Dark fiction writers
about us
We are a group of writers who met through the Federation of British Columbia’s Writing Circle program.
Kelli Etheridge
Author
Kelli Etheridge lives on Vancouver Island. She loves dark beer, dark coffee, and dark fiction. While horror is her favourite genre, she’s gentle in life.
She adopts rescued dogs, she doesn’t kill mosquitos, and she swerves to avoid the monstrous banana slugs on the road. Despite that, she’s certain she’d make it to final girl status in a horror movie. Lately, you can find her curled up deep in the rabbit hole of flow state research.
Kelli is the facilitator of the Dark Fiction Writing Circle, which she started for a purely selfish reason: she wanted someone to read her dark, scary stories. She has since discovered that horror writers are some of the kindest people around.
She has been published by Graveside Press, Renaissance Press, 101 Words, and Wordworks Magazine. She is a member of the Federation of BC Writers and the Horror Writers Association.
K.A. Thomson
Author
K. A. Thomson (she/her) is a Toronto-born writer embracing her new West Coast life on Vancouver Island, BC. A lifelong pluviophile, tea addict, and lover of the macabre, she is pursuing her dream of writing dark and twisted tales inspired by her quiet coastal town.
She has a BA in Anthropology and Museum Studies, and her new adult dark fantasy novel was selected for mentorship through the Humber School for Writers Postgraduate program in Creative Writing (2020).
Her current work-in-progress is an adult gothic fantasy novel influenced by her years working in museums and archives, which may or may not have been haunted.
Ennis Lucy
Author and Editor
Ennis Lucy is a dark fantasy and horror author with a love for the strange and twisted. Their short fiction has been awarded a silver honorable mention from Writers of the Future and will soon be adapted to podcast form.
They live in Victoria, BC, where they are writing their debut novel and working as a freelance editor. You can find them at ennislucy.carrd.co and on Bluesky @elucywrites.
Louise Dumayne
Author
Louise Dumayne lives off-road and off-grid in the remote Yukon wilderness with her husband, Neil, and a retired sled dog called Blaze. She won the Lush Triumphant Short Fiction Award in 2021 with Impact.
The Demon Fufu was shortlisted for the Federation of BC Writers Short Fiction Award in 2022. Other publishing credits include Deep Pool Bridge (Understorey Magazine, 2021) and The Bear (Words and Women IV, Unthank Books, Highly Commended, Words and Women Short Story Competition 2018). Spring Break Up was published in Riverside Review (Klondike Institute of Arts and Culture).
She graduated from The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University in 2022 and is currently working on a supernatural thriller called Crooked Creek, set in the Yukon winter wilderness.
Kim Harbridge
Author and Editor
Kim Harbridge (she/her) is a writer and editor of speculative, scary, and otherwise strange fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Strange Horizons, Pulp Literature, and The Years’ Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction (vol. 2).
She is grateful to live in Burnaby, BC, on the ancestral and unceded homelands of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Sníchim speaking peoples. In her non-writing life, she is a voracious consumer of horror movies, crime novels, and Haribo Tangfastics.
Find her online at www.kimharbridge.com
Desiree Friesen
Author
Desiree Friesen lives on Canada’s west coast, where she primarily writes dark or unsettling short fiction. Her dystopian horror story The Task is featured in ELA Literary Magazine’s The End of the World themed issue.
She has several top ten NYC Midnight contest placings, including 3rd for round one of the 2025 Scary Story Challenge (also honorable mention 1 for round two).
She loves donuts, horror movies, and cabin life, and she can be found on Instagram at @martenedesiree.
Rebecca Cremini
Author
Rebecca Cremini wore suits for a long time. She studied creative writing at the University of Victoria but then fell dormant while her suits drove across Canada, adopted four animals, then drove back covered in scales and fur. After respawning in Vancouver, British Columbia, she returned to writing. Now, she most often writes poetry and speculative fiction.
Her poetry has been published in The /tƐmz/ Review, by Maverick Duck Press, and in Wordscapes Youth Arts Journal as the Ripple Effect poetry grand prize winner. Her debut novella, Mouths of Stone, is forthcoming from Three Ocean Press.
When she is not at her desk, Rebecca spends her time in the water, sewing old books together again, and occasionally on taxidermy.
Website
E.J. Klassen
Author
E.J. Klassen is an author from East Vancouver, a part time bartender and one time film critic. He doesn’t spend too much time in this world and can usually be found somewhere in space harvesting the raw materials for his various weird writings. His film criticism has been archived at Cinematemple.wordpress and if you run into him around town he may be convinced to read your Tarot.
Timeline
Our Story
We are a group of writers who met through the Federation of British Columbia’s Writing Circle program, and have been sharing scares ever since.
2024
Dark Fiction Writing Circle established with the Federation of BC Writers.
2025
Dark Fiction Writers were featured in the Spotlight series presented by the Federation of BC Writers. We had the chance to read our scary stories to an online audience.
We decided to write an anthology together and started planning the location, the familiar (we chose a spider!) and devised creative ways to weave our stories together.
2026
Finished final drafts of our anthology stories. The compiled stories will be in the hand of our beta reader crew shortly.
Many of us are headed to When Words Collide in Calgary this August to present a panel on Thriving in a Writing Circle.