Jack Ketchum
Jack Ketchum (1946 – 2018) is the pseudonym for a former actor, singer, teacher, literary agent, lumber salesman, and soda jerk — a former flower child and baby boomer who figures that in 1956 Elvis, dinosaurs and horror probably saved his life. His first novel, Off Season, prompted the Village Voice to publicly scold its publisher in print for publishing violent pornography. He personally disagrees but is perfectly happy to let you decide for yourself. His short story The Box won a 1994 Bram Stoker Award from the HWA, his story Gone won again in 2000 — and in 2003 he won Stokers for both best collection for Peaceable Kingdom and best long fiction for Closing Time. He has written eleven novels, the latest of which are Red, Ladies’ Night, and The Lost. His stories are collected in The Exit At Toledo Blade Boulevard, Broken on the Wheel of Sex, and Peaceable Kingdom. His novella The Crossings was cited by Stephen King in his speech at the 2003 National Book Awards. (Photo by Steve Thornton) www.jackketchum.net
Jack Sargeant
As an author Jack Sargeant’s work has been described as “dangerously inspirational”. His numerous books include Against Control, Deