Thomas Ligotti

Thomas Ligotti (b. 1953) is an American author who is widely considered to be one of the most important living writers of horror fiction. His work is characterized by a distinctively bleak and dark philosophical vision, pitching over into outright nihilism, that remains strikingly original even as it draws on a rich set of literary influences that includes the likes of H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Bruno Schulz, William Burroughs, E. M. Cioran, and Vladimir Nabokov. He has won multiple Bram Stoker Awards, British Fantasy Awards, and World Fantasy Awards. In 2015 Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe were published in a single-volume Penguin Classics edition, making Ligotti one of ten living authors to be included in that distinguished series.
Ligotti started his career as a published writer in the early 1980s with a number of short stories published in various American small press magazines. He was contributing editor to Grimoire from 1982 to 1985. In 2015, Ligotti's first two collections, Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe: His Lives and Works, were republished in one volume by Penguin Classics as Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe. Michael Calia of The Wall Street Journal wrote of the reprint that "Horror writer Thomas Ligotti is about to enter the American literary canon. Penguin Classics published a volume of Mr. Ligotti’s short stories, making him one of 10 living writers, including Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo, among the hundreds the imprint has published in the U.S."  Ligotti's work received high praise following the publication from the likes of The New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker. Terrence Rafferty contrasts Ligotti with Stephen King, observing, "King, the great entertainer, needs the story as the comedian needs the joke, and when he can’t quite deliver it he dies (in the comedian’s sense). King is a master of horror, though. When inspiration fails, he has the technique to fake it. Thomas Ligotti is a master of a different order, practically a different species. He probably couldn’t fake it if he tried, and he never tries. He writes like horror incarnate."
Ligotti collaborated with the musical group Current 93 on the albums In a Foreign Town, In a Foreign Land (1997, reissued 2002), I Have a Special Plan for This World (2000), This Degenerate Little Town (2001) and The Unholy City (2003), all released on David Tibet's Durtro label. Tibet has also published several limited editions of Ligotti's books on Durtro Press. Additionally, Ligotti played guitar on Current 93's contribution to the compilation album Foxtrot, whose proceeds went to the treatment of musician John Balance's alcoholism.
Ligotti has suffered from chronic anxiety and anhedonia for much of his life; these have been prominent themes in his work. Ligotti avoids the explicit violence common in some recent horror fiction, preferring to establish a disquieting, pessimistic atmosphere through the use of subtlety and repetition. Ligotti has stated he prefers short stories to longer forms, both as a reader and as a writer, though he has written a novella, My Work Is Not Yet Done (2002)
Cadabra Releases:
The Bungalow House
The Red Tower
The Small People
Gas Station Carnivals
The Clown Puppet
Mrs. Rinaldi's Angel
Cadabra Illustrated 8: The Small People
Bibliography:
* Songs of a Dead Dreamer (1985, rev. & exp. 1989)
* Grimscribe: His Lives and Works (1991)
* Noctuary (1994)
* The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein and Other Gothic Tales (1994)
* The Nightmare Factory (1996). Essentially an omnibus of selections from Ligotti's first three collections, with a concluding section containing new stories.
* In a Foreign Town, in a Foreign Land (1997, accompanying CD by Current 93)
* I Have a Special Plan for This World (2000, accompanying CD by Current 93)
* This Degenerate Little Town (2001, accompanying CD by Current 93)
* The Unholy City (2002, accompanying CD by Current 93)
* My Work Is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror (2002)
* Crampton: A Screenplay (2003, with Brandon Trenz) (Unproduced screenplay written in 1998 for an episode of The X-Files)
* Sideshow, and Other Stories (2003)
* Death Poems (2004)
* The Shadow at the Bottom of the World (2005)
* Teatro Grottesco (2006, reprinted in 2008)
* The Conspiracy Against the Human Race (2010)
* The Spectral Link (2014)
* Born to Fear: Interviews with Thomas Ligotti (2014), edited by Matt Cardin
* Songs of a Dead Dreamer & Grimscribe (2015)