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Sep 3, 2024 · Scroll through our list and vote on the all-time greatest horror writers. Whether you’re a fan of King’s vivid nightmares, Poe’s unsettling atmospheres, or Lovecraft’s eldritch horrors, your votes will help crown the most influential authors in the genre.
- Fantasy Authors
The best fantasy writers construct enthralling stories that...
- Fantasy Authors
- John Langan. The Fisherman. By John Langan. When asked to provide a list of authors every horror fan should be reading, I decided to go with authors who are alive and working today, rather than old classics.
- Edgar Allan Poe. The Complete Short Stories. By Edgar Allan Poe. While not as explicit in violence and gore as other horror writers, Edgar Allan Poe remains one of the foremost authors to seek out if you love the gothic and the macabre.
- Maryse Meijer. The Seventh Mansion. By Maryse Meijer. Maryse Meijer writes like nobody else, in a calm, knowing, completely controlled voice that tells you gorgeous stories of utter chaos.
- Kayla Chenault. These Bones. By Kayla Chenault. I don’t know if Kayla Chenault would consider herself a horror writer but she describes herself as a practitioner of Black Girl Magic, and her debut novel These Bones (Lanternfish Press), which came out in September, is billed as folk horror.
- Stephen Graham Jones
- Lauren Beukes
- Victor Lavalle
- Helen Oyeyemi
A Native American horror author whose stories make us think about what it means to be an “other,” or from society’s perspective, a “monster.” Start with: The Ones That Got Away
How do you feel about time-traveling serial killers in historic Chicago? What about a supernatural creature that fuses humans and animals together in the dilapidated wreckage of Detroit? Lauren Beukes’s stories are convoluted, gory, and absolutely terrifying. Start with: Broken Monsters
Victor LaValle’s novels and characters are strange, surreal, and idiosyncratic, and his almost-formal style of writing makes the reading experience just as strange. Start with: The Ballad of Black Tom
Even though Helen Oyeyemi’s writing more closely falls in line with magical realism, she writes dark fables that are just as scary as they are surreal. Start with: White Is For Witching *Not actually statistically-valid research Want more “best-of” horror lists? Check out our compilation of 50 of the Best Horror Novels or 50 Must-Read Contemporary ...
- Stephen King. Any list of famous horror authors wouldn’t be complete without Stephen King, a prolific author known for his horror and suspense novels. He has published over 60 books, many of which have been adapted into movies and television series.
- Anne Rice. Anne Rice is a celebrated American author known for her supernatural and Gothic fiction. Rice’s most popular works include “The Vampire Chronicles,” “The Mayfair Witches” series, and “Christ the Lord.”
- Dean Koontz. Dean Koontz is an American author known for his suspenseful and thrilling novels. He has published over 80 books and sold over 500 million copies worldwide.
- Clive Barker. Clive Barker is a British author known for his horror and fantasy fiction. He has written over 30 books and numerous short stories, and his work has been adapted into films, plays, and comics.
- Agustina Bazterrica. The Argentine writer Agustina Bazterrica has said that a turning point in her life came when she decided to give up eating meat. Seeing animals hanging in the window of a butcher shop partially spurred the idea for her 2020 novel Tender is the Flesh, which explores a dystopian world in which cannibalism is allowed because animal meat has become tainted by a virus.
- Tananarive Due. Tananarive Due’s interest in horror is inherited: Her mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, was “a huge horror fan,” Due said in a 2021 interview with Roxane Gay.
- Mariana Enriquez. Mariana Enriquez’s writing has been praised by Kazuo Ishiguro as “the most exciting discovery I’ve made in fiction for some time.” The author engages deeply with her native Argentina in her work: Her 2019 novel Our Share of Night (translated into English by Megan McDowell) takes place during the 1980s at a time when the country was under military dictatorship; it tells the story of a medium and his son, who are enmeshed in a cult known as The Order.
- Grady Hendrix. American author Grady Hendrix’s writing has been influenced by both fairy tales—“Little Red Riding Hood is the ur-slasher,” he told Mental Floss in 2021—and cinema: His 2021 book The Final Girl Support Group was inspired by the “final girl,” a horror trope which refers to the last woman (or women) left alive to face down the killer in slasher films like Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Jun 17, 2024 · Recommended reads from new and upcoming horror authors: The Dark Between the Trees by Fiona Barnett. The Unsuitable by Molly Pohlig. Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein by Anne Eekhout. Orpheus Builds a Girl by Heather Parry.
May 11, 2024 · Discover spine-chilling tales in our collection of the best horror books ever written. From Psychological to Supernatural, uncover top horror authors and plots.
