Ann K. "Ankh" Schwader is a well-known science fiction, fantasy, and horror poet, but she is also a prose writer. Here at last is a collection of her dark fiction, including all her Cthulhu Mythos tales to date. Included are "Home Visitor" and "Twenty Mile", both of which have received honorable mentions in the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, as well as "Mail Order Bride" and "Lost Stars", possibly her best work to date. With a preface by the author, a foreword by Robert M. Price, and cover and interior artwork by Steve Lines. Edited by Kevin L. O'Brien.

Strange Stars & Alien Shadows: The Dark Fiction of Ann K. Schwader

Literature & Fiction

Price, Robert M.

Schwader, Ann K.

O'Brien, Kevin L.

Contemporary

Lindisfarne Pr

Praise for Ann K. Schwader's poetry: Ann Schwader, poet and "imaginer" par excellence, represents in her considerable mythopoeic art something at once remarkably novel and yet somehow reassuring despite her often dystopian vision. She deploys her craft and technique to offer us in depth a wide range of adventures, past, present, and future, whether alluring, distressing, or horrific. -Donald Sidney-Fryer The dark and enchanting verse of Ann K. Schwader weaves layers and labyrinths of wonder and beauty. Her work burns with language perfumed with mighty magic. It is not to be missed! -Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. Ann K. Schwader's intoxicating poetry is as authentically Lovecraftian as it is brilliantly original. This is poetry that is truly transporting. Superb! -W. H. Pugmire It takes more than mastery of rhyme, meter, euphony, and alliteration to preserve the emotional essence of the weird poetry of Lovecraft, Chambers, and Frank Belknap Long. Ann Schwader's poetical vision re-evokes the same senses of terror based on the weird prose she offers in rhythmical form. It is as though one is reading the dreams of a gargoyle. -Fred Phillips, author of From the Cauldron From early inspiration by H. P. Lovecraft, and later science fiction, Ann K. Schwader's own voice speaks ever more confidently and resonates with messages profound and relevant, universal and perennial. -Charles Lovecraft If Yog-Sothoth knows the gate, is the gate, is the key and guardian of the gate, then likewise, Ann K. Schwader's weird verse opens a gate to lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. Schwader's verse-haunting, evocative, arresting in both conception and imagery-gibbers like Old Ones' voices on the wind, and like the earth that mutters with Their consciousness. -Leigh Blackmore, author of Spores from Sharnoth

Twisted in Dream: The Collected Weird Poetry of Ann K. Schwader

Poetry

Hippocampus Press

As Hippocampus Press's award-winning weird poetry journal Spectral Realms completes its ninth year of publication, it continues to feature some of the best poems of terror and the supernatural by leading contemporary poets. Ann K. Schwader, Adam Bolivar, D. L. Myers, Wade German, and others grace this issue. Carole Abourjeili writes on vampires, Christian Dickinson in banshees, Steven Withrow on ghosts, and Scott J. Couturier on ghouls. David Barker continues his revisioning of Lovecraft's Fungi from Yuggoth, while Carl E. Reed writes a vibrant tribute to Clark Ashton Smith. Ngo Binh Anh Khoa uses a Vietnamese verse form to cosmic terror and grue; master versifier Frank Coffman conveys weirdness in a quaternelle; and Joshua Gage utilizes the ghazal to speak of the "old gods." The classic reprints include an anonymous poem dating to 1823 and James F. Morton's "Haunted Houses." Reviews by Leigh Blackmore, Katherine Kerestman, and Steven Withrow of recent books of weird poetry complete a bountiful issue.

Spectral Realms No. 18: Winter 2023

Bolivar, Adam

History & Criticism

This nineteenth issue of Spectral Realms contains the customary array of diverse and riveting poetry by today's leading weird poets, including Ann K. Schwader, Wade German, Scott J. Couturier, Ian Futter, and Ngo Binh Anh Khoa. David Barker contributes two more poems to his ongoing series of reimaginings of Lovecraft's Fungi from Yuggoth. Oliver Smith looks at Frankenstein in an innovative way. Frank Coffman tells a miniature weird tale in a four-sonnet cycle, "A Cabin in the Wood." Carl E. Reed, Andrew White, and Christian Dickinson draw upon ancient folklore for their brooding poems. Maxwell I. Gold contributes three of his cosmic prose poems, while Jay Sturner and Liam Garriock add their own distinctive prose poems. Two classic reprints (by Erasmus Darwin and Thomas Hardy), along with S. T. Joshi's review of a new edition of the obscure American Decadent poet Lee Roy J. Tappan, conclude the issue.

Spectral Realms No. 19: Summer 2023

Gold, Maxwell I

Unquiet Stars is the ninth collection from Rhysling Award-winning speculative poet Ann K. Schwader. These poems of somber brilliance are equally magisterial as metrical formalism or as free verse. Complex and hypnotic, Schwader's work leads us down-or out-into ancient darknesses that touch us where we live.

Unquiet Stars

Weird House Press