About

Alan’s writing has appeared in two dozen small press and amateur publications, including Arkham Sampler, Cthulhu Codex, Eldritch Tales, Etchings and Odysseys, From Beyond the Dark Gateway, Nyctalops, Spectral Realms, Studies in Weird Fiction, and Yawning Vortex.

As a child he was drawn to imaginative literature and film. He reveled in TV shows like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits and in movies like Jason and the Argonauts and the Vincent Price Poe films. Dr. Seuss and Tom Swift gave way to Poe, Bierce and Lovecraft.
At 14 he began writing pastiches that blended these influences, and at 16 he published his own literary fanzine, Ambrosia.

In high school he earned awards in English, Latin and History and received the Sons of the American Revolution Citizenship Medal. He helped form the school chess club and team, and in 1973 he won the Tennessee High School Chess Championship. He was literary editor for the school newspaper, The Headliner.

At the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, he studied comparative philosophy and religious studies, English and music, earning a B.A. in the College Scholars Program. His teachers included Richard Aquila, Kathy Emmett, Rolf-Dieter Hermann, Jay Kim, Bob Leggett, Richard Penner, Paul Pinckney and Jon Manchip White. His thesis was entitled Krishnamurti and the Transformation of Man (1980, unpublished). He was poetry editor for two issues of the school’s literary-arts magazine, The Phoenix.

Over the years he has supported himself variously as a manual laborer, maintenance worker, clerk, word processor, researcher, analyst, programmer, and database application developer.

His first poetry chapbook, Another Eucharist, was published by Elephant Printing in 1995.

In 1996, he launched a website dedicated to his favorite writers of supernatural fiction, absurdism and surrealism when most of them were scarce on the internet. It remained online for 25 years.
 
From 1997 to 2007, he participated the Esoteric Order of Dagon APA, producing The Terrorist, The Western Front, and Mutatis Mutandis.

Beginning in 1998, he assisted poet-author Donald Sidney-Fryer in preparing a dozen titles for publication, beginning with Songs and Sonnets Atlantean, The Third Series and including his magnum opus, the million-word, five-volume The Case of the Light Fantastic Toe (2018) with index. (A second edition will be issued in early 2021.)

Anamnesis Press published his poetry chapbook From a Safe Distance in 2000.

In 2012, Hippocampus Press published Intimations of Unreality, collecting most of his early Lovecraftian stories and fantasy poetry together with several new tales and two fantasy novellas representing his more original work.

In 2015, John Thomas Allen invited him to collaborate on a book of surrealist poetry. The “trans-continental surrealist séance” lasted 24 days and resulted in the 328 poems in The Lighthouse Above the Graveyard (Dark Green Sun Press, 2016).

The year 2017 saw a new publishing venture with translucent books, issuing four titles from April Fool’s Day 2017 (The Adventures of Franco Corelli) to April Fool’s Day 2018 (Reviving a Dead Priest).

On the autumnal equinox of 2020, a collection of new stories The Elephant in the Room and Others was published, concurrent with the launch of a new website. He is married to Julie Hodge.

Join my email list

For website and publishing news, reprints and more.
Copyright © 2020 Alan Gullette. All Rights Reserved.