Katherine Dunn: Nightmare Carnival

Livia Llewellyn is a writer of dark fantasy, horror, and erotica. A 2006 graduate of Clarion, her fiction has appeared in ChiZine, Subterranean, Sybil’s Garage, Pseudopod, Apex Magazine, Postscripts, Nightmare Magazine, and numerous anthologies, including The Best Horror of the Year. Her first collection, Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & Other Horrors , was published in 2011. Engines received a nomination for the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Collection, and “Omphalos” received a Best Novelette nomination. You can find her online at LiviaLlewellyn.com.

Nick Mamatas is the author of several novels, including most recently Love Is the Law and The Last Weekend. His short fiction has appeared in Supernatural Noir, West Coast Crime Wave , and The Best American Mystery Stories 2013. He has written about martial arts and professional wrestling for The Smart Set, The Village Voice , and Clarkesworld Magazine . With Masumi Washington, Nick coedited the essay collection The Battle Royale Slam Book— featuring work by Sam Hamm, John Skipp, Brian Keene, and others — about the novel by Koushun Takami and the related film and manga projects.

Priya Sharma is a doctor in the UK. Her fiction has appeared in Interzone, Black Static, Albedo One , and Alt Hist , as well as on Tor.com. She has been reprinted in previous editions of The Best Horror of the Year , edited by Ellen Datlow, and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror , edited by Paula Guran, and will be in more reprint anthologies in 2014. This year she hopes to cure her morbid fear of novel writing.

More information can be found at PriyaSharmaFiction.WordPress.com.

Robert Shearman has written four short story collections, and between them they have won the World Fantasy Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Edge Hill Readers’ Prize, and three British Fantasy Awards. The most recent, Remember Why You Fear Me , was published in 2012.

He writes regularly in the UK for theater and BBC Radio, winning the Sunday Times Playwriting Award and the Guinness Award in association with the Royal National Theatre. He’s probably best known for reintroducing the Daleks to the twenty-first- century revival of Doctor Who , in an episode that was a finalist for the Hugo Award.

Genevieve Valentine’s first novel, Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti , won the 2012 Crawford award. Her second, The Girls at the Kingfisher Club , has recently been published. Her short fiction has appeared in Tor.com, Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Journal of Mythic Arts, Lightspeed , and others, and the anthologies Federations, After, Teeth , and more. Her nonfiction and reviews have appeared at NPR.org, The A.V. Club, Strange Horizons , and io9. Her appetite for bad movies is insatiable, a tragedy she tracks at GenevieveValentine.com.

A. C. Wise is the author of numerous short stories, which have appeared in publications such as Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Shimmer , and The Best Horror of the Year , among others. In addition to her writing, she coedits Unlikely Story . For more information, visit the author’s website at ACWise.net.

N. Lee Wood was born in Hartford, Connecticut, but currently lives in New Zealand with her partner and their fat, bolshie cat.

Wood is the author of Looking for the Mahdi , which was selected as a New York Times notable book. Her other science fiction titles include Faraday’s Orphans, Bloodrights , and Master of None . Her short stories have been published in Amazing Stories, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction , and Asimov’s Science Fiction .

Writing as “Lee Jackson,” she is the author of a mainstream novel, Redemption , and has also published two novels in a mystery/crime series, Kingdom of Lies and Kingdom of Silence . She is currently working on completing her eighth novel, Glass Hearts .

She holds a master’s degree in English literature and has taught creative writing to undergraduate and private students.

Ellen Datlow has been editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction for over thirty years. She currently acquires short fiction for Tor.com. In addition, she has edited more than fifty science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies, including the annual The Best Horror of the Year, Lovecraft’s Monsters, Fearful Symmetries , and a six-volume series of retold fairy tales starting with Snow White, Blood Red (the latter with Terri Windling and soon to be released for the first time as eBooks).

Forthcoming are The Cutting Room and The Doll Collection .

She’s won multiple World Fantasy Awards, Locus Awards, Hugo Awards, Stoker Awards, International Horror Guild Awards, Shirley Jackson Awards, and the 2012 Il Posto Nero Black Spot Award for Excellence as Best Foreign Editor. Datlow was named recipient of the 2007 Karl Edward Wagner Award, given at the British Fantasy Convention for “outstanding contribution to the genre”; has been honored with the Life Achievement Award, given by the Horror Writers Association in acknowledgment of superior achievement over an entire career; and has been awarded the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award for 2014, which is presented annually to individuals who have demonstrated outstanding service to the fantasy field.

She lives in New York and cohosts the monthly Fantastic Fiction Reading Series at KGB Bar. More information can be found at Datlow.com, on Facebook, and on Twitter at @EllenDatlow.

Dark Horse Books

10956 SE Main Street

Milwaukie, OR 97222

DarkHorse.com

Cover illustration by E. M. Gist

Cover design by Justin Couch

Book design by Tina Alessi

Special thanks to Daniel Chabon, Ian Tucker, and Annie Gullion

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Nightmare Carnival / edited by Ellen Datlow.

pages cm

Summary: “Fourteen stories by some of the most talented writers in horror, science fiction, and fantasy provide unique and uncanny looks at the tradition of the traveling carnival, its strange denizens, and its unforgettable effects on the places it stops”- Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-1-61655-427-9 (paperback)

1. Horror tales. 2. Carnivals-Fiction. I. Datlow, Ellen, editor.

PN6071.H727N46 2014

808.83’8738-dc23

2014014043

ISBN 978-1-61655-427-9

First Dark Horse Books edition: September 2014

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Mike Richardson, President and Publisher Neil Hankerson, Executive Vice President Tom Weddle, Chief Financial Officer Randy Stradley, Vice President of Publishing Michael Martens, Vice President of Book Trade Sales Anita Nelson, Vice President of Business Affairs Scott Allie, Editor in Chief Matt Parkinson, Vice President of Marketing David Scroggy, Vice President of Product Development Dale LaFountain, Vice President of Information Technology Darlene Vogel, Senior Director of Print, Design, and Production Ken Lizzi, General Counsel Davey Estrada, Editorial Director Chris Warner, Senior Books Editor Diana Schutz, Executive Editor Cary Grazzini, Director of Print and Development Lia Ribacchi, Art Director Cara Niece, Director of Scheduling Mark Bernardi, Director of Digital Publishing