Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had four hundred stories and poems published so far, and six books. Ed works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories, where he sits on the review board and manages a posse of nine review editors. He’s also lead editor at The Scribes Micro Fiction magazine.

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Maureen Bowden is a Liverpudlian, living with her musician husband in North Wales. She has had 157 stories and poems accepted by paying markets, she was nominated for the 2015 international Pushcart Prize, and in 2019 an anthology of her stories, Whispers of Magic, was published by Hiraeth Books. She also writes song lyrics, mostly comic political satire, set to traditional melodies. Her husband has performed these in folk music clubs throughout the UK. She loves her family and friends, rock ‘n’ roll, Shakespeare, and cats.

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Nicola Brayan is a young, aspiring artist from Sydney, Australia. She has rediscovered her passion for art during the pandemic. She uses vivid colours and contrast to capture emotions and expression. Her work is a love letter to what it means to be human. More of her work can be found on Instagram at @an.aesthetic.mirror.

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Harris Coverley has short fiction published or forthcoming in Curiosities, Hypnos, Penumbra, and The Space Cadet Science Fiction Review, amongst many others. A former Rhysling nominee, he also has had verse most recently in Star*Line, Spectral Realms, Silver Blade, Scifaikuest, Novel Noctule, Songs of Eretz Poetry Review, Tigershark, View From Atlantis, Yellow Mama, and elsewhere. He lives in Manchester, England.

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Shikhar Dixit’s stuff has appeared in such venues as Weird Horror, Space & Time, Dark Regions, Journ-E, Strange Horizons and Not One of Us. His fiction has been printed in several anthologies, including The Darker Side, Songs From Dead Singers, and Barnes & Noble’s 365 Scary Stories. He lives with his wife somewhere in the deep, dark heart of New Jersey. To learn more, visit his website at SlipOfThePen.com

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Tim Hildebrandt is a writer in Indianapolis, Indiana. His short stories have appeared in Consequence Forum, the Boston Literary Magazine, Pandemic Magazine, Bending Genres, Corvus Review, and others. You can see his work at: https://www.instagram.com/ax_beckett

Tim has a bootless BFA, he lived in San Francisco in ’68, traveled Europe from Amsterdam to Africa, and survived combat in Vietnam. hildebrandt343@icloud.com




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Ryan Hyatt is a former news reporter and author of the Terrafide sci-fi series. He edits the satirical sci-fi news site, The La-La Lander, as well as Not Your Father’s Bedtime Stories, kid’s lit he creates with his daughter, author Sage Hyatt. Find him at the beach and his stories across the internet, or connect with him on Twitter/Instagram @ucalthisreality.


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R. Mac Jones is a writer and visual artist. His work has appeared in venues such as Dreams and Nightmares, Star*Line, Strange Horizons, and Daily Science Fiction. He has a website, https://rmacjoneswrote.com/, that is always in need of updating.





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Harrison Kim lives and writes in Victoria, Canada. Like Maskwa in "The Rock Swimmers" he once worked in a religious fanatic’s compound digging a well by hand. Blogspot Link: https://harrisonkim1.blogspot.com

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N.K. Leullier’s experience as an archaeologist tends to find its way into her writing, but she mainly relies on her unfettered imagination to craft strange stories. More work can be found in Sein und Werden, Circlet Press, Literary Orphans, Luna Station Quarterly and others. She spends her time between Boston and Quebec City. (The story "Fire and Particles" was written in part thanks to the inspiration provided by her magical friend Maryse Cloutier-Gélinas.) You can find N.K. on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/natasha_lnorth/

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Tabitha Marsh is a UK-based illustrator specialising in ink, watercolour, and digital drawings. She graduated with a BA in Fine Art from Lancaster University in 2018 and has been working freelance ever since, mainly in publishing, but also exhibiting work at galleries in London and Leamington Spa.

In 2019 she was shortlisted for the Stratford Literary Festival/Salariya Children’s Book Prize, and since then she has illustrated several books and had her work published in a wide variety of magazines (details of which can be found on her website at www.tabithamarshillustration.com ). Alongside this, she has been the illustrator in residence at the multi-award-winning independent bookshop Kenilworth Books since 2017. You can find more of her work on instagram (@tab_marsh).

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Emma Neale lives and works in Ōtepoti/Dunedin, New Zealand, where she works as an editor. Her sixth novel, Billy Bird (2016) was short-listed for the Acorn Prize at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards and long-listed for the Dublin International Literary Award. Emma, who has also published six collections of poetry, received the Lauris Edmond Memorial Award for a Distinguished Contribution to New Zealand Poetry 2020. Her first collection of short stories, The Pink Jumpsuit, was long-listed for the Acorn Prize at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2022. (image by Caroline Davies)

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Jesper Nordqvist, aka ’Ragathol’, is a comic artist and illustrator from Sweden, specialized in fantasy and SF comedy and drama. He’s been making a lot more comics since creating Mondo Mecho, most of which are available at gumroad.com/ragathol.

