The New Black

The New Black is a collection of twenty neo-noir stories exemplifying the best authors currently writing in this dark sub-genre. A mixture of horror, crime, fantasy, science fiction, magical realism, and the grotesque—all with a literary bent—these stories are the future of genre-bending fiction.

Table of Contents:
Foreword by Laird Barron
Stephen Graham Jones, "Father Son, Holy Rabbit"
Paul Tremblay, "It's Against the Law to Feed the Ducks"
Lindsay Hunter, "That Baby"
Roxane Gay, "How"
Kyle Minor, "The Truth and All Its Ugly"
Craig Clevenger, "Act of Contrition"
Micaela Morrissette, "The Familiars"
Richard Lange, "Fuzzyland"
Benjamin Percy, "Dial Tone"
Roy Kesey, "Instituto"
Craig Davidson, "Rust and Bone"
Rebecca Jones-Howe, "Blue Hawaii"
Joe Meno, "Children Are the Only Ones Who Blush"
Vanessa Veselka, "Christopher Hitchens"
Nik Korpon, "His Footsteps are Made of Soot"
Brian Evenson, "Windeye"
Craig Wallwork, "Dollhouse"
Tara Laskowski, "The Etiquette of Homicide"
Matt Bell, "Dredge"
Antonia Crane, "Sunshine for Adrienne"

Matt Bell's debut novel In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods was published by Soho Press in June 2013. He is also the author of two previous books, How They Were Found and Cataclysm Baby. His writing has been anthologized in Best American Mysteries 2010, Best American Fantasy 2, and 30 Under 30: An Anthology of Innovative Fiction by Younger Writers. He teaches creative writing at Northern Michigan University.

Antonia Crane teaches teenagers creative writing in Los Angeles when she can convince them to log off of Facebook. Her work can be found in Akashic&;s The Heroin Chronicles, Soft Skull Press&; Johns, Marks, Tricks & Chickenhawks: Professionals & Their Clients Writing about Each Other, The Rumpus, Dame Magazine, Salon, PANK, Black Clock, Slake, The Los Angeles Review and other places. Her memoir Spent is forthcoming by Barnacle Books/Rare Bird Lit in 2014.

Craig Clevenger is the author of The Contortionist's Handbook and Dermaphoria. He divides his time between San Francisco and the Mojave Desert.

Craig Davidson has written four books: Rust and Bone, The Fighter, Sarah Court and Cataract City. His nonfiction and fiction has appeared in Esquire, GQ, The Walrus, Salon, Nerve, The London Observer, The Cincinnati Review, Avenue, Agni, Event, The Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, SubTerrain and elsewhere. His first book was made into a film directed by Jacques Audiard, starring Marion Cotillard. Davidson is a graduate of the UNB Creative Writing Program and the University of Iowa's MFA program, and currently jobless.

Brian Evenson is the author of twelve books of fiction, most recently the story collection Windeye and the novel Immobility, both of which were finalists for the Shirley Jackson Award. His novel Last Days won the American Library Association's award for Best Horror Novel of 2009. His novel The Open Curtain (Coffee House Press) was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an IHG Award. He is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes. Other books include The Wavering Knife (which won the IHG Award for best story collection), Dark Property, and Altmann's Tongue. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Slovenian. He lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, at the school that served as the basis for Lovecraft's Miskatonic University.

Roxane Gay lives and writes in the Midwest.

Lindsay Hunter lives in Chicago and is the author of the story collections Daddy's and Don't Kiss Me. Her novel is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the fall of 2014. Find her at lindsayhunter.com.

Stephen Graham Jones is the author of eleven novels and three story collections. His most recent are The Last Final Girl, Growing Up Dead in Texas, and Zombie Bake-Off. Up soon are Zombie Sharks with Metal Teeth, The Least of my Scars, and The Gospel of Z. Jones has some hundred and fifty stories published, many of which are collected in best of the year annuals. He's been a Shirley Jackson Award finalist, a Bram Stoker Award finalist, a Colorado Book Award finalist, and has won the Texas Institute of Letters Award for fiction and an NEA fellowship in fiction. He teaches in the MFA programs at CU Boulder and UCR–Palm Desert. Find him at demontheory.net or @SGJ72.

Rebecca Jones-Howe lives and writes in Kamloops, British Columbia. Her work has appeared in Pulp Modern, Punchnel's and ManArchy, among others. She is currently working on her first collection of short fiction. She can be found online at rebeccajoneshowe.com.

