30+ Black Authors for fans of Horror, Urban Fantasy, and Paranormal Fiction
Helen Oyeyemi, Linda D. Addison, and Tananarive Due. Author photos copyright their owners. Helen Oyeyemi photograph by Tereza Linhartova.
Make sure your reading list includes some great authors of color.
There are many great Black writers that readers of horror, urban fantasy and paranormal fiction should get to know.
Updated October 2023
The horror films from director Jordan Peele’s are loved by audiences and get great reviews from critics. He’s been creating thoughtful cultural commentaries that have also ruled at the box office.
But driving horror fiction with African-American experiences didn’t start with Peele’s movies. In our list below, you’ll find several great Black novelists writing horror fiction, urban fantasy or paranormal stories.
Our list features a variety of authors who write different kinds of works about monsters—including Helen Oyeyemi, Linda D. Addison, Tananarive Due, Jessica Cage, Victor LaValle, Kenesha Williams, Nnedi Okorafor, Moni Boyce, Nalo Hopkinson, Delizhia Jenkins, Octavia E. Butler, K.T. Rose, Justina Ireland, Toni Morrison, and lots more!
Do you have a favorite Black author that we forgot to include? Be sure to let us know below!
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More than 30 Black Authors for Readers of Horror, Urban Fantasy, and Paranormal Fiction
Marc L. Abbott
Marc L. Abbott is an award-winning African American writer from Brooklyn, NY. “I write and tell stories of horror and the macabre,” he says on his author website. “But don’t let that scare you.”
His fiction includes Hell At The Way Station, an anthology created with author Steven Van Patten, and its sequel, Hell at Brooklyn Tea, which includes Van Patten and Kirk Johnson.
Abbott also contributed to Blackened Roots: An Anthology of the Undead, a groundbreaking anthology celebrating nontraditional zombie stories from the African diaspora; Even in The Grave, about those who die with unfinished business and haunt the living; Under Twin Suns, an anthology of weird fiction inspired by Robert W. Chambers’ foundational works of weird horror; the Bram Stoker Award-nominated A New York State of Fright: Horror Stories from the Empire State, featuring 24 visions of dread from New York horror authors; Soul Scream Antholozine, a portable horror convention which includes the lighter side of horror, plus author profiles, and horror pop culture essays; Hell’s Mall: Sinister Shops, Cursed Objects and Maddening Crowds, an anthology where all your shopping nightmares come real; and Hell’s Heart: 15 Twisted Tales of Love Run Amok, featuring tales of tortured love.
On his website, Abbott explains his mission as an author:
“My goal is to evoke fear and dread through quality fiction featuring strong characters, plots, and terrifying premises. I want readers to be entertained as horrors, both familiar and new, are presented to them in stories that keep them hooked to the very end.”
More about Marc L. Abbott online
Linda D. Addison
Linda D. Addison is a poet and writer of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. She is the first African-American winner of the Bram Stoker Award—which she has won multiple times. In 2018, Addison received the Horror Writer Association Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2020, she was designated Science Fiction Poetry Association Grand Master of Fantastic Poetry.
“I’m often looking for a different perspective on fear,” Addison says, “while opening my own fear/pain as roots to feed what I’m writing.”
Her books include How To Recognize A Demon Has Become Your Friend, a collection of horror and science fiction short stories and poetry; The Place of Broken Things, a Bram Stoker Award-winning collection of dark, surrealistic poetry from Addison and Alessandro Manzetti; Consumed, Reduced to Beautiful Grey Ashes, a Bram Stoker Award-winning poetry collection that captures the path between things gone bad and transformation; and Animated Objects, a collection of science fiction, fantasy and horror poetry and short stories.
Addison has also contributed to such collections as Sycorax’s Daughters, a scary anthology featuring 28 dark stories and 14 poems written by African-American women writers; Dark Thirst, a haunting anthology of vampire fiction from some of the most popular African-American writers; Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda, a ground-breaking prose anthology celebrating Marvel’s beloved Black Panther and his home country; and the chilling Don’t Turn Out the Lights: A Tribute to Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, a middle grade horror anthology.
More about Linda D. Addison online
Related links:
13 Updates Linda D. Addison—horror poet and author of ‘The Place of Broken Things’
Interview: Poetic Voices of Horror: Award Winning Poet Linda D. Addison
Panel: Black Women Who Write Dark Fiction and Poetry [Video]
‘Classic Monsters Unleashed’ by Jonathan Maberry, Seanan McGuire, Owl Goingback, and more
Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda—a ground-breaking anthology with stories from amazing authors
L.A. Banks (1959-2011)
Complete Vampire Huntress Legend Series by L.A.Banks
Author Leslie Esdaile Banks wrote the Vampire Huntress Legend series under the pen name L.A. Banks. In her career, she wrote more than 40 novels in various genres, including African-American literature, romance, women’s fiction, crime suspense, dark fantasy, horror, and non-fiction.
“I like the good guys to win in the end,” she said. She won several literary awards, including the 2008 Essence Literary Awards Storyteller of the Year.
Find L.A. Banks online
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Steven Barnes
Steven Barnes is the award-winning and NY Times-bestselling author of more than 30 novels of horror, science fiction, and suspense. His books include the Aubry Knight cyberpunk action series, the paranormal thriller Twelve Days, the SF psychological thriller Charisma, and the Great Sky Woman books, the epic story of how primitive humans, without words or machines, set in motion civilization’s long, winding journey to the present.
He and wife Tananarive Due co-wrote the Devil’s Wake zombie series, and the Black Horror graphic novel The Keeper, illustrated by Marco Finnegan.
His fiction also includes The Hive (part of the Star Wars Legends books), and the Heorot series (with co-authors Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle).
Barnes also writes for television, including The Twilight Zone, Stargate SG-1, Andromeda, and an Emmy Award-winning episode of The Outer Limits.
He also has taught at UCLA, Seattle University, and lectured at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. With his wife, Tananarive Due, he has created online courses in Afrofuturism, Black Horror, and Screenwriting. Due and Barnes also co-host the podcast Lifewriting: Write for Your Life!
Find Steven Barnes online
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Moni Boyce
Moni Boyce is a writer, filmmaker, poet and award-winning author of contemporary and paranormal romances. Ms. Boyce spent 15 years in the film industry, and now creates characters of her own and brings them to life on the page. Her books include the paranormal romance series Oracle Chronicles and urban fantasy romance series the Curse of the Wolf. She also won two awards from the RSJ 2020 Virtual Romance Book Con, in the categories of Debut Author, and Best Commercial Romance for Redemption of the Heart.
Find Moni Boyce online
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Maurice Broaddus
Complete Knights of Breton Court Series by Maurice Broaddus
An accidental teacher (at the Oaks Academy Middle School), an accidental librarian (the School Library Manager which part of the IndyPL Shared System), and a purposeful community organizer (resident Afrofuturist at the Kheprw Institute), Maurice Broaddus’ novels include the urban fantasy trilogy Knights of Breton Court, the epic space trilogy Astra Black and the steampunk adventures Buffalo Soldier and Pimp My Airship. He also contributed to the weird wild west anthology Straight Outta Tombstone and the Marvel Comics prose anthology Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda.
Broaddus’ work has also appeared in Magazine of SF&F, Lightspeed Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Asimov’s, and Uncanny Magazine, with some of his stories having been collected in The Voices of Martyrs. As an editor, he’s worked on Dark Faith, Fireside Magazine, and Apex Magazine. His gaming work includes writing for the Marvel Super-Heroes, Leverage, and Firefly role-playing games as well as working as a consultant on Watch Dogs 2.
Find Maurice Broaddus online
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Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006)
Often referred to as the “grand dame of science fiction,” Octavia E. Butler was the author of several award-winning novels including Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novel. She was also the author of Kindred, which was developed into a TV show. Recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant and numerous literary awards, she has been acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations in stories that range from the distant past to the far future.
More about Octavia E. Butler online
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Jessica Cage
Complete Djinn Rebellion Series by Jessica Cage
Award-winning and USA Today bestselling author, Jessica Cage dabbles in artistic creations of all sorts but at the end of the day, it’s the pen that her hand itches to hold. Her books include the series Scorned by the Gods, Djinn Rebellion, High Arc Vampires, the Alphas werewolf series, and Siren.
“My dream is to write the stories I grew up loving with characters who look like me,” she says on her website homepage. “I can remember as a little girl wondering why there were no black vampires, werewolves, and fairies in the stories I read. Well, now there are because I’ve written them! This is my passion and I’m overjoyed to be able to share it with the world.”
Find Jessica Cage online
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Johnny Compton
Johnny Compton is the author of The Spite House, a terrifying Gothic thriller about grief and death and the depths of a father’s love. In our interview with him, Compton talked to Monster Complex about The Spite House, shared the angle that drove him to write it, explained his favorite things about horror fiction, and revealed how he hates it when people dismiss the genre.
A San Antonio-based author whose fascination with frightening fiction started when his kindergarten teacher played a record of the classic ghost story “The Golden Arm” for her class. His short stories have appeared in several publications since 2006, including Pseudopod, Strange Horizons and The No Sleep Podcast. He is a Horror Writers Association member and operates the podcast Healthy Fears, which covers how our fears are explored through horror fiction.
More about Johnny Compton online
Related link: Q&A: Johnny Compton on ‘The Spite House’: “Someone building a house purely to express their hatred fascinated me.”
Tananarive Due
A leading voice in Black speculative fiction for more than 20 years, Tananarive Due is an American Book Award-winning, Essence-bestselling author of more than a dozen books, including The Between, her African Immortals series, The Good House, Joplin’s Ghost, and her new anthology The Wishing Pool and Other Stories.
Due also took part in the anthology Hex Life: Wicked New Tales of Witchery, featuring brand-new stories of witches and witchcraft from popular female fantasy authors writing in their own bestselling universes. Also in the book are Alma Katsu, Kelley Armstrong, Rachel Caine, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Rachel Deering, Ania Ahlborn, Amber Benson, Chesya Burke, Rachel Caine, Kristin Dearborn, Theodora Goss, Kat Howard, Sarah Langan, Helen Marshall, Jennifer McMahon, Hillary Monahan, Mary SanGiovanni, and Angela Slatter.
She was also a contributor to Jonathan Maberry’s middle grade anthology, Don’t Turn Out the Lights: A Tribute to Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. (That book also includes R.L. Stine, Madeleine Roux, Linda D. Addison, Christopher Golden, Luis Alberto Urrea, and more!)
Due has won an American Book Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a British Fantasy Award. She teaches Black Horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA.
She is an executive producer on Shudder’s groundbreaking documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror. She and her husband/collaborator, Steven Barnes, wrote “A Small Town” for Season 2 of Jordan Peele’s The Twilight Zone on Paramount+ and two segments of Shudder’s anthology film Horror Noire. They also co-wrote the Black Horror graphic novel The Keeper, illustrated by Marco Finnegan. Due and Barnes co-host a podcast, Lifewriting: Write for Your Life!
More about Tananarive Due online
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Alicia Ellis
Who will survive the war between man and machine? Alicia Ellis’ Flesh and Metal series about a cyborg woman combines action movie energy with classic story ideas and mystery solving.
Alicia Ellis decided to write books about ten minutes before graduating from law school. Now, she’s an Atlanta attorney moonlighting as an author, electronics junkie, and secret superhero. With two degrees in computer science and an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction, she loves creative problem-solving, especially as it relates to high-tech things.
Alicia writes mysteries, sometimes for young adults, sometimes in fantasy or science fiction settings, and sometimes in the real world. Her debut novel, Girl of Flesh and Metal, a young adult sci-fi mystery, was the first self-published book ever to make the American Library Association’s LITA Excellence in Children’s and Young Adult Science Fiction Notable Lists.
Alicia Ellis writes sci-fi, contemporary, and fantasy mysteries. She is the author of the sci-fi action mysteries “Girl of Flesh and Metal,” the urban fantasy Blood Spells and the “Gray Girls” mystery. Ellis told the GIRL MEETS MONSTER site that her love for SF and Fantasy came because her father raised her on Star Trek and Star Wars.
More about Alicia Ellis
Seressia Glass
Complete Shadowchasers books by Seressia Glass
Author Seressia Glass’ fiction spans urban fantasy, paranormal romance, and contemporary romance. “No matter the genre,” she says on her author website homepage, “my books feature tales of overcoming the odds to achieve love and acceptance–universal desires for everyone no matter who or what they are.”
Her Shadowchasers series is set in a supernatural Atlanta where Kira Solomon is an antiquities expert by day—and by night a Shadowchaser, a bounty hunter charged by the Light to hunt the Fallen. Glass also was one of the authors that was part of Vegas Bites, a werewolf anthology with romance novellas by Glass, L.A. Banks, J.M. Jeffries, and Natalie Dunbar.
Find Seressia Glass online
Related link: 75+ Urban Fantasy Writers Who Aren’t White
Nalo Hopkinson
House of Whispers series by Nalo Hopkinson
Jamaican-born Canadian speculative fiction writer and editor Nalo Hopkinson often infuses her fiction with Caribbean history and language, and its traditions of oral and written storytelling. Her books include the novels Brown Girl in the Ring (a young woman must solve the tragic mystery surrounding her family and bargain with the gods to save her city and herself), Midnight Robber (a man commits an unbelievable crime—and his daughter must fight to save her own life), The Salt Roads (which blends fantasy, women’s history, and slavery), and The Chaos (a blend of fantasy and Caribbean folklore that navigates between myth and chaos).
She also wrote the collections Falling in Love with Hominids and Skin Folk. She was the curator of Six Impossible Things, an audio series of Canadian fantastical fiction on CBC Radio One. She is also one of the Black authors involved with the SF Black Stars books.
Hopkinson entered Neil Gaiman’s Sandman universe with the comic book limited-series House of Whispers (DC Comic), taking readers from the bayou to the Dreaming. “What’s wonderful is that Neil and the artists who did the original Sandman series wrote the roads into to inclusivity,” Hopkinson told Gizmodo. “I want to bring in a diverse diversity of African-ness. Our skin colors are different, we speak different languages, we have different socioeconomic backgrounds. I have so far used at least three languages. I’m hybridizing our existing mode. Yoruba is a religion that has numbers of different versions of it, and I’m hybridizing those. There’s a feel of kind of breaking orthodoxy that sort of gives me pause, but I need to do it to make the story go where I want.”
Find Nalo Hopkinson online
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Justina Ireland
Justina Ireland is a New York Times bestselling author, professor, and bookish bon vivant with a strong commitment to elevating marginalized voices. She’s written numerous books, including the zombie historical novels Dread Nation and Deathless Divide, as well as the Scott O’Dell Award winning middle-grade book Ophie’s Ghosts. She is also the author of numerous Star Wars books and one of the story architects of Star Wars: The High Republic. She is the former co-editor in chief of FIYAH Literary Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, for which she won a World Fantasy Award.
More about Justina Ireland online
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N.K. Jemisin
N.K. Jemisin is a science fiction and fantasy writer whose fiction includes a wide range of themes, notably cultural conflict and oppression. She is the first author to win three consecutive Best Novel Hugos—she won them for each book in her Broken Earth trilogy, the first time to win three Hugos for all three novels in a trilogy.
Jemisin previously won the Locus Award for her first novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and her short fiction and novels have been nominated multiple times for Hugo, World Fantasy, and Nebula awards, and shortlisted for the Crawford and the James Tiptree, Jr. awards.
Her fiction also includes the Great Cities series, the Inheritance Trilogy series, and the Dreamblood series. She was one of the authors in the Forward SF series. She also wrote the cosmic murder mystery Green Lantern comic book Far Sector.
She is a MacArthur 2020 Genius Grant Fellow. She is a science fiction and fantasy reviewer for the New York Times. She lives and writes in New York City.
More about N.K. Jemisin online
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Delizhia Jenkins
Complete Vampire Hunters Academy from Delizhia Jenkins
Delizhia Jenkins is an urban fantasy and paranormal romance author whose love for writing began in elementary school when the passion for storytelling developed into a journey of writing. Over the years, she excelled in subjects such English and English Literature, and read the works of Anne Rice, K’Wan, Christopher Pike, Carl Weber, Omar Tyree, and the late L.A. Banks. J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood also claimed her heart and author Karen Marie Moning joined the ranks of Miss Jenkins’ all time favorite authors.
“I create worlds with broken dreams. I live my life with the help of dragon wings…”
Jenkins’ fiction includes The Vampire Hunters Academy series and The Lost Queen: Mercury’s Heir. She was also one of the authors in the Rise of the Elites project, and a contributor for Black Magic Women: Terrifying Tales by Scary Sisters.
Find Delizhia Jenkins online
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The Vampire Issue: L.A. Banks, Delizhia Jenkins, Faith Hunter, Anne Rice, Laurell K. Hamilton
‘What We Do in the Shadows’ Fans—16 Vampire Books You Should Check Out
Author Q&A: Delizhia Jenkins | The Book of Maya (Vampire Hunters Academy)
Delizhia Jenkins: Sanctum: A Last Vampire Huntress Novel [Spotlight]
60+ Special Vampire Book Series—from Anne Rice, L.A. Banks, Charlaine Harris, more
30+ Indie Urban Fantasy Authors—including Ilona Andrews, Brandon Sanderson, more
N.D. Jones
N.D. Jones, Ed.D. is a USA Today bestselling author who wanted to see more novels with positive, sexy, and three-dimensional Black characters as soul mates, friends, and lovers—so set out to write them herself.
Her books include the Fairy Tale Fatale series, which are urban fantasy stories that reimagine fairy tales. She also wrote the urban fantasy duology Feline Nation, the paranormal romance Death and Destiny trilogy, the paranormal romance series Winged Warriors and the Dragon Shifter Romance series. Her novel A Queen’s Pride: An African American Shapeshifter Urban Fantasy (Feline Nation Book #1) was a U.S. Selfies Book Award 2021 Adult Fiction finalist and a Wishing Shelf Book Awards 2021 Adult Fiction finalist.
Find N.D. Jones online
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Nicole Givens Kurtz
Nicole Givens Kurtz has been called “a genre polymath who does crime, horror, and SFF (Book Riot).” Her fiction includes the Death Violations cybernoir series; the weird western anthology, Sisters of the Wild Sage: A Weird West Collection; the Cybil Lewis science fiction mysteries; and the Kingdom of Aves fantasy mystery series.
Kurtz is also the editor of SLAY: Stories of the Vampire Noire, a revolutionary anthology with stories by multiple authors set in a world of horror and wonder where Black protagonists take center stage as vampires, hunters, or heroes.
A two-time Atomacon Palmetto Scribe Award winner, Kurtz has published more than 50 short stories. She’s been published by Pseudopod, Fiyah, Apex Magazine, White Wolf, The Realm (formerly Serial Box), Subsume, and Baen.
Kurtz is a member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and Horror Writers Association. She is the owner of Mocha Memoirs Press. She has conducted workshops for Clarion and is an active instructor at Speculative Fiction Academy.
More about Nicole Givens Kurtz online
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Michelle Renee Lane
Michelle Renee Lane writes dark speculative fiction about identity politics and women of color battling their inner demons while falling in love with monsters. Her work includes elements of fantasy, horror, romance, and occasionally erotica.
Lane’s fiction includes the Bram Stoker Award-nominated debut novel Invisible Chains (2019) and the erotic suspense paranormal romance The Courtship of Nora Fagan: A Marriage Made in Hell #1 (2022).
Her short fiction appears in several anthologies, including including Dead Awake: 12 Tales of Darkness, Graveyard Smash (Women of Horror Anthology Volume 2), The One That Got Away (Women of Horror Anthology Volume 3), Dark Murmurs: A Compendium of Curiosities, The Monstrous Feminine: Dark Tales of Dangerous Women, and midnight & indigo: Twenty-two Speculative Stories by Black Women Writers.
She also was a contributor to Writers Workshop of Horror 2, along with Stephen King, Anne Rice, and R.L. Stine.
Born and raised in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania, Michelle spent countless hours of her youth obsessed with the occult and consumed by vampire fiction. She climbed into strangers’ cars, explored abandoned buildings seeking secret passageways to hidden worlds, taught herself to read Tarot cards, and consulted the dead with a Ouija board. Michelle’s first and subsequent heartbreaks have given her much material for her cautionary tales about the perils of falling in love with monsters.
More about Michelle Renee Lane online
Monster Complex articles
Victor LaValle
Victor LaValle is the author of several works of fiction—including novels, novellas, and short stories. His novels include The Changeling, The Ballad of Black Tom, Lone Women, and The Devil in Silver. His novels have been included in best-of-the-year lists by The New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, The Nation, and Publishers Weekly, among others.
He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Key to Southeast Queens. He lives in New York City with his wife and kids and teaches at Columbia University.
More about Victor LaValle online
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L.L. McKinney
An advocate for equality and inclusion in publishing, L.L. McKinney is the creator of the hashtags #PublishingPaidMe and #WhatWoCWritersHear. Her works include the Nightmare-Verse books (an urban fantasy retelling of Alice in Wonderland), the DC Comics project Nubia: Real One, the Marvel Comics project Black Widow: Bad Blood, the Power Rangers Unlimited: Heir to Darkness comics, and more.
McKinney has also been part of the anthologies Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda (short story collection), Twice Cursed: An Anthology (blend of traditional and reimagined curses from fairy-tales), The Grimoire of Grave Fates (a multi-author wizard school murder mystery), Wonderland: An Anthology (stories inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland written by fantasy and horror authors), and A Phoenix First Must Burn: Sixteen Stories of Black Girl Magic, Resistance, and Hope (featuring tales that explore the Black experience through fantasy, science fiction, and magic).
McKinney’s also a gamer, Blerd, and adamant Hei Hei stan, living in Kansas, spending her free time plagued by her cat—Sir Chester Fluffmire Boopsnoot Purrington Wigglebottom Flooferson III, esquire, Baron o’Butterscotch or #SirChester for short.
Find L.L. McKinney online
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Toni Morrison (1931-2019)
Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. She wrote several novels, including the critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her novel Beloved (1987) won the Pulitzer Prize and was made into a major movie. Morrison was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor, in 2012 by President Barack Obama.
Ms. Morrison told the New York Times that unlike some authors, who dislike being labeled, she doesn’t mind being called a Black writer, or even a Black woman writer. “I’ve decided to define that, rather than having it be defined for me…I really think the range of emotions and perceptions I have had access to as a black person and as a female person are greater than those of people who are neither. I really do. So it seems to me that my world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger.”
Walter Mosley
Walter Mosley is is the author of dozens of books, which have won numerous awards and have been translated into more than twenty languages. His book The Tempest Tales follows a man—wrongfully shot by police—who goes into the afterlife and is condemned to hell. Mosley also writes the Crosstown to Oblivion short novels, which explore life’s cosmic questions.
Mosley’s fiction also includes the acclaimed Easy Rawlins series of mysteries, the Leonid McGill series, the Fearless Jones series, and the Socrates Fortlow series.
More about Walter Mosley online
Related link: Top 70 Horror Authors and Their Work
Errick Nunnally
Errick Nunnally writes dark pulp, sci-fi, crime, fantasy, and horror stuff. “I don’t believe horror needs to be scary, shocking, or gory, per se as much much as it needs to be disturbingly horrific,” Nunnally told My Life My Books My Escape. “It should also plumb as much human depth and emotion as possible. It is horrific by demonstration, not necessarily that the characters are experiencing the emotion of horror as much as they are in a horrific situation. If their solution to the problem is as disturbingly horrific as the problem, we’re good. That said, everyone has their threshold and there are plenty of different writers out there willing to go mining for it.”
Nunnally’s work includes the werewolf detective Alexander Smith novels Blood for the Sun and All The Dead Men, and the superhero novel Lightning Wears a Red Cape. He has also contributed to several anthologies, including Halloween Nights: Tales of Autumn Fright, After the Fall: Tales of the Apocalypse, The Bad Book, Wicked Witches: An Anthology of the New England Horror Writers, and Fright Train.
Born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, Nunnally served one tour in the Marine Corps before deciding art school would be a safer—and more natural—pursuit. He is permanently distracted by art, comics, science fiction, history, and horror. Trained as a graphic designer, he has earned a black belt in Krav Maga/Muay Thai kickboxing after dark. Eventually, the author came to his senses and moved to Rhode Island with his two lovely children and one beautiful wife.
More about Errick Nunnally online
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Nnedi Okorafor
Nnedi Okorafor is an international award-winning New York Times bestselling novelist who has won LOTS of awards for her science fiction and fantasy for children, young adults and adults. Born in the United States to Nigerian immigrant parents, she is known for drawing from African cultures to create captivating stories with unforgettable characters and evocative settings.
Champions of her work include Neil Gaiman, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, George R.R. Martin, and Rick Riordan. Literary ancestors Diana Wynne Jones, Ursula K. Le Guin and Nawal El Saadawi also loved her work. She has received the World Fantasy, Nebula, Eisner and Lodestar Awards and multiple Hugo Awards, amongst others, for her books.
Okorafor’s fiction includes the Binti series (the highly-acclaimed science fiction trilogy that began with the Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning first book), the Nsibidi Scripts series (affectionately dubbed “the Nigerian Harry Potter”), Who Fears Death (now optioned as a TV series for HBO with executive producer George R. R. Martin, this World Fantasy Award-winning magical realism novel follows a remarkable woman in post-apocalyptic Africa), The Shadow Speaker (a CBS Parallax Award winner), Noor (a science fiction novel of intense action and thoughtful rumination on biotechnology, destiny, and humanity in a near-future Nigeria), The Black Pages (part of the epic event Black Stars, featuring several Black speculative fiction authors), Lagoon (a British Science Fiction Association Award finalist for Best Novel), Remote Control (a thrilling sci-fi tale of community and female empowerment for which the audiobook version won the AudioFile Earphones Award), The Book of Phoenix (prequel to Who Fears Death that New York Times called a “triumph”), and lots more.
The author also writes for comic books and movies. Her writings for Marvel Comics include Black Panther, the Shuri series starring Black Panther’s techno-genius sister, and the Wakanda Forever event.
Find Nnedi Okorafor online
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Helen Oyeyemi
Named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists, Helen Oyeyemi is a British novelist who lives in Prague with an ever-increasing perfume wardrobe. (Let’s just say the bottle count exceeds 150, but so far is less than 300.)
Her novels include White is for Witching (winner of the Somerset Maugham Award), Mr. Fox (winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction), The Icarus Girl (a striking variation on the classic literary theme of doubles—both real and spiritual), Boy, Snow, Bird (recasting the Snow White fairy tale as a story of family secrets, race, beauty, and vanity), Peaces, Gingerbread, and The Opposite House.
