The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

PRIYA SHARMA is a medical doctor in the UK, where she spends as much free time as she can devouring books and writing speculative fiction. She has a computer but prefers a fountain pen and a notebook. Her short stories have appeared in publications such as Albedo One, On Spec, Alt Hist and Fantasy Magazine. More will appear in 2012 in Dark Tales, On Spec, and Bourbon Penn. She is currently working on a historical fantasy novel set in North Wales, not far from where she lives. More information can be found at www.priyasharmafiction.co.uk

“The Show” was originally published in Box of Delights, edited by John Kenny.

PETER STRAUB is the author of eighteen novels, including Ghost Story, Koko, Mr. X, two collaborations with Stephen King, The Talisman and Black House, and his most recent A Dark Matter. He has also written two volumes of poetry and two collections of short fiction. He edited Conjunctions 39: The New Wave Fabulists, Library of America’s H. P. Lovecraft: Tales, the LoA’s American Fantastic Tales and Poe’s Children. He has won the British Fantasy Award, nine Bram Stoker Awards, two International Horror Guild Awards, and three World Fantasy Awards. In 1998, he was named Grand Master at the World Horror Convention. He has also won WFC’s Lifetime Achievement Award and the Barnes & Noble Writers For Writers Award. The University of Wisconsin and Columbia University gave him Distinguished Alumnus Awards.

“The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine” was originally published in Conjunctions 56.

ANNA TABORSKA was born in London, England. She studied Experimental Psychology at Oxford University and went on to gainful employment in public relations, journalism and advertising, before throwing everything over to become a filmmaker and horror writer.

Taborska has directed two short films (Ela and The Sin), two documentaries (My Uprising and A Fragment of Being) and a one-hour television drama (The Rain Has Stopped), which won two awards at the British Film Festival Los Angeles in 2009. She has also worked on seventeen other films, including Simon Magus and Number One Longing. Number Two Regret.

Taborska’s feature length screenplays include Chainsaw, The Camp, and Pizzaman. Her short stories have been published in 52 Stitches, Daily Flash, The Horror Zine, and in several volumes of The Black Book of Horror. “Little Pig” was originally published in The Eighth Black Book of Horror.

You can watch clips from Taborska’s films and view her full resume here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1245940/

CHET WILLIAMSON is the author of over twenty books, the latest of which are Defenders of the Faith and Hunters. Among his other published novels are Second Chance, The Story of Noichi the Blind, Ash Wednesday, Soulstorm, Lowland Rider, Reign, and McKain’s Dilemma. Most of his early work remains in print as e-books from Crossroad Press and Amazon’s Kindle store. Over a hundred of his short stories have appeared in such magazines as The New Yorker, Playboy, Esquire, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and many other magazines and anthologies. Figures in Rain, a collection of his short stories, was given the International Horror Guild Award for Outstanding Collection.

His work has also been adapted for television, radio, and recorded books. His New Yorker short story, “Gandhi at the Bat,” was made into a short film and has been shown in festivals worldwide.

“The Last Verse” was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May/June issue.

A.C. WISE was born in Montreal and currently lives in the Philadelphia area with a spouse, two cats, and one very short dog. Her fiction has appeared in publications such as Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, and Fantasy Magazine, among others. In addition to her writing, she co-edits the online ’zine of bug-related fiction, The Journal of Unlikely Entomology. You can find her online at www.acwise.net.

“Final Girl Theory” was originally published in Chizine #48.

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