StokerCon 2025: Full Schedule

Welcome to the premiere horror literary convention presented by the Horror Writers Association. Registration for StokerCon 2025 is now available! This year the convention is being hosted by the city of Stamford, Connecticut, at the Hilton Stamford Hotel and Executive Meeting Center. We’re taking over from June 12th through the 15th, 2025.

4:00pm EDT

Author Readings - Thursday 04 Elm

Thursday June 12, 2025 4:00pm - 4:45pm EDT

Elm 1 & 2

Speakers

J.S. Breukelaar

Debra K Every

Debra K. Every is an author of horror, thrillers, and stories with twisted perspectives. Her debut novel, Deena Undone, has won multiple awards including an American Fiction Award, a Storytrade Book Award and a Page Turner Award. A Spanish edition of Deena Undone will be released... Read More →

Thursday June 12, 2025 4:00pm - 4:45pm EDT
Elm 1 & 2

Convention Event

5:00pm EDT

Author Readings - Thursday 05 Elm

Thursday June 12, 2025 5:00pm - 5:45pm EDT

Elm 1 & 2

Speakers

Rob Costello

Rob Costello (he/him) writes dark and contemporary fiction with a queer bent for and about young people. He’s the contributing editor of We Mostly Come Out At Night: 15 Queer Tales of Monsters, Angels & Other Creatures, nominated for a 2024 Bram Stoker Award® and named a 2024 CYBILS... Read More →

Diana Rodriguez Wallach

Young Adult Author

Diana Rodriguez Wallach is a multi-published author of young adult novels, most recently YA horror novels. Her next book, THE SILENCED, described as Girl Interrupted meets Poltergeist, comes out in September 2025 through Random House/Delacorte. In October 2023, she released HATCHET... Read More →

Thursday June 12, 2025 5:00pm - 5:45pm EDT
Elm 1 & 2

Convention Event

9:00am EDT

Author Readings - Saturday 09 Elm

Saturday June 14, 2025 9:00am - 9:45am EDT

Elm 1 & 2

Speakers

Rachel Harrison

Darius Jones

Darius Jones’s stories and poems have appeared in Strange Horizons, The No Sleep Podcast, Star*Line Magazine, and other places. He is a member of the HWA, SFWA, and SFPA. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

Ryan Marie Ketterer

Author & Editor

Ryan Marie Ketterer is an author and editor from Malden, Massachusetts. Her editorial debut, Welcome to Your Body: Lessons in Evisceration, released in May 2024 from Salt Heart Press. Her short fiction can be found in Clarkesworld, Cosmic Horror Monthly, and various anthologies. She’s... Read More →

Saturday June 14, 2025 9:00am - 9:45am EDT
Elm 1 & 2

Convention Event

10:00am EDT

Author Readings - Saturday 10 Elm

Saturday June 14, 2025 10:00am - 10:45am EDT

Elm 1 & 2

Speakers

Kristy Park Kulski (K.P. Kulski)

KRISTY PARK KULSKI (K.P. KULSKI) is a Hawaii-born Korean-American author, historian, and career vampire of patriarchal tears. Channeling a lifelong obsession with history and the morose she’s managed to birth the gothic horror novel, Fairest Flesh, and novella, House of Pungsu... Read More →

Nelson Pyles

Nelson W. Pyles is an author, musician, podcast creator and voice actor living in Pittsburgh. He has written two novels and is currently working on his third. His second collection of short stories, essays and articles All These Steps Lead Down will be released in July 2024 from Cold... Read More →

Gordon B. White

Gordon B. White is a Shirley Jackson Award and Bram Stoker Award nominee, as well as the author of the weird horror collection As Summer’s Mask Slips and Other Disruptions, as well as the novellas Rookfield and And In Her Smile, The World (with Rebecca J. Allred). A graduate... Read More →

Saturday June 14, 2025 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
Elm 1 & 2

Convention Event

11:00am EDT

Author Readings - Saturday 11 Elm

Saturday June 14, 2025 11:00am - 11:45am EDT

Elm 1 & 2

Speakers

Michael Allen Rose

Bizarro Writers Association President, RoShamBo Publishing

Michael Allen Rose is a Wonderland Award winning author, musician, and performance artist based in Chicago, IL. In addition to writing books such as Jurassichrist & Inappropriate Toasts For All Occasions, he also edits and publishes anthologies under the name RoShamBo Publishing... Read More →

Kathleen Palm

Emmett Nahil

LET ME OUT (Oni Press, 2023) // FROM THE BELLY (Tenebrous Press, 2024). Writing featured in THE BOOK OF QUEER SAINTS, VOLUME II, Laura Kate Dale's GENDER EUPHORIA anthology, and elsewhere. Favoring the historic, the strange, and the gory, in his other life Emmett makes video games... Read More →

Saturday June 14, 2025 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
Elm 1 & 2

Convention Event

12:00pm EDT

Author Readings - Saturday 12 Elm

Saturday June 14, 2025 12:00pm - 12:45pm EDT

Elm 1 & 2

Speakers

Amanda Casile

SLP

Catlyn Ladd

Writer

Catlyn Ladd loves alliteration, the poetic slip of similar sounds through throat and tongue. She blends metaphors and archetypes from the shadow self, illuminating the monsters, beautiful and horrifying, that gestate there. Her speculative fiction has been published in over a dozen... Read More →