She also wrote Juniper’s Whitening AND Victimese (featuring two plays that explore the pain of living and the difficulty of dying) and the collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours.
More about Helen Oyeyemi online
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Steven Van Patten
Brooklyn native Steven Van Patten has written about everything from sleep demons to the Harlem Hellfighters of WWI. His critically acclaimed Brookwater’s Curse trilogy features an 1860s Georgia plantation slave who becomes law enforcement within the vampire community. In contrast, the main character in his Killer Genius series is a modern day hyper-intelligent Black woman who uses high-end technology as a socially conscious serial killer.
SVP’s well-reviewed short fiction includes contributions to horror anthologies—including SLAY: Stories of the Vampire Noire, plus the Bram Stoker Award-nominated books Under Twin Suns and A New York State of Fright: Horror Stories from the Empire State. Van Patten also contributed to Hell’s Kitties and Other Beastly Beasts, Shopping List 4: A Terrifying Anthology of 18 Tales of Horror!, Even in The Grave. He has also made multiple appearances in Tales from The Canyons of The Damned.
Van Patten and co-author Marc Abbott wrote the collection of short horror and dark fiction stories Hell At The Way Station. The authors were joined by sword & sorcery writer Kirk Johnson for the sequel collection, Hell at Brooklyn Tea.
SVP’s honors include three African American Literary Awards in 2019, two for Hell at The Way Station (“Best Anthology” and “Best in Science Fiction”) and one for “Best Independent Publisher” for his company Laughing Black Vampire Productions.
When he’s not writing fiction, Van Patten can be found stage managing television shows in New York City, as well as writing for productions seen on YouTube. He’s a member of the New York Chapter of The Horror Writer’s Association, the Director’s Guild of America, and the professional arts fraternity Gamma Xi Phi.
More about Steven Van Patten online
Related link: ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ Fans—16 Vampire Books You Should Check Out
K.T. Rose
K.T. Rose is the author of The Haunting of Gallagher Hotel. A horror, thriller, and dark fiction writer from Detroit, Michigan, she posts suspense and horror flash fiction on her blog. Rose is also the author of a gruesome, suspenseful short story series titled A Trinity of Wicked Tales and an erotic thriller, When We Swing.
“I’m not a fan of protagonists who are beyond human,” Rose told Monster Complex. “If they start off perfect, there is nothing for them to learn and nowhere for them to go. I like to drag my main characters through the dirt so they can come back beaten and bruised, but enlightened and changed for the better because of the plot and people involved.”
More about K.T. Rose Online
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Zin E. Rocklyn
“I write anything within horror,” Zin E. Rocklyn told Nightmare Magazine, “from weird to supernatural to even fanfic of slashers! I love the dark and love exploring the creatures within it.”
Rocklyn is a contributor to Bram Stoker-nominated and This is Horror Award-winning anthology Nox Pareidolia, as well as the giant monster anthology Kaiju Rising II: Reign of Monsters, the dark fantasy underworld anthology Brigands: A Blackguards Anthology, and the Colors in Darkness anthology Forever Vacancy. They also contributed the story “Summer Skin” in the Bram Stoker-nominated anthology Sycorax’s Daughters.
Rocklyn told The Lineup that they absolutely love horror. “I’m obsessed with everything about it. There is so much that is inherently fearful about being human and the catharsis that horror offers is unrivaled in any other genre, in my opinion. It touches on such human emotions and helps you process, understand, and in a way, get a deeper understanding of yourself, your limitations, and your boundaries. Horror is incredible. It’s a lot more ubiquitous than a lot of people give it credit for.”
Rocklyn’s dark fantasy novella Flowers for the Sea—said to read like Rosemary’s Baby by way of Octavia E. Butler—won the Shirley Jackson Award and the Pulver Award. It was also an Ignyte Award Finalist, a Library Journal Editor’s Pick, and one of Den of Geeks Best Books of 2021.
About the book Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn
We are a people who do not forget.
Survivors from a flooded kingdom struggle alone on an ark. Resources are scant, and ravenous beasts circle. Their fangs are sharp.
Among the refugees is Iraxi: ostracized, despised, and a commoner who refused a prince, she’s pregnant with a child that might be more than human. Her fate may be darker and more powerful than she can imagine.
Zin E. Rocklyn’s extraordinary debut is a lush, gothic fantasy about the prices we pay and the vengeance we seek.
