Michael Arnzen


Michael A. Arnzen is an American horror writer. He has won the Bram Stoker Award three times.

Early life and education

Arnzen was born on May 17, 1967, in Amityville, New York. After a brief stint in the United States Army overseas, where he began writing horror stories to entertain his fellow soldiers, he moved to Colorado, where he began his writing career.
Arnzen received the Bram Stoker Award in 1994 for Grave Markings. Shortly thereafter, he earned a master's degree while working on his second novel, soon followed by his Ph.D. in English at the University of Oregon, where he studied the role of horror and nostalgia in 20th-century culture in a dissertation called The Popular Uncanny.
100 Jolts features 100 of Arnzen's flash fiction stories. His short story collection, Fluid Mosaic collects his best stories from the 1990s. His poetry chapbooks include Freakcidents, Gorelets: Unpleasant Poetry, Dying , Paratabloids, Chew, Sportuary, and Writhing in Darkness. His most recent published work is Play Dead, a crime thriller with a poker theme.
Arnzen holds a Ph.D. in English and currently teaches graduate studies in Seton Hill University's Writing Popular Fiction Program and undergraduate English courses at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, Pennsylvania.
Arnzen runs Mastication Publications, an umbrella imprint for creative ephemera, chapbooks, collector's items and independently published ebooks.

Novels and novellas

Short story and flash fiction collections

Needles and Sins Fluid Mosaic and Other Outre Objects D'Art 100 Jolts Proverbs For Monsters Winner, Bram Stoker Award Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection

Poetry collections

Chew and other ruminations Writhing in Darkness Paratabloids Gorelets: Unpleasant Poems Dying Sportuary Freakcidents: A Surrealistic Sideshow Winner, Bram Stoker Award Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection

Non-fiction

Many Genres, One Craft Instigation: Creative Prompts on the Dark Side
  • ''Screamin' in the Rain: The Orchestration of Catharsis in William Castle's 'The Tingler'''