Mort Castle


Mort Castle is an American horror author with more than 500 short stories and 17 books to his credit, including Cursed Be the Child and The Strangers. Castle's first novel was published in 1967. Since then he has had pieces published in all sorts of places ranging from traditional literary magazines to more off-the-wall or risqué markets. He has been nominated eleven times for the Bram Stoker Award for Short Fiction and was winner three times.
A dedicated writing teacher, Castle has been a working musician, a standup comic, a stage hypnotist, a high school English teacher, and a magazine and comic book editor. He was a writer-in-residence for two high schools, and taught "Researching and Writing Historical Fiction" and "Story In Graphic Form" and other classes at Columbia College Chicago. He is a frequent keynote speaker at writing conferences, and has given over 1000 presentations to writers, would-be writers, and teachers of writing. One of his latest books, Writing Horror, for which he served as editor, has become the "bible" for aspiring horror authors. It also includes interviews with some of horror's top stars, such as Stephen King. Castle is also the Executive Editor of , and currently fiction editor for Doorways Magazine.
Castle has been a regular contributor to Eureka Productions' Graphic Classics series since 2006, with work in Graphic Classics: Jack London,, Graphic Classics: Ambrose Bierce, Graphic Classics: Bram Stoker, Graphic Classics: Robert Louis Stevenson, Graphic Classics: O. Henry, and Graphic Classics: Halloween Classics.
In August 2013 it was announced that Castle will be scripting the Red Giant Entertainment comic book Darchon, an ongoing feature of their Giant-Size Comics line of free print comic book titles set to debut on May 3, 2014, as part of Free Comic Book Day. Darchon will appear monthly in Giant-Size Thrills, their horror-focused title.
Mort Castle's short story, Oval Portrait, was published in 3Elements Literary Review's fall issue no. 8, in October 2015.

Awards

Castle has been nominated for various awards, including the Pushcart Prize, the Bram Stoker Award, the DeMarco Prize, and the , Leaders in the Arts for Chicago. He was presented the 2023 Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Novels

  • In Memoriam: Papa, Blake and HPL
  • The Deadly Election
  • The Strangers
  • ''Cursed Be the Child''

    Collections

  • So Many Tomorrows: Three Stories About Children
  • Moon on the Water
  • Nations of the Living, Nations of the Dead
  • New Moon on the Water
  • ''Knowing When to Die''

    Anthologies edited

  • Nukes: Four Horror Writers on the Ultimate Horror : Stories
  • Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury with Sam Weller
  • "All American Horror of the 21st Century"

    Short Fiction

  • "Teachers" from the anthology Miskatonic University edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Robert Weinberg

    Non-fiction

  • Writing Horror: A Handbook by the Horror Writers Association
  • "Writer's Digest Annotated Classics: Dracula"

    Interviews

  • Barrantes, Guillermo y Martín Valiente. Boletín
Category:American horror writers
Category:American fantasy writers
Category:American comics writers
Category:20th-century American novelists
Category:1946 births
Category:Living people
Category:American male novelists
Category:20th-century American male writers