“Gorgeously written.”—Seanan McGuire, New York Times bestselling author
“Rocklyn’s lyrical gothic fantasy debut considers how life can persist in a world of rot, death, and destruction. . . . [They] conjure Iraxi’s precarious position in fluid, lovely prose.” —Publishers Weekly
“This novella will whet the appetite of fans of classics like Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, P. D. James’ The Children of Men, and Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild.” —Booklist
“A gorgeous, powerful debut. . . . You don’t want to miss it.” —Cassandra Khaw, USA Today bestselling author
“Rocklyn manages to write a darkly spectacular, yet strangulating world in the middle of the sea, with well-developed characters, vivid imagery, and dense lyrical prose….This claustrophobic story had me reeling as the tension rose until I reached the impressive ending.”—Cemetery Dance
“Zin E. Rocklyn’s extraordinary debut is a lush, gothic fantasy about the prices we pay and the vengeance we seek.”—The Quiet Pond
Find Flowers for the Sea on Amazon
More about Zin E. Rocklyn online
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Eden Royce
Eden Royce is a Black gothic horror writer from Charleston, South Carolina. A member of the Gullah-Geechee nation, she references the Gullah-Geechee culture in her writing.
Her debut novel, Root Magic, was a Walter Dean Myers Award Honoree, an ALA Notable Children’s Book, a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award winner, and a Nebula Award Finalist for outstanding children’s literature.
As a short story writer, Royce is also a Shirley Jackson Award finalist for her short fiction for adults. Her fiction has appeared in two collections of her work, Spook Lights: Southern Gothic Horror and Spook Lights II: Southern Gothic Horror. She has also contributed to anthologies Sycorax’s Daughters, Forever Vacancy: A Colors in Darkness Anthology, Dark Things V, and The Big Bad: An Anthology of Evil, plus magazines like Apex Magazine and Strange Horizons. Royce is also the recipient of the Speculative Literature Foundation’s Diverse Worlds grant.
She now lives in the Garden of England with her husband and cat. When she’s not writing or reading, she's probably roller-skating, watching quiz shows, or perfecting her signature dish for Masterchef. Sometimes all at once.
More about Eden Royce online
Monster Complex articles
Related link: Top 70 Horror Authors and Their Work
Liselle Sambury
Liselle Sambury’s fiction spans multiple genres, from fantasy to sci-fi, horror, and more. She is the Trinidadian-Canadian author of the Governor General’s Literary Awards Finalist Blood Like Magic. She also wrote Delicious Monsters.
In her free time, she shares helpful tips for upcoming writers and details of her publishing journey through a YouTube channel dedicated to demystifying the sometimes complicated business of being an author.
Find Liselle Sambury online
Related link: Urban Fantasy Showcase: 101 Authors To Know and Their Works
Sumiko Saulson
Sumiko Saulson—Social Media Manager for the Horror Writers Association—is a speculative fiction author whose focus is on horror and science-fiction. An award-winning author of Afrosurrealist and multicultural sci-fi and horror, their work includes The Rat King: A Book of Dark Poetry, the reference book 100+ Black Women in Horror Fiction, and the novels Solitude and Warmth. Their short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies including Tales From the Lake Vol 3, Forever Vacancy: A Colors In Darkness Anthology, and Slay: Tales of the Vampire Noire.
Winner of the Afrosurrealist Writers Award (2018), Grand Prize 2017 BCC Voice “Reframing the Other” contest, 2nd Place Carry The Light Sci-fi/Fantasy Award (2016), 2017 Mixy Award, 6th Place in the Next Great Horror Writers Contest (2017). They are the recipient of the 2002 STAND Grant for First Time Directors, 2016 HWA StokerCon “Scholarship from Hell”, 2018 Ara Joe Grant for Zinemakers, 2020 HWA Diversity Grant recipient, and 2021 Ladies in Horror Fiction grant.
More about Sumiko Saulson online
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Tade Thompson
The Wormwood Trilogy by Tade Thompson
British author Tade Thompson is the author of the Rosewater trilogy (winner of the Nommo Award and John W. Campbell finalist), The Murders of Molly Southbourne (nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award, the British Science Fiction Award, and the Nommo Award), and Making Wolf (winner of the Golden Tentacle Award). His interests include jazz, visual arts and MMA. He is addicted to reading.
Find Tade Thompson online
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Kenesha Williams
Kenesha Williams is an independent author, speaker, and founder/editor-in-chief of the speculative fiction literary magazine Black Girl Magic Lit Mag. Her own work spans many genres from mystery to romance, but always with a dark twist. Her book Blood Debt: The Daywalker Chronicles is an inventive novel about a natural daywalker on a mission to find the murderer of a Master Vampire. She was also a contributor to Boneyard of Lost Dreams and Black Magic Women: Terrifying Tales by Scary Sisters.
Find Kenesha Williams online
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