Eric J. Guignard has twice won the Bram Stoker Award (the highest literary award of horror fiction), won the Shirley Jackson Award, and been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and International Thriller Writers Award for his works of dark and speculative fiction. He has over 100 stories and non-fiction author credits appearing in publications around the world; has edited multiple anthologies (including the current series, The Horror Writers Association’s HAUNTED LIBRARY OF HORROR CLASSICS, through SourceBooks, with co-editor Leslie S. Klinger); and has created an ongoing series of author primers championing modern masters of the dark and macabre, EXPLORING DARK SHORT FICTION through his press, Dark Moon Books. He is also publisher and acquisitions editor for the renowned +HORROR LIBRARY+ anthology series. His latest books are LAST CASE AT A BAGGAGE AUCTION; DOORWAYS TO THE DEADEYE; and short story collection THAT WHICH GROWS WILD: 16 TALES OF DARK FICTION (Cemetery Dance). Visit Eric at: www.ericjguignard.com, his blog: ericjguignard.blogspot.com, or Twitter: @ericjguignard.

Lee Clark Zumpe’s nights are consumed with the invocation of ancient nightmares, dutifully bound in fiction and poetry.

Lee’s work has been seen in distinguished genre magazines such as Weird Tales, Space and Time and Dark Wisdom, and in notable anthologies including Horrors Beyond, Corpse Blossoms, High Seas Cthulhu and Cthulhu Unbound Vol. 1. His stories and poems have earned Honorable Mentions in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.

Lee’s inclination toward horror manifested itself early in his childhood when he began flipping through the pages of Forrest J. Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland and reading Gold Key Comic classics like Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery and Grimm’s Ghost Stories. Throughout the 1970s, Lee also watched his share of “horrible old movies” on Creature Feature, a locally produced horror movie series hosted by Dr. Paul Bearer (Dick Bennick Sr.).

In his teenage years, Lee discovered Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, Richard Matheson and other masters of the genre.

By day, Lee is an entertainment columnist with Tampa Bay Newspapers. Covering the Tampa area entertainment beat, he has penned hundreds of film, theater and book reviews and has interviewed novelists as well as music industry icons such as Paddy Moloney of The Chieftains and Alan Parsons. His work for TBN has been recognized repeatedly by the Florida Press Association, including a first place award for criticism in the 2007 Better Weekly Newspaper Contest.

Lee earned his bachelor’s degree in English at the University of South Florida in Tampa. The author lives on the west coast of Florida with his wife and daughter.