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J.C. Pillard is a former academic whose love of gothic literature has made its way into her writing. Her stories have appeared in Metaphorosis, In the Wake of the Kraken, and Electric Spec. When she’s not reading or writing speculative fiction, J.C. spends time knitting and running far too many D&D games. Find her at www.jcpillard.com.



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Originally from California, AmeriBoricua Bob Ritchie now lives on the lovely island of Puerto Rico (it’s true, wet heat is better than dry). He and his wife have released five adult children into the wild. He does some editing, yeah, some teaching, sure, some translating, claro. Ritchie (as his wife calls him) is also a musician who is fortunate enough to have collaborated with Jon Anderson. Bob (as he calls himself) is also a writer of stories and has penned several things he believes are good. Two of his stories were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Neither won. Oh well.

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Carolyn R. Russell’s latest novel is In the Fullness of Time, a dystopian thriller published by Vine Leaves Press in 2020. Her new collection of cross-genre flash, Death and Other Survival Strategies, will be published by Vine Leaves Press in October of 2023. Carolyn’s short stories, poetry, and essays have been widely featured in magazines and literary journals. She lives on and writes from Boston’s North Shore.


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Carl Scharwath has appeared globally with 150+ journals selecting his poetry, short stories, interviews, essays, plays or art photography (His photography was featured on the cover of 6 journals.) Two poetry books, Journey To Become Forgotten (Kind of a Hurricane Press) and Abandoned (ScarsTv) have been published. His first photography book was recently published by Praxis. Carl is the art editor for Minute Magazine, a competitive runner and 2nd degree black-belt in Taekwondo.

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Marge Simon is an award-winning poet/writer, living in Ocala, Florida. Her works have appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Dark Moon Digest, New Myths, Silver Blade, Polu Texni, Crannog, JoCCA and numerous pro anthologies. She is a multiple Stoker winner and Grand Master Poet of the SF & F Poetry Association. She recently received the HWA Lifetime Service Award, HWA. Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/-/eB006G29PL6/marge simon

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Christina Sng is the three-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of A Collection of Nightmares (2017), A Collection of Dreamscapes (2020), and Tortured Willows (2021). Her poetry, fiction, essays, and art have appeared in numerous venues worldwide, including Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Interstellar Flight Magazine, Penumbric, Southwest Review, and The Washington Post. Visit her at christinasng.com and connect @christinasng.

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Canadian poet, fiction writer, and playwright J. J. Steinfeld lives on Prince Edward Island, where he is patiently waiting for Godot’s arrival and a phone call from Kafka. While waiting, he has published 23 books, including An Unauthorized Biography of Being (Stories, Ekstasis Editions, 2016), Absurdity, Woe Is Me, Glory Be (Poetry, Guernica Editions, 2017), A Visit to the Kafka Café (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions, 2018), Gregor Samsa Was Never in The Beatles (Stories, Ekstasis Editions, 2019), Morning Bafflement and Timeless Puzzlement (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions, 2020), Somewhat Absurd, Somehow Existential (Poetry, Guernica Editions, 2021), and Acting on the Island (Stories, Pottersfield Press, 2022). His short stories and poems have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies internationally, and over 60 of his one-act plays and a handful of full-length plays have been performed in Canada and the United States.

https://49thshelf.com/content/search?SearchText=J.+J.+Steinfeld

https://49thshelf.com/Books/A/Acting-on-the-Island

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Luke Walker has been writing horror, fantasy and dark thrillers for most of his life after finding a copy of Lovecraft’s stories that his eldest brother left in the bathroom. From there, he went on to his dad’s collection of Stephen King books and hasn’t looked back since. The new novels The Mirror Of The Nameless, The Kindred and Pandemonium are out now as are The Dead Room, The Unredeemed, Ascent, Die Laughing and Dead Sun. The crime/horror Winter Graves will be published by Hellbound Books in 2021. A prequel and a sequel to The Mirror Of The Nameless will also be published in 2021. Several of his short stories have been published online and in magazines/books. While writing, he has worked in a library, a hospital (disposing of severed legs) and a record shop (back in the distant past). He is currently working on new novels and short fiction.

Luke is (too) active on Twitter, his site and his newsletter and loves to hear from people who want to talk about books or horror.

He is forty-three and lives in England with his wife, cats, too many bad films and not enough books.