Fantasycon 2022 Participants

Fantasycon could not take place without the many attendees who volunteer to take part in readings, panels, workshops and talks and we couldn’t be more excited to listen to them. Haven’t bought your ticket yet? Book here: Buy tickets – FantasyCon 2022 – Radisson Red Hotel and Conference Centre, Sat 17 Sep 2022 10:00 AM – Sun 18 Sep 2022 3:00 PM (tickettailor.com)

Find out more about the 2022 participants below:

Zack Argyle – Zack Argyle lives just outside of Seattle, WA, USA, with his wife and two children. His Threadlight trilogy was the winner of the Indies Today Best Fantasy Award and a finalist in Mark Lawrence’s Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off. He has a degree in Electrical Engineering and works full-time as a software engineer.

Stephen Aryan – Stephen Aryan is the award-winning fantasy author of the Age of Darkness and Age of Dread trilogies published by Orbit books. His latest duology from Angry Robot Books, The Quest for Heroes, began with The Coward in 2021 and wraps up with The Warrior in August 2022. https://linktr.ee/stephenaryan

Allen Ashely – Allen Ashley is a British Fantasy Award winner and a stalwart of the BFS and Fantasy Con. His most recent book is the poetry collection “Echoes from an Expired Earth” (Demain Publishing, paperback, 2021). Allen is the founder of the advanced SFF group Clockhouse London Writers.

Mike Brooks – Mike Brooks is the author of the God-King Chronicles, the Keiko series, and various works for Games Workshop’s Black Library. He is queer, partially deaf, plays guitar and sings in a punk band, and DJs wherever anyone will tolerate him.

Ryan Cahill – Ryan Cahill is an Epic Fantasy author who hails from Dublin, Ireland. Growing up with authors such as J.K.Rowling, Terry Pratchett and J.R.R Tolkien, George R.R. Martin Ryan was always immersed in the art of worldbuilding. In the creation of a world that could transport you to a place in your mind where nothing else could ever reach you.
Having stepped into the world of indie publishing in 2021, Cahill’s debut year saw him sell just over 50,000 books worldwide.  https://ryancahillauthor.com/

Ramsey Campbell – The Oxford Companion to English Literature describes Ramsey Campbell as “Britain’s most respected living horror writer”. He has received the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association, the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award.

David Cartwright – David Cartwright was born in 1981, and raised in a Golden Age of Saturday morning cartoons.
An avid consumer of Science-Fiction and Fantasy, David has been a Jack of many trades, but so far, a master of none, David has taken to committing his own words to paper. He lives in Hampshire, England with his family, cat and growing collection of flannel shirts.

Zen Cho – Zen Cho is the author of the Sorcerer to the Crown novels, Black Water Sister and various shorter fiction. Her work has won the Hugo, Crawford and British Fantasy Awards, and the LA Times Book Prize/Ray Bradbury Prize. Born and raised in Malaysia, Zen now lives in the UK.

Jenni Coutts – Jenni Coutts is a freelance illustrator, writer and junior doctor based in Glasgow, Scotland. She is a member of Glasgow SF Writers Circle. Her writing has been featured in BFS Horizons and Flotation Device: a GSFWC charity anthology. You can see her artwork on book covers and magazines in both uk and international publications. For more, follow her on twitter: @jenni_coutts

Gary Couzens – Gary Couzens has had short fiction published in F & SF, Interzone and elsewhere and has written film reviews for Black Static and CIne Outsider. Gary won the BFS Award in 2007 for Best Anthology and was Chair of the Society from 2000 to 2003.

Dan Coxon – Dan Coxon is the editor of award-nominated anthologies This Dreaming Isle and Out of the Darkness, and the author of short story collection Only The Broken Remain (shortlisted for two British Fantasy Awards). He co-edited Writing The Uncanny alongside Richard V. Hirst.

T.H. Dray – T.H. Dray is a new voice in speculative fiction. She lives in Glasgow and enjoys reading things out loud. Her work may be found in BFS Horizons and is forthcoming in Shoreline of Infinity and The Best of British Science Fiction 2021. You can find her on Twitter @thdray1.

Robin C.M. Duncan – Robin C.M. Duncan is a Scot born and living in Glasgow. An Engineer by profession, he has been writing for decades, but seriously only for the last ten years. Robin has completed various novels, numerous short stories, novellas, novelettes, and poems, with copious other projects in different stages of incompletion.

