien, Doctor Who, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Transformers, among others, and he's written novelizations for films such as Halloween Kills, Terrifier 2, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter and Kingsman: The Golden Circle. His articles on writing have appeared in Writer's Digest, The Writer, and The Writer’s Chronicle. He’s the author of the acclaimed horror-writing guide Writing in the Dark, which won the Bram Stoker Award for Nonfiction in 2021. The follow-up, Writing in the Dark: The Workbook, also won a Stoker in the same category in 2023. He won another Stoker in 2021 in the category of Short Nonfiction for his article “Speaking of Horror,” and in 2017 he received the Stoker for Long Fiction for his novella The Winter Box. In addition, he’s won the Scribe Award, given by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. He's also been a multiple finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award and a one-time finalist for the Splatterpunk Award. His fiction has received numerous Honorable Mentions in volumes of Best Horror of the Year, and he’s had several stories selected for inclusion in volumes of Year’s Best Hardcore Horror. His work has been translated into Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Hungarian, and Turkish. He’s also a full-time tenured professor who teaches creative writing and composition at Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio. His papers are collected by the University of Pittsburgh's Horror Studies Program.
​
Adam L. G. Nevill
Adam L. G. Nevill was born in Birmingham, England, in 1969 and grew up in England and New Zealand. He is an author of horror fiction. Of his novels, The Ritual, Last Days, No One Gets Out Alive and The Reddening were all winners of The August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel. He has also published three collections of short stories, with Some Will Not Sleep winning the British Fantasy Award for Best Collection, 2017.
Imaginarium adapted The Ritual and No One Gets Out Alive into feature films and more of his work is currently in development for the screen.
The author lives in Devon, England. More information about the author and his books is available at: www.adamlgnevill.com
Paula Guran
Editor, anthologist, and reviewer Paula Guran has edited more than fifty science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies and more than fifty novels and collections featuring the same. She was senior editor for Prime Books for seven years. Previously, she edited the Juno fantasy imprint from its small press inception through its incarnation as an imprint of Pocket Books. Guran edits the annual Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror series (first ten volumes with Prime; now published by Pyr). (See Books for a list of anthologies, novels, and collections edited.) In an earlier life, she produced weekly email newsletter DarkEcho (winning two Stokers, an IHG award, and a World Fantasy Award nomination), edited Horror Garage (earning another IHG and a second World Fantasy nomination), and has contributed reviews, interviews, and articles to numerous professional publications. The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Volume Two was nominated for a World Fantasy Award in 2022. Guran’s been reviewing for Locus: The Magazine of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Field on a regular basis for more than seven years.
​
Gaby Triana
GABY TRIANA is the Cuban-American author of 24 books for adults and teens, including Moon Child, Island of Bones, River of Ghosts, City of Spells, Wake the Hollow, Cubanita, and Summer of Yesterday. Her short stories have appeared in Classic Monsters Unleashed, A Tribute to Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, A Conjuring for All Seasons, Novus Monstrum, and Weird Tales Magazine. She has co-authored ghosthunters Sam & Colby’s horror novel, Paradise Island, and edited the ghost anthology series, Literally Dead (Tales of Halloween Hauntings; Tales of Holiday Hauntings. As a ghostwriter, Gaby has penned 50+ novels for bestselling authors in every genre. Her own books have won the IRA Teen Choice Award, ALA Best Paperback, and Hispanic Magazine's Good Reads Awards, and she writes under several pen names, including Gabrielle Keyes for her paranormal women’s fiction. She lives in Miami with her family and the four-legged creatures they serve, currently at work organizing the 2025 I HEART HORROR Book Festival.
​
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates is the author of 58 novels and many novellas, plays, short stories, and other work. She is a recipient of the National Book Award, two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize and a five-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Among Oates’ most notable works of horror are The Corn Maiden, Dis Mem Ber, The Doll Master, Haunted, Night Gaunt, Starr Bright Will Be With You Soon, and Zombie.
She grew up in the countryside outside of Lockport, New York. After receiving the gift of a typewriter at age fourteen, she began consciously training herself, “writing novel after novel” throughout high school and college. While attending Syracuse University on scholarship, she won the coveted Mademoiselle fiction contest. After graduating as valedictorian, she earned an M.A. in English at the University of Wisconsin, where she met and married Raymond J. Smith. In 1962, the couple settled in Detroit, a city whose erupting social tensions suggested to Oates a microcosm of the violent American reality. Her early novel, them, along with a steady stream of other novels and short stories, grew out of her Detroit experience.
Between 1968 and 1978, Oates taught at the University of Windsor in Canada, just across the Detroit river. She published new books at the rate of two or three per year, while maintaining a full-time academic career. Though still in her thirties, Oates had become one of the most respected and honored writers in the United States. In 1978, Oates moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where she taught in Princeton University’s creative writing program until 2014. She and her husband also operated a small press and published a literary magazine, The Ontario Review. Shortly after arriving in Princeton, Oates began writing Bellefleur, the first in a series of ambitious Gothic novels that simultaneously reworked established literary genres and reimagined large swaths of American history.
From 2016 to 2020, she was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught short fiction in the spring semesters. She now teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Scott Edelman
SCOTT EDELMAN has published 125+ short stories in magazines such as Lightspeed, Analog, Apex, and The Twilight Zone, and in anthologies such as Why New Yorkers Smoke, Crossroads: Southern Tales of the Fantastic, and MetaHorror. He began his professional writing career in the comics industry, creating Marvel’s version of The Scarecrow and writing many horror shorts for the DC anthology books House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Secrets of Haunted House, and others.
His collection of zombie fiction, What Will Come After was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Memorial Award. And that’s far from his only zombie connection, as he appeared as one in an episode of Z Nation where he was put down by series star D. J. Quall. His most recent collections include Tell Me Like You Done Before: and Other Stories Written on the Shoulders of Giants and Things That Never Happened, the latter of which caused Publishers Weekly to write, "his talent is undeniable." He has been a Bram Stoker Award finalist eight times, both in the category of Short Story and Long Fiction.
He's also the host of the Eating the Fantastic podcast, which since February 2016 has allowed listeners to eavesdrop on his meals with creators of science fiction, fantasy, horror, comics, and more. Find him at http://www.scottedelman.com/