Michael A. Arnzen is a horror author and writer of the Bram Stoker Award-winning novel, Grave Markings (Dell Books). He won his second Bram Stoker Award for his newsletter (The Goreletter) and his third for his poetry collection, Freakcidents.
Arnzen was born in Amityville, New York. After a brief stint in the US Army overseas, where he began writing horror stories to entertain his fellow soldiers, he moved to Colorado, where he launched his career in publishing to much success. By the mid-nineties he received the coveted Bram Stoker Award—the highest accolade in the horror genre. Shortly thereafter, he went on to earn 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 (Raw Dog Screaming Press) features 100 of his very best flash fiction stories. His short story collection, Fluid Mosaic (Wildside Press) collects his best stories from the 1990s. His poetry chapbooks include Freakcidents, Gorelets: Unpleasant Poetry, Dying (With No Apologies to Martha Stewart), 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 presently teaches graduate studies in "Seton Hill University's Writing Popular Fiction Program" and undergraduate English courses at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, where he lives with his wife and cats.
In addition to his extensive publications and award-winning blog, Arnzen also runs Mastication Publications, an umbrella imprint for creative ephemera, chapbooks, collector’s items and independently published ebooks.
He also keeps a weblog devoted to teaching.