Kat Dunn – Kat Dunn grew up in London and has lived in Japan, Australia and France. She is the author of DANGEROUS REMEDY, MONSTROUS DESIGN and GLORIOUS POISON. Her writing on mental health has appeared in The Guardian and Mind, and she has worked as a translator for Japanese television.

Kate Dylan – Kate is a video editor by day, science fiction and fantasy author by night. Her passion for writing YA novels is fuelled by a love of banter, snark, and all things Marvel, and is supported by her long-suffering boyfriend and their thoroughly indifferent cat. https://linktr.ee/katedylan

Saara El-Arifi – Saara El-Arifi is the Sunday Times bestselling author of THE FINAL STRIFE, an epic fantasy inspired by her Ghanaian and Arabian heritage.

Kevin Elliott – Irish passport, English accent. Irish passport, English accent. Kevin’s passion for science and English mutated into a love of science fiction. His anthology ‘Go When the Light Turns Red’, and his first novel ‘Lightmaker’, both lurk on Amazon. He’s spoken at WorldCon, EasterCon and FantasyCon, and muses on his blog (‘Where’s My Flipping Tea’.)

Tracy Fahey – Tracy Fahey is an Irish writer of three collections, two of which have been shortlisted for BFAs. Her short fiction has been published in more than 30 Irish, UK, US and Australian anthologies. In 2022 she was awarded Saari Fellow status by the Kone Foundation, Finland. She holds a PhD and her research and fiction interests include the Gothic and folklore. www.tracyfahey.com

E.M. Faulds – E.M. Faulds is an Australian who now calls Scotland home. She has published short stories in Shoreline of Infinity and Strange Horizons magazine, and Under the Moon: Collected Speculative Fiction is now available at GhostMothPress.com. Find her websites and social links at https://linktr.ee/bethkesh

Paul M Feeney – Paul M. Feeney is a writer of mainly pulp horror with occasional firsts into science fiction, fantasy, and quiet, emotional stories. He has numerous short stories in various publications, plus two novellas. He is working on his first novel and various other projects.

David Green – David Green is a neurodiverse writer of the epic and the urban, the fantastical and the mysterious. With his character-driven epic dark fantasy series Empire Of Ruin, or urban fantasy noir Hell In Haven, David takes readers on emotional, action-packed thrill rides.

Ian Green – Ian Green is a science-fiction and fantasy writer born in Aberdeen, Scotland. He has a PhD in clinical epigenetics and his short fiction has been widely broadcast and performed, including winning the BBC Radio 4 Opening Lines competition and winning the Futurebook Future Fiction prize. He is the author of The Rotstorm: an epic fantasy trilogy from Head of Zeus starting with THE GAUNTLET AND THE FIST BENEATH (2021) and continuing with THE GAUNTLET AND THE BURNING BLADE (2022). You can find him on twitter @ianthegreen or at www.ianthegreen.com

JL George – JL George lives in Cardiff and writes speculative fiction. Her debut novel The Word, published in 2021, won the New Welsh Writing Awards and Rubery Book of the Year. She wrote her PhD on classic weird fiction and can otherwise be found baking, listening to shouty music, and bothering cats.

Dan Hanks – Dan Hanks is the author of Swashbucklers and Captain Moxley and the Embers of the Empire. He lives in the Peak District, UK, with his kids and dogs, where he writes books and works for an archaeological consultancy.

Caroline Hardaker – Author. Poet. Novelist. Occasional librettist. Caroline Hardaker writes quite a lot of things, mainly dark and brooding tales exploring everything speculative, from folklore to future worlds. Caroline’s debut poetry collections, ‘Bone Ovation’ and ‘Little Quakes Every Day’ are published by Valley Press. Caroline’s debut novel, Composite Creatures, was published by Angry Robot in April 2021. Her second novel – due to be released in 2023 – will be announced soon.

Stark Holborn – Stark Holborn is a novelist, games writer and the author of Ten Low, the British Fantasy Award-nominated Triggernometry series and Nunslinger. Stark lives in Bristol, UK and is currently a judge for the Clarke Award.

Andrew Hook – Andrew Hook has had over a hundred and sixty short stories published, with several novels, novellas and collections also in print. His next collection, “Candescent Blooms”, will appear from Salt in October, and “Secondhand Daylight”, an SF novel written with Eugen Bacon, has recently been accepted for publication in 2023

Lucy Hounsom – Lucy Holland is the author of The Times bestselling Sistersong, a reimagining of the folk ballad ‘The Twa Sisters’ published in the UK by Pan Macmillan and in the US by Orbit / Redhook. As Lucy Hounsom, she wrote the Worldmaker Trilogy. Her first book, Starborn, was shortlisted in the 2016 Gemmell Awards for Best Fantasy Debut. She works for Waterstones Booksellers and co-hosts the award-winning podcast ‘Breaking the Glass Slipper’. Lucy lives in Devon.

