A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 
Editors
 
 
THOMAS LIGOTTI
b.1953
 
American short story writer and poet. One of the most prominent exponents of classic weird fiction.
Thomas Ligotti was born in 1953, a second-generation American of predominately Sicilian heritage. Brought up a Roman Catholic, Ligotti had rejected the doctrines of the church by his late teens. After habitual use of drugs and alcohol in the late 1960s, he suffered the onset of a lifelong chronic anxiety-panic disorder in August 1970. The following year he graduated from Grosse Pointe North High School.
Ligotti began to write fiction in college. He was awarded a BA degree in English from Wayne State University (Detroit) in 1978. Around this time he began submitting horror tales to Arkham House Publishers, but they were all rejected as unsuitable.
Ligotti found employment at the Literary Criticism Division of Gale Research Company (now Thomson Gale) in 1979. His first published story, "The Chymist" appeared in Nyctalops # 16, March 1981. During 1983 Ligotti attended the World Fantasy Convention in Ottawa, Canada. At the time, he was relatively unknown as a writer, but throughout the 1980s many more of his stories were published in small press journals and his reputation grew among aficionados of weird fiction, culminating in the landmark volume Songs of a Dead Dreamer from Silver Scarab Press in 1985. A revised and expanded volume of this book, featuring substantially different contents, was published in the UK as a trade paperback in 1989 and in the United States the following year in hardcover. Two further major collections of stories, Grimscribe (1991) and Noctuary (1994) enjoyed simultaneous publication on both sides of the Atlantic. A selection from all three collections followed in 1996 under the title The Nightmare Factory, which also included six new stories.
In 1997, Ligotti's In a Foreign Town, In a Foreign Land saw print, and this heralded the beginning of his association with David Tibet's band Current 93. Tibet's Durtro Press subsequently issued three chapbooks of Ligotti's poems I Have a Special Plan for This World (2000), This Degenerate Little Town (2001), Death Poems (2004) and his screenplay Crampton (2003-co-written with Brandon Trenz). Ligotti left his job of twenty-three years during 2001 and subsequently began working as a freelance writer and editor. Shortly afterwards he moved from the Detroit area to the Gulf coast of Florida to be near his family. The year 2003 also saw the appearance of Ligotti's longest work to date, the short novel My Work is Not Yet Done from Mythos Books in the United States.
Ligotti's new short stories often appear in Weird Tales magazine, and he continues to feature regularly in prestigious book anthologies.  

Mark Samuels

 
Short Stories
 
Songs of a Dead Dreamer, Silver Scarab Press (Albuquerque, N.M.), 1985
Limited edition of 300 trade paperback copies [no hardcovers recorded.] Illustrated by Harry O. Morris. Includes: "Introduction" by Ramsey Campbell, Here and There: "The Frolic", "Les Fleurs", "Aunt Elise: A Tale of Possession in Old Grosse Pointe", "Drink to Me Only with Labyrinthine Eyes", "Alice's Last Adventure", "Dream of a Mannikin, or the Third Person", "The Troubles of Dr. Thoss", Elsewhere: "Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech", "The Greater Festival of Masks", Tales Retold: "Three Scientists" ["One Thousand Painful Variations Performed upon Divers Creatures Undergoing the Treatment of Dr. Moreau, Humanist", "The Excruciating Final Days of Dr. Henry Jekyll, Englishman", and "The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein, Citizen of Geneva"], "Two Immortals" ["The Heart of Count Dracula, Descendent of Attila, Scourge of God", and "The Insufferable Salvation of Lawrence Talbot the Wolfman"], "Leading Men" ["The Unbearable Rebirth of the Phantom of the Wax Museum", and "The Intolerable Lesson of the Phantom of the Opera"], Nowhere: "Professor Nobody's Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror", "Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story".]
 
Songs of a Dead Dreamer, Robinson, 1989
(A different selection to the above, includes: "Introduction", by Ramsey Campbell, "The Frolic", "Les Fleurs", "Alice's Last Adventure", "Dream of a Mannikin, or the Third Person", "The 'Chymist", "Drink to Me Only with Labyrinthine Eyes", "Eye of the Lynx", "Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story", "The Christmas Eves of Aunt Elise", "The Lost Art of Twilight", "The Troubles of Dr. Thoss", "Masquerade of a Dead Sword", "Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech", "Professor Nobody's Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror", "Dr. Locrian's Asylum", "The Sect of the Idiot [Azathoth]", "The Greater Festival of Masks", "The Music of the Moon", "The Journal of J.P. Drapeau", "Vastarien".)
 
Grimscribe: His Lives and Works, Carroll & Graf, 1991
(Including: "Introduction", "The Last Feast of Harlequin", "The Spectacles in the Drawer", "Flowers of the Abyss", "Nethescurial", "The Dreaming in Nortown", "The Mystics of Muelenburg", "In the Shadow of Another World", "The Cocoons", "The Night School", "The Glamour", "The Library of Byzantium", "Miss Plarr", "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World".)
ditto, Robinson (London), 1991
 
The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein and Other Gothic Tales, Silver Salamander Press, 1994 
(Includes: "Introduction: Good-Tom-Go-Lightly" by Michael Shea, "One Thousand Painful Variations Performed Upon Divers Creatures Undergoing the Treatment of Dr. Moreau, Humanist", "The Excruciating Final Days of Dr. Henry Jekyll, Englishman", "The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein, Citizen of Geneva", "The Heart of Count Dracula, Descendant of Attila, Scourge of God", "The Insufferable Salvation of Lawrence Talbot the Wolfman", "The Intolerable Lesson of the Phantom of the Opera", "The Unbearable Rebirth of the Phantom of the Wax Museum", "The Perilous Legacy of Emily St. Aubert, Inheritress of Udolpho", "The Eternal Devotion of the Governess to the Residents of Bly", "The Unnatural Persecution, by a Vampire, of Mr. Jacob J.", "The Superb Companion of André de V., Anti-Pygmalion", "The Ever-Vigilant Guardians of Secluded Estates", "The Scream: from 1800 to the Present", "The Transparent Alias of William Wilson, Sportsman and Scoundrel", "The Worthy Inmate of the Will of the Lady Ligeia", "The Interminable Residence of the Friends of the House of Usher", "The Fabulous Alienation of the Outsider, Being of No Fixed Abode", "The Blasphemous Enlightenment of Prof. Francis Wayland Thurston of Boston, Providence, and the Human Race", "The Premature Death of H. P. Lovecraft, Oldest Man in New England".)
 
Noctuary, Robinson (London), 1994
(Including: "In the Night, in the Dark", Part One: Studies in Shadow: "The Medusa", "Conversations in a Dead Language", "The Prodigy of Dreams", "Mrs. Rinaldi's Angel", Part Two: Discourse on Blackness: "The Tsalal", "Mad Night of Atonement", "The Strange Design of Master Rignolo", "The Voice in the Bones", Part Three: Notebook of the Night" "The Master's Eyes Shining with Secrets", "Salvation by Doom", "New Faces in the City", "Autumnal", "One May Be Dreaming", "Death without End", "The Unfamiliar", "The Career of Nightmares", "The Physic", "The Demon Man", "The Puppet Masters", "The Spectral Estate", "Primordial Loathing", "The Nameless Horror", "Invocation to the Void", "The Mocking Mystery", "The Interminable Equation", "The Eternal Mirage", "The Order of Illusion".)
 
The Nightmare Factory, Raven, 1996
(Contains the collection Grimscribe (1991), selections from Songs of a Dead Dreamer (1986) and Noctuary (1994); and new stories. Includes: "Foreword" by Poppy Z. Brite, "Introduction: The Consolations of Horror", Part I: from Songs of a Dead Dreamer: "The Frolic", "Les Fleurs", "Alice's Last Adventure", "Dream of a Mannikin", "The 'Chymist", "Drink to Me Only with Labyrinthine Eyes", "Eye of the Lynx", "The Christmas Eves of Aunt Elise: A Tale of Possession in Old Grosse Pointe", "The Lost Art of Twilight", "The Troubles of Dr. Thoss", "Masquerade of a Dead Sword: A Tragedie", "Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech", "Dr. Locrian's Asylum", "The Sect of the Idiot [Azathoth]", "The Greater Festival of Masks", "The Music of the Moon", "The Journal of J.P. Drapeau", "Vastarien", Part 2: Grimscribe: "Grimscribe: His Lives and Works", "The Last Feast of Harlequin", "The Spectacles in the Drawer", "Flowers of the Abyss", "Nethescurial", "The Dreaming in Nortown", "The Mystics of Muelenburg", "In the Shadow of Another World", "The Cocoons", "The Night School", "The Glamour", "The Library of Byzantium", "Miss Plarr", "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World", Part 3: from Noctuary: "The Medusa", "Conversations in a Dead Language", "The Prodigy of Dreams", "Mrs. Rinaldi's Angel", "The Tsalal", "Mad Night of Atonement", "The Strange Design of Master Rignolo", "The Voice in the Bones", Part 4: Teatro Grottesco and other tales: "Teatro Grottesco", "Severini", "Gas Station Carnivals", "The Bungalow House", "The Clown Puppet", "The Red Tower".)
ditto, Carroll & Graf (New York), 1991
 
In A Foreign Town, In a Foreign Land, Durtro (London), 1997
(With cd. Including: "His Shadow Shall Rise to a Higher House", "The Bells Will Sound Forever", "A Soft Voices Whispers Nothing", "When You Hear the Singing, You Will Know It Is Time".)
 
I Have A Special Plan For This World, Durtro (London), 2000
(With cd.)
 
This Degenerate Little Town, Durtro (London), 2001
(With cd.)
 
My Work Is Not Yet Done, Mythos Books, 20002
(Contains: "The Wages of Life: My Work is Not Yet Done", "The Second Coming of the Dead: I Have a Special Plan for this World", "Going Out Of Business: The Nightmare Network".)
 
TV Play
Crampton, Durtro (London), 2002 (written with Brandon Trenz).
(Paperback, with cd "The Unholy City)
 
Poetry
Death Poems, Durtro (London), 2002
 
 
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