Author Description

Following the success of Handheld Press's 2019 best-selling anthology Women's Weird, we will be publishing a second anthology of classic Weird short fiction by women authors. To be published alongside James Machin's anthology of classic British Weird fiction, British Weird, Women's Weird 2 will contain thirteen remarkably chilling stories originally published from 1891 to 1937, by women authors from the USA, the UK, India and Australia. Featured stories will include: Lettice Galbraith's 'The Blue Room' (1897), Barbara Baynton's 'A Dreamer' (1902), Katherine Mansfield's 'The House' (1912), Bithia Mary Croker's 'The Red Bungalow' (1919), Marjorie Bowen's 'Florence Flannery' (1924), L M Montgomery's 'The House Party at Smoky Island' (1934) and Stella Gibbons' 'The Roaring Tower' (1937). Melissa Edmundson's introduction will explore how the evolving Weird tradition was interpreted using colonial settings, and focus on how Weird fitted naturally into the careers of writers like Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables) and Gibbons (Cold Comfort Farm) who were not normally considered exponents of supernatural fiction.