Gabriela Houston – I’m a Polish, London-based writer of Slavic-folklore-inspired fantasy novels for adults (The Second Bell, out from Angry Robot Books) and children (The Wind Child, published by Uclan). I write stories of families, grief, motherhood and communities, steeped in the Ancient Slavic lore and set against the beauty and danger of the natural (and supernatural) world.

Somto Ihezue – Somto Ihezue is an Igbo writer, filmmaker, and wildlife enthusiast. His works have appeared in Tordotcom: Africa Risen, Fireside, Cossmass Infinities, OnSpec, Flame Tree Press, Omenana, The Year’s Best Anthology of African Speculative Fiction, and elsewhere. Somto is an alumnus of Milford SF Writers and Voodoonauts’22. He is also part of the editorial team of both Cast of Wonders, and Android Press. He tweets @somto_Ihezue

Dave Jeffery – Dave Jeffery is the author of 18 novels and novellas, two collections, and numerous short stories. His Necropolis Rising series and yeti adventure Frostbite have both featured on the Amazon #1 bestseller list. His YA work features the Beatrice Beecham supernatural adventures. Jeffery is also the creator of the A Quiet Apocalypse series which has received worldwide critical acclaim. His contemporary mental health novel Finding Jericho is currently being optioned as a TV miniseries. Jeffery is a full member of the Society of Authors and a frequent reviewer for the British Fantasy Society. Actively involved in the Horror Writers Association (HWA), Jeffery is a mentor on the HWA Mentorship Scheme, and co-chair of the HWA Wellness Committee.

Penny Jones – Penny Jones knew she was a writer when she started to talk about herself in the third person. She loves reading and reads pretty much anything. In fact Penny only got into writing to buy books, when she realised there wasn’t much money in writing she stayed for the cake.

Benjamin Langley – Benjamin Langley is a writer of quiet horror with a creeping dread. He lives, writes, and teaches in Cambridgeshire. He is currently part-way through writing the trilogy, Guy Fawkes: Demon Hunter, and struggling under the equal weight of history and occult books.

L.R. Lam – L.R. Lam is the Sunday Times Bestselling author of upcoming epic fantasy romance Dragonfall, the Seven Devils duology co-written with Elizabeth May, Goldilocks, False Hearts, Shattered Minds, and the Micah Grey trilogy (Pantomime, Shadowplay, and Masquerade). Lam is programme leader for the Creative Writing MA at Edinburgh Napier University.

Shauna Lawless – Shauna Lawless is an avid reader of Irish mythology and folklore. She lives in Northern Ireland with her family. Her debut novel, The Children of Gods and Fighting Men, has been critically acclaimed. The Words of Kings and Prophets is the second volume in the Gael Song trilogy. www.shaunalawless.com

PS Livingstone – PS Livingstone is the author of the Transcendent Saga trilogy and various short stories. She is also an editor, proofreader, and ghostwriter, as well as a member of the Society of Authors, Chartered Institute of Editors and Proofreaders and the British Fantasy Society. She lives in Glasgow with her partner and three cats, often to be found in her allotment, usually covered in mud. https://linktr.ee/pslivingstone

Anny Lyle – Anne Lyle was born in the former heart of Sherwood Forest and grew up fascinated by history, folklore, and swashbuckling outlaws. She is the author of the Night’s Masque trilogy, and the first in her new fantasy crime series, “The Dead Dragon Job”, is due out January 2023. https://www.annelyle.com

Kevan Manwaring – Kevan Manwaring, PhD, is a writer of fantasy & non-fiction exploring ecology, fantastika, and the bardic tradition. He is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, and lives on the Jurassic Coast. Author website: www.kevanmanwaring.co.uk

Abbey Masahiro – Dr. Abbey Masahiro is a Japanese film and stage producer. He has been working with SciFi actors since 1999. His clients are acting in Star Wars, Gremlins, Aliens, Ghost Busters, Thunderbirds, Godzilla, Astro Boy and Ultraman. Especially he creates new monsters with Tom and Nimue Brown for their Hopeless, Maine.

Laura Mauro – Laura Mauro is a London-born writer, videogame narrative designer and PhD candidate researching Japanese horror literature. Their debut collection, ‘Sing Your Sadness Deep’ won the 2020 BFA for Best Collection, and her short story ‘The Pain-Eater’s Daughter’ won the 2020 BFA for Best Short Fiction.

