About the Dread Machine

We are the weirdos, mister.

The Dread Machine is a magazine, publishing house, and community where writers and fans of dread-inspiring, dark speculative fiction can read and connect. We make cool creative projects accessible to those who will love them the way they deserve to be loved.

Elder Gods

Executive Editor

Alin Walker

Tina Alberino (she/her) is a certified copyeditor and project manager with over a decade of publishing experience. To escape her five children, Tina serves as the Executive Editor of The Dread Machine under her fiction-focused pseudonym, Alin Walker, and spends the rest of her time coaching writers at Strikethrough Editing.

Acquiring Editor

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Monica Louzon

Monica Louzon (she/her) is a queer writer, Spanish-English translator, and editor. She has been Acquiring Editor for The Dread Machine since late 2020, and was founding editor of the MOSF Journal of Science Fiction. Her words have appeared in Apex Magazine, Dark Recesses, Haven Speculative Magazine, Paranoid Tree, Shoreline of Infinity, and others. Her story “9 Dystopias” was selected for Best Microfiction 2023.

Managing Editor

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Timothy Burkhardt

Tim Burkhardt (he/him) is an editor and writer whose fiction has been published in Metastellar, Riddled with Arrows, The Horror Tree, and others. In the daylight hours, he provides editing and support to rising fiction writers at Strikethrough Editing.

Hackerman

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Jason

Jason administrates The Dread Machine. He fixes the broken things and performs technological miracles at Alin’s request. (As her husband, he really doesn’t have much of a choice. She knows where he sleeps.)

Secret police

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Xanthur

Nick (aka Xanthur) handles all aspects of community management, including comment moderation, event coordination, and Discord administration.

Artists

Yorgos Cotronis

Cover ARtist

Yorgos Cotronis is a Greek illustrator and designer, currently residing in Athens. He makes a living designing book covers and is known for his dark, atmospheric genre illustrations. He sometimes writes. His stories have appeared in XIIIBig Pulp and Vignettes from the End of the World.

Katerina Belikova

Cover ARtist

Katerina Belikova (aka Ninja Jo) is a Russian freelance illustrator, concept artist, and lover of robots working in digital and traditional materials. She specializes in science fiction and cyberpunk with a bit of a horror vibe. After working as a full-time designer for nearly a decade at FiXT Music, Katerina now works as an independent artist, illustrating book covers, graphic novels, album covers, packaging, and concept art for tabletop and video games.

First Readers

Emma Burnett

Emma is a researcher and writer. She has been published in Rejection Letters, Roi Fainéant Press, Elegant Literature, Five Minute Lit, and Fairfield Scribes, along with a bunch of academic stuff. She won second place in the 2022 Hammond House Publishing International Literary Prize, which was pretty exciting. If you’re into twitter stuff, you can find her @slashnburnett.

Vivian Chou

Vivian is a science advocate by day and a science fiction/slipstream writer by night. Her work appears in The Bookends Review and The Dread Machine and is forthcoming in Fusion Fragment. Follow her on Twitter at @vivianhchou or read her work at www.vivianchouwriter.com.

Eóin Dooley

Eóin (he/him) is writer from rural Ireland. Having completed a master’s in cognitive science and philosophy, he turned to creative fiction, primarily as a way to stave off a PhD. His previous work can be found in Elegant Literature. His mastodon handle is @eoindooley@mastodon.ie, while his increasingly redundant twitter handle is @eoin_dooley.

Nathaniel Lee

Nate puts words in various orders. People intermittently give him money for this. No one knows why. His fiction has previously been published at Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Nightmare Magazine, among many others. You can read more here.

Mob

Mob writes, boulders, and codes. Work found on Metastellar, Old Moon Quarterly, and the Translunar Travelers Lounge.
Contact: Twitter @mob_writes or Email mobaisle.writing@gmail.com

Cody Mower 

Cody is a pastel monster from the depths of the Maine woods. Whenever they’re not writing or fist fighting iron, they can be found advocating for trans and veteran’s rights dressed like a 80s Trapper Keeper. Their works can be found in TDM, various Ghost Orchid Press, 9th Story Studios, and the award winning A Toast to Edgar Allen Poe Anthology.

Kathleen Morrish

Kathleen Morrish has sung with a choir in the Royal Albert Hall, Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, and Carnegie Hall; attained a Ph.D. in applied mathematics; worked as a computer scientist; served as a tabloid reporter in Second Life for Axel Springer SE; and nourished herself with generous servings of speculative fiction. She self-identifies as autistic. Her next adventure will take her to Texas State University’s Creative Writing MFA program. You can find her poetry in The Fib Review.

Andrew Najberg

Andrew is the author of the forthcoming novels Gollitok (Cactus Moon Press, 2023) and The Mobius Door (Wicked House Publications, 2023), as well as the collection of poems The Goats Have Taken Over the Barracks (Finishing Line Press, 2021). His short fiction has appeared in Prose Online, Psychopomp Review, Bookends Review, The Colored Lens, Utopia Science Fiction, The Gateway Review, Dark Death Things, Creepy Podcast, and is forthcoming in Fusion Fragment. Currently, he teaches for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and is serving as a senior editor for Symposeum magazine.

Dan Peacock

Dan is a sci-fi writer from the UK. His short stories have been published or are forthcoming in F&SF, Kaleidotrope and Etherea. He is also a First Reader for Orion’s Belt. You can find links to all his published stories at danpeacockwriter.com, and he tweets at @DanPeacock92. He lives with his long-suffering partner and daughter, along with a second-hand cat that hoots like an owl.

Parker Ragland

Parker Ragland is a writer who spends most days trying to convince people that artificial intelligence isn’t that scary (contrary to what his fiction might suggest). He tends to write about robots having existential crises, but also jots down stories about humans having existential crises. His fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld and The Dread Machine. He lives in Denver.

Priya Sridhar

A 2016 MBA graduate and published author, Priya Sridhar has been writing fantasy and science fiction for fifteen years, and counting. Capstone published the Powered series, and Alban Lake published her works Carousel and Neo-Mecha Mayhem. Priya lives in Miami, Florida with her family.

Kanishk Tantia

Kanishk is a BIPOC immigrant from India. His stories often center on the immigrant experience, environmental issues, and plants eating people. His work is available or forthcoming in Flametree Press, Dark Matter Ink and of course, The Dread Machine. Find him in the Dread Discord or on his website, kanishkt.com and follow him on Twitter @t_kanishk.

David Lee Zweifler

David spent decades writing non-fiction in jobs that took him around the world, including long stints in Jakarta, Hong Kong, and New York City. David’s work appears in Little Blue Marble, The Dread Machine, and Wyldblood, and he has upcoming stories in Analog, The Paramnesia Anthology in Grendel Press, and Shortwave Media’s Obsolescence anthology. His website is davidleezweifler.com.

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