Author and translator Roy Kesey was born in northern California and currently lives in Maryland. His latest book is the short story collection Any Deadly Thing (Dzanc Books 2013). His other books include the novel Pacazo (Dzanc Books 2011/Jonathan Cape 2012), the short story collection All Over (Dzanc Books 2007), the novella Nothing in the World (Bullfight Media 2006/Dzanc Books 2007), and two historical guidebooks. He has received a number of awards for his work, including an NEA creative writing fellowship, the Paula Anderson Book Award, and the Bullfight Media Little Book Award. His short stories, essays, translations and poems have appeared in more than a hundred magazines and anthologies, including Best American Short Stories and New Sudden Fiction.

Richard Lange&;s stories have appeared in The Sun, The Iowa Review, and Best American Mystery Stories, and as part of the Atlantic Monthly&;s Fiction for Kindle series. He is the author of the collection Dead Boys and the novels Angel Baby and This Wicked World. He received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow. He lives in Los Angeles.

Tara Laskowski is the author of Modern Manners For Your Inner Demons (Matter Press), a short story collection of dark etiquette. She is the senior editor for SmokeLong Quarterly and has published numerous stories online and in print.

Nik Korpon is the author of Old Ghosts, By the Nails of the Warpriest, Bar Scars: Stories, and the forthcoming Stay God, Sweet Angel (2014). His stories have bloodied the pages and screens of Needle Magazine, Crime Factory, Shotgun Honey, Yellow Mama, Out of the Gutter, Speedloader, and Warmed & Bound, among others. He is a columnist for LitReactor.com. He lives in Baltimore.

Joe Meno is a fiction writer and playwright who lives in Chicago. He is the winner of the Nelson Algren Literary Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Great Lakes Book Award, and a finalist for the Story Prize. He is the author of six novels, including the bestsellers Hairstyles of the Damned and The Boy Detective Fails, and two short story collections, including Demons in the Spring. His short fiction has been published in One Story, McSweeney's, Swink, LIT, TriQuarterly, Hayden Ferry&;s Review, Ninth Letter, Alaska Quarterly Review, Mid-American-Review, Fourteen Hills, Washington Square Review, Other Voices, Gulf Coast, and broadcast on NPR&;s Selected Shorts. His non-fiction has appeared in The New York Times and Chicago Magazine. He was a longtime contributing editor to Punk Planet, the seminal underground arts and politics magazine, before it ceased publication in 2007. His plays have been produced in Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and Paris, France. He is a professor in the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago.

Kyle Minor is the author of two collections of short fiction, In the Devil's Territory (2008) and Praying Drunk.

Micaela Morrissette's fiction has been anthologized in Best American Fantasy (Prime Books), The Pushcart Prize XXXIII (Pushcart Press), Best Horror of the Year (Night Shade), and The Weird (Tor and Atlantic/Corvus). Periodical publications include Conjunctions (where she is the managing editor), Tor.com, Ninth Letter, and Weird Tales.

Benjamin Percy is the author of two novels, Red Moon (Grand Central/Hachette, 2013) and The Wilding, as well as two books of short stories, Refresh, Refresh and The Language of Elk. His fiction and nonfiction have been published in Esquire (where he is a contributing editor), GQ, Time, Men's Journal, Outside, the Wall Street Journal, Tin House and the Paris Review. His honors include an NEA fellowship, the Whiting Writer's Award, the Plimpton Prize, the Pushcart Prize and inclusion in Best American Short Stories and Best American Comics. He is the writer-in-residence at St. Olaf College and teaches at the low-residency MFA program at Pacific University.

Paul Tremblay is the author of the novels The Little Sleep, No Sleep Till Wonderland, and Swallowing a Donkey's Eye, and the short story collections Compositions for the Young and Old and In the Mean Time. He has published two novellas, and his essays and short fiction have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Five Chapters.com, and Best American Fantasy III. He is the co-editor of four anthologies, including Creatures: Thirty Years of Monster Stories (with John Langan). Paul is the president of the board of directors for the Shirley Jackson Awards. He lives outside of Boston, Massachusetts, has a master's degree in Mathematics, and has no uvula.

Vanessa Veselka is the author of the novel Zazen, which was a finalist for the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction and won the 2012 PEN/Robert W. Bingham prize for fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Tin House, YETI, and Zyzzyva. Her nonfiction has been published in GQ, The Atlantic, The American Reader, Salon, and is included in the Best American Essays 2013.

Craig Wallwork lives in West Yorkshire, England. He is the author of the short story collection Quintessence of Dust (KUBOA), and the novels To Die Upon a Kiss (Snubnose Press) and The Sound of Loneliness (Perfect Edge Books). His fiction has appeared in various anthologies, journals and magazines. He is the fiction editor at Menacing Hedge Magazine. .