Maura McHugh – Maura McHugh lives in Ireland and writes across a variety of media, including prose, theatre, film/TV, video games, and comic books. Her short story collection, The Boughs Withered (When I Told Them My Dreams), was nominated for the British Fantasy Award for Best Collection. She also writes non-fiction and appears on podcasts and radio, where she interviews, reviews, and discusses pop culture.  https://splinister.com/easylinks/

Juliet E McKenna – Juliet E McKenna has always loved history, myth and other worlds. From 1999 her Tales of Einarinn were followed by The Aldabreshin Compass, The Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution, and The Hadrumal Crisis. Her Green Man contemporary fantasies are rooted in British folklore. Shorter fiction includes dark fantasy, steampunk and SF.

Lucy A McLaren – Lucy is a fantasy author and professional counsellor, passionate about writing stories that include a realistic representation and exploration of mental health issues. Her debut novel, Awakening: The Commune’s Curse Book 1, released from Santa Fe Writers Project in May 2022. https://linktr.ee/lucyamclaren

Lauren McMenemy – Lauren is writer, editor and coach whose life revolves around gothic and folk horror. She also has a developing fascination with folklore, the old ways and our fast-changing relationship with the natural world. You’ll find Lauren haunting south London, where she lives with her Doctor Who-obsessed husband and their aged black house rabbit.

Cheryl Morgan – Cheryl Morgan is a writer, editor, and publisher. She is the winner of four Hugo Awards and is the owner of Wizard’s Tower Press. Cheryl was a Guest of Honour at the 2012 Eurocon in Zagreb and the 2019 Finncon in Jyväskylä.

Steve P. Morgan – Steve P. Morgan is a freelance online marketer, blogger and self-published business book author, who is currently working on his first novel on the side. Provisionally titled “DEMONS”, he hopes it will be finished in late 2022 / early 2023 and will be the first of an epic fantasy trilogy. He lives in Cardiff. http://thedemonsseries.com/

Peter Newman – Peter Newman is a Gemmell Award winning author and Hugo Award winning podcaster. He is the writer of the Vagrant trilogy and the Deathless trilogy. He also writes for George RR Martin’s and Melinda Snodgrass’ Wild Cards series. He is not as good at computer games as he thinks he is. He is represented by Juliet Mushens.

Claire North – Claire North is a pseudonym for Catherine Webb, who wrote several novels in various genres before publishing, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, her first major work as Claire North. She has since published several hugely popular and critically acclaimed novels, won the World Fantasy Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and been shortlisted for numerous awards including the Sunday Times/PFD Young Writer of the Year Award. She lives in London.

Steven Poore – Sheffield’s resident Epic Fantasist. Lead Judge for the BFS Short Story Competition. Can usually be found.

Kit Power – Kit Power is an author, blogger, podcaster, reviewer, and all round genre hound. His pulp horror novella A Song For The End made last year’s BFA best novella finalist list.

Tina Rath – Dr Rath has been a member of the BFS for many years. Her particular interest is vampires and she wrote her Doctoral Thesis on “The Vampire in Popular Fiction.” She writes dark fantasy fiction which has been extensively published in both the genre and mainstream press.

Ellis Saxey – E. Saxey works in universities and volunteers in libraries.
Their first collection of fiction, Lost in the Archives, is available from Lethe Press. Stories have appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Apex Magazine, and anthologies including Transcendent and Best of British Fantasy 2019.
“a vast array of speculative ideas, which… all stem from grounded human struggles.” – Publisher’s Weekly  https://thelightningbook.co.uk/ Twitter: @esaxey

Priya Sharma – Priya Sharma writes short stories and novella have won British Fantasy Awards and Shirley Jackson Awards. Her work has been translated into French, Spanish Italian, and Czech.

Russell Smith – Russell is a writer, historian and gamer who occasionally gets to do all three at once. He also likes cars and planes quite a bit.

Anna Smith Spark – Anna Smith Spark is the author of the grimdark epic fantasy series Empires of Dust, and the forthcoming A Woman of the Sword. Her writing has been described as ‘howls like Moorcock, converses like Le Guin’ by the Daily Mail. You may know her by the heels of her shoes.

Teika Marija Smits – Teika Marija Smits is a UK-based writer and freelance editor. She writes poetry and fiction, and her speculative short stories have been published in Parsec, Best of British Science Fiction and Great British Horror 6. She is delighted by the fact that Teika means fairy tale in Latvian.