Raymonde Chira

Author

Raymonde Chira (she/they) is a writer, illustrator and librarian based in New York City. She is the author of multiple dark short stories and comics, having been published in Ghost Parachute, Dark Matter Presents: The Off-Season, Let Her Be Evil, and Bump in the Night (forthcoming... Read More →

Saturday June 14, 2025 12:00pm - 12:45pm EDT
Elm 1 & 2

Convention Event

1:00pm EDT

Author Readings - Saturday 01 Elm

Saturday June 14, 2025 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT

Elm 1 & 2

Speakers

V. Castro

Corey Farrenkopf

Staff Librarian, Eastham Public Library

Corey Farrenkopf is a Cape Cod based writer and librarian. His work has been published in Nightmare, The Deadlands, Strange Horizons, Vastarien, Three-Lobed Burning Eye, Cosmic Horror Monthly, Bourbon Penn, and elsewhere. He is the author of the novel, Living in Cemeteries and the... Read More →

Sumiko Saulson

2 Time Bram Stoker Finalist in the Poetry Collection category, Author

Sumiko Saulson is a two-time Bram Stoker Finalist in the Poetry Collection for the poetry collections Melancholia: A Book of Dark Poetry (Bludgeoned Girls Press) and The Rat King: A Book of Dark Poetry (Dooky Zines), Elgin Nominee, 3rd Place Dwarf Stars Award Winner, Winner... Read More →

Saturday June 14, 2025 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
Elm 1 & 2

Convention Event

2:00pm EDT

Author Readings - Saturday 02 Elm

Saturday June 14, 2025 2:00pm - 2:45pm EDT

Elm 1 & 2

Speakers

John Langan

Author, THE FISHERMAN

John Langan is the author of two novels and five collections of stories. For his fiction, he has received the Bram Stoker and the This Is Horror awards. With Paul Tremblay, he co-edited Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters (2011). He is one of the founders of the Shirley Jackson... Read More →

James Chambers

Trustee; Co-Chair, StokerCon Governing Committee; Chair, Horror University, Horror Writers Association

James Chambers is the Bram Stoker Award® and Scribe Award-winning editor and author of A Bright and Beautiful Eternal World, On the Night Border, On the Hierophant Road, the graphic novel, Kolchak the Night Stalker: The Forgotten Lore of Edgar Allan Poe, and editor of Under Twin... Read More →

John Opalenik

John Opalenik is an author and educator from Connecticut. He is the author of The Primeval series, The Blue Beneath the Mountain, and the short story collection Among the Willows & Other Strange Tales. He’s had numerous short stories published in anthologies, and zines. He lives... Read More →

Saturday June 14, 2025 2:00pm - 2:45pm EDT
Elm 1 & 2

Convention Event

3:00pm EDT

HU: Write Your Trauma: Harness Your Darkness to Create Compelling Work

Saturday June 14, 2025 3:00pm - 5:00pm EDT

Elm 1 & 2

This is a separately ticketed event. Tickets may be purchased through the Registration portal. Click Get Tickets and scroll down to options labeled "Horror University" or "HU."

We'll discuss how to use personal trauma to create work that emotionally resonates. We'll discuss works that do this well, and afterward attendees will participate in a short brainstorming/writing session that will give them a concrete idea to pursue. Q&A will follow.

Speakers

Mercedes M. Yardley

They call me Miss Murder. I'm a two-time Bram Stoker Award-Winner in Long Fiction and Short Fiction, and a finalist in Anthology, Fiction Collection, and Short Fiction. I bake voodoo doll cookies and make darling little quilts with skulls on them.

Saturday June 14, 2025 3:00pm - 5:00pm EDT
Elm 1 & 2

Horror University, Writing Workshop

10:00am EDT

Author Readings - Sunday 10 Elm

Sunday June 15, 2025 10:00am - 10:45am EDT

Elm 1 & 2

Speakers

Frank Michaels

Robbie Dorman

Robbie Dorman believes in horror. He has published seventeen novels. His newest is WORDS OF CHRIST IN RED. When he's not writing, he's walking his dog, mixing cocktails, or watching pro wrestling.

Emily Hughes

Author, reviewer, listmaker

Emily C. Hughes (she/her) wants to scare you. Formerly the editor of Unbound Worlds and TorNightfire.com, she writes about horror and curates a list of the year’s new scary books. Her first book, Horror For Weenies: Everything You Need to Know About the Films You’re Too Scared... Read More →

Sunday June 15, 2025 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
Elm 1 & 2

Convention Event

11:00am EDT

Author Readings - Sunday 11 Elm

Sunday June 15, 2025 11:00am - 11:45am EDT

Elm 1 & 2

Speakers

Aaron Dries

Aaron Dries is a Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson Award nominated, and Ditmar, Australian Shadows and Aurealis Award-winning author based in Canberra, Australia. His novels include HOUSE OF SIGHS, THE FALLEN BOYS, A PLACE FOR SINNERS, WHERE THE DEAD GO TO DIE (with Mark Allan Gunnells... Read More →

Christopher Hawkins

Co-chair, Chicagoland Chapter

Christopher Hawkins (he/him) is the multi-award-winning author of Downpour and Suburban Monsters. His latest novel is I Contain Multitudes.

Chris Panatier

Writer

Sunday June 15, 2025 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
Elm 1 & 2

Convention Event