BFS Online: Power in SFFH – Power Corrupts

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We’ve all the heard the sayings “Absolute power corrupts absolutely” and “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”, but what really makes a character power mad? And does it ever go the other way? Do people with bad intentions see the light?

Join moderator Lauren McMenemy and panellists Erin Brown, Luke Dumas, Kieron Gillen, and Ash Huang as they discuss abuse of power in SFFH.

Erin Brown (she/her): Erin Brown is a black, neurodivergent poet and author of horror, fabulist, and fantasy short fiction. She has been published in FIYAH Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, Midnight and Indigo, The Deadlands, Eastover Press, Baffling Magazine, the Escape Pod, and And One Day We Will Die: Neutral Milk Hotel anthology, Fantasy Magazine, and many other publications and anthologies. Her stories have been selected for three different “Best of 2025” anthologies so far this year. Erin’s debut novelette “Garden of the Bloodpotter” through Psychopomp Press published in September 2025, and the anthology she is coediting, The Cookout, will be published in early 2027. Erin currently resides in Los Angeles, and will be finishing her M.A. in Creative Writing in Winter of 2026. Find out more about Erin on her website, along with her previously published works. Or connect with her on Instagram or Bluesky. Get her novelette here.

Luke Dumas (he/him): Luke Dumas is the USA TODAY bestselling author of four horror and thriller novels including Nothing Tastes as Good and A History of Fear. His bestselling novel The Paleontologist won an ITW Thriller Award, and his short fiction has appeared in The Big Bad Book of Kaiju and Dread Coast: SoCal Horror Tales. He received his master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Edinburgh. He lives in San Diego, California, with his dogs. Find out more on Luke’s website. Or follow him on Instagram or Threads. Books: Nothing Tastes as Good; The Paleontologist.

Kieron Gillen (he/him): Kieron Gillen is a writer, game designer and recovering critic. As a comic writer, he’s best known for co-creating books like the Wicked + the Divine, DIE, the Power Fantasy, Once & Future, Phonogram and more. When not doing his own works, he has written extensively for Marvel comics, on all the characters you’ve heard of and quite a few you probably haven’t. He’s based in Bath. Find out more about Kieron on his website. Or connect on Bluesky or Instagram. Get Kieron’s books here.

Ash Huang (she/her): Ash Huang is the author of The Secret Lives of Immortals, forthcoming in 2027 from Orbit UK and Redhook. She has been published in Nightmare, Lightspeed, Ecotone, Orion’s Belt, and elsewhere. In 2022, she won the Diverse Worlds Grant from the Speculative Literature Foundation, and is a grateful alum of the Roots. Wounds. Words. Retreat, Tin House Winter Workshop (MWC), and the Periplus Fellowship. She was a Reading Fellow for Tin House Workshop in 2024–2025. She is currently a Fiction Editor at Orion’s Belt, and a Lisa Brown and Daniel Handler Resident with Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. Find out more about Ash on her website and sign up for her newsletter here. Or follow her on Bluesky or Instagram.

Lauren McMenemy (she/her): Lauren McMenemy wears many hats. Former Editor-in-Chief at Trembling With Fear for horrortree.com, she is the British Fantasy Society’s Managing Editor for Online Content, and host and curator of the Writing the Occult virtual event series. A British Fantasy Award-nominated author, she writes gothic-influenced occult and folk horror stories. You’ll find her haunting south London, where she lives with her Doctor Who-obsessed husband, the ghost of their aged black house rabbit, and the entity that lives in the walls. Learn more about Lauren on her website. Or this website. She’s also a social media queen. Find her on Twitter, Instagram, Instagram (Society of Ink Slingers), Bluesky, Threads or Mastodon. Whatever your social media pleasure, Lauren has you covered.