Before her 2017 book Drawn to the Dark: Explorations in Scare Tourism Around the World, author Chris Kullstroem had written books about Halloween celebrations and how to throw great murder mystery parties, and had blogged about Halloween haunts (and the haunters who stage them). But then she decided to try something completely different: she quit her job, gave up her apartment, stashed her possessions, and traveled the world for a year to see how other cultures celebrate monsters and the art of the playful scare.

Three-time Shirley Jackson Award nominee S.P. Miskowski was raised in Decatur, Georgia, but later moved to the Pacific Northwest. After receiving an M.F.A. from the University of Washington and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, she seemed poised for a career as a writer of mainstream fiction (she cites Flannery O’Connor as an early influence), but instead found her way into the horror genre. She debuted with Knock Knock, the first of a series of books set in the fictional town of Skillute.

In 2014, a horror novel by a young writer named Josh Malerman was released by HarperCollins’ Ecco Press imprint to starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews. Malerman had never been published before, because (talk about dream day jobs!) he’d been touring for years as frontman for the band the High Strung, who scored when their song “The Luck You Got” was chosen as the theme song for the Showtime series Shameless. Since Bird Box, Josh has published an impressive array of short stories, novellas, introductions, and—just released in May—his second novel, Black Mad Wheel.

Since her first novel Rosemary and Rue was published in 2009, Seanan McGuire has written scores of short stories, non-fiction essays, songs, and nearly two-dozen novels . . . and that’s just under her own name. As Mira Grant, she has written the popular Newsflesh and Parasitology series, which include more medical horror than the works attributed to Seanan McGuire. A fan of both science and folklore, Seanan’s books include ten volumes in the October Daye urban fantasy series, the Incryptid series (which explores cryptozoology), the Wayward Children series from Tor, and the Velveteen Vs. superhero stories.

Pop culture journalist Theresa DeLucci joins Nightmare’s very own Christie Yant, as well as Angela Watercutter, writer and Wired editor, to discuss the TV series Penny Dreadful.

There’s a famous quote about Jack Ketchum that goes like this: “Who’s the scariest guy in America? Probably Jack Ketchum.” The author of that quote? Just some guy named Stephen King. Ketchum—who, in person, is amiable and personable enough to have once been a successful literary agent (he managed the career of literary icon Henry Miller, among others)—has always walked a unique line between mass market author and cult object. His first novel, Off Season, was released by Ballantine Books in 1980; in his introduction to a later reprint, Douglas Winter called the tale of a group of cave-dwelling and cannibalistic savages who prey on vacationing New Yorkers “raw and risky.”