Elizabeth Donald is a dark fiction writer fond of things that go chomp in the night. She is author of the Blackfire urban fantasy series and Nocturne vampire mystery series, as well as other novels, novellas and stories in the horror, science fiction and fantasy genres. She is a three-time winner of the Darrell Award for speculative fiction and finalist for the Prism and Imadjinn fiction awards. More recently, she received the Mimi Zanger Literary Award and was a finalist for the Imadjinn screenplay competition and the Knost Award. She is the founder of the Literary Underworld small-press cooperative; an award-winning journalist and essayist with more than 25 years in journalism; a nature and art photographer; freelance editor and writing coach. She holds a masters degree in media studies and an MFA in creative writing from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and is an adjunct professor of journalism and English composition at area colleges. She serves as president of the St. Louis Society of Professional Journalists and the Eville Writers, and is a member of the national SPJ Ethics Committee, Association of Writers and Writing Programs, Authors Guild, St. Louis Writers Guild and more writing and trade organizations than is healthy. She lives with her family in a haunted house in Edwardsville, Illinois. In her spare time, she has no spare time.