Ashley Stokes – Ashley Stokes is the author of Gigantic (Unsung Stories, 2021). His recent short fiction has appeared in Weird Horror, Black Static, BFS Horizons, Nightscript, The Ghastling Out of Darkness (edited by Dan Coxon, Unsung Stories) and Fade to Black in This is not a Horror Story (edited by JD Keown, Night Terror Novels). He lives in the East of England where he’s a ghost and ghostwriter. ashleystokes.net

Allen Stroud – Allen Stroud is Chair of the British Science Fiction Association and has been Chair of Fantasycon in 2017, 208 and 2021. He is university lecturer and a writer of fantasy, science fiction and horror. He works on computer games, TV, novels and short stories. His science fiction novels, Fearless and Resilient are published by Flame Tree Press.

Pete Sutton – Pete W Sutton is a writer and editor. His first book – A Tiding of Magpies – was shortlisted for the British Fantasy Awards in 2017 for Best Collection and republished in 2021. His short story collection – The Museum for Forgetting was published September 2021.

Steve J Shaw – Steve J Shaw is the owner/operator of Black Shuck Books, a British-based publisher of peculiar fiction.

Tasha Suri – Tasha Suri is an award-winning author, a writing tutor, an occasional librarian and a cat owner. When she isn’t writing, Tasha likes to cry over TV shows, buy too many notebooks, and indulge her geeky passion for reading about South Asian history. She lives with her family in a mildly haunted house in London.

Adrian Tchaikovsky – Author of over 40 SF and Fantasy novels and novellas. Shadows of the Apt, Children of Time, Guns of the Dawn, Elder Race and more.

Steve Toase – Steve Toase lives in Bavaria, Germany.His fiction has appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Shadows & Tall Trees 8, Analog, Three Lobed Burning Eye, and Shimmer amongst others. ‘To Drown in Dark Water’ is now out from Undertow Publications www.undertowpublications.com/shop/to-drown-in-dark-water. He also likes old motorbikes and vintage cocktails.

Sandra Unerman – Sandra Unerman is the author of two fantasy novels and short stories published in a range of venues. She writes articles for the BFS and the BFSA and runs a small writing workshop. She is a member of Clockhouse London writers and is completing an MA in Folklore Studies.

Dave Watkins – David Watkins lives in Devon in the UK with his wife, two sons, dog, cat and two turtles. He is unsure of his place in the pecking order: probably somewhere between the cat and the turtles. He has currently released four novels and a short story. Each book is well rated and reviewed on Amazon and beyond. His most recent release is The Exeter Incident, from D&T Publishing.

Kit Whitfield – Fantasy author, most recently IN THE HEART OF HIDDEN THINGS from Jo Fletcher Books – a tale of cold iron, wild fey, special needs and protecting folks from the People.

W.P. Wiles – W.P. Wiles was born in India in 1978. He published three novels under the name Will Wiles, one of which won a Betty Trask award. The Last Blade Priest is his first fantasy novel. When not writing books, he writes about architecture. He lives in London.

Jen Williams – Jen Williams is an award-winning writer from London. When not frowning at notebooks, she also dabbles in illustration, copywriting and mead drinking.

Neil Williamson – Neil lives in Glasgow, Scotland. His work has been shortlisted for British Fantasy, British Science Fiction Association and World Fantasy awards, and his most recent book is Queen of Clouds, a fantasy novel about the frustrations of battling environmental disaster, described as “if Studio Ghibli did Gormenghast.”

Lorraine Wilson – Lorraine is a conservation scientist who lives by the sea in Scotland writing speculative fiction influenced by folklore and the wilderness. The dystopian thriller, This Is Our Undoing, was her debut novel, and her newly released second book is The Way The Light Bends, a dark folkloric mystery. https://linktr.ee/raine_clouds  

David Wragg – David Wragg is the author of the Articles of Faith series – The Black Hawks (2019) and The Righteous (2021), published by HarperVoyager. He is very tall and must obey his cats. https://www.davewragg.com/.

C.A. Yates – C.A Yates’s BFA nominated, debut collection, We All Have Teeth, was released in December 2021 by Fox Spirit Books. Her website is www.chloeyates.com and she tweets as @shloobee. She is an advocate for the open discussion and exploration of mental illness, in both life and fiction.

Susan York – Four of Susan York’s short stories and a novelette have been published by Midnight Street Press in various anthologies. Happy Birthday can be found in The Fifth BHF Book of Horror Stories (2021) and Justica in the journal Lemonspouting (2021). A collection of her short stories is to be published soon.