Spooky Stories Night

Join us for an exciting lineup of writers sharing their sharing stories to tell in the dark...

We’ll be featuring local authors reading from their newest and latest writings, stories, and novels…

• L.S. Johnson
• Francesca Maria
• Loren Rhoads
• Tamika Thompson

This event is sponsored by Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature. RSVP not required, but appreciated.

Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature presents writers, musicians, and other artists, while giving back to the creative community and to our neighbors. (https://telhilit.org)

L.S. Johnson writes about the past to better understand the present, and about monsters to better understand ourselves. She is the author of the Chase and Daniels quartet of queer gothic novellas and over 40 short stories. Her first collection, Vacui Magia, won the North Street Book Prize and was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Her second collection, Rare Birds, was an IPPY medalist and longlisted for the Stoker Award. Her Enlightenment-era serial, Prima Materia, about vampires and alchemists and a returning serpent god, is happening now.

Francesca Maria has been penning horror stories since she was able to pick up a pen and write at the age of six. This fascination with horror was spurred by her insatiable quest to uncover what was haunting her house as a child. Now in her late forties, Francesca is still haunted by her childhood home which continues to invade her dreams.

Francesca has spent 19 years as the co-owner of Black Cat Comics in Northern California and has been reading comics for over two decades. She is an avid fan of Neil Gaiman, Tom King, Stephen King, Tom Taylor, Geoff Johns and Jeph Loeb. When she's not reading and writing horror, Francesca visits haunted places and records their histories.

Francesca is a former journalist, a published author and a graduate from University of California at Berkeley.

Loren Rhoads is the author of In the Wake of the Templars, a space opera trilogy. She’s co-author (with Brian Thomas) of the As Above, So Below books, a dark urban fantasy duet about a succubus and her angel. Her short stories have appeared in Best New Horror, Strange California, Fright Mare: Women Write Horror, Sins of the Sirens: 14 Tales of Dark Desire, and much more. Unsafe Words is the first full-length collection of her short fiction.

Tamika Thompson is a writer, producer, and journalist. She is author of Unshod, Cackling, and Naked (Unnerving Books), which is the 2024 Next Generation Indie Book Awards WINNER for Horror, and which Publishers Weekly calls “powerful,” “unsettling,” and “terrifying,” as well as author of Salamander Justice (Madness Heart Press). She is co-creator of the artist collective POC United and fiction editor for the group’s Foreword INDIES Award-winning anthology, Graffiti. Her work has appeared in several speculative fiction anthologies as well as in Interzone, Prairie Schooner, The New York Times, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. Her long fiction tale, “Bridget Has Disappeared,” is in translation at Independent Legions’ Italian-language Molotov Magazine, her story, “The Sand Ate Her,” is available in audio format at the Creepy Podcast, and her tale, “The God Bot,” is forthcoming in Penumbric.

Host or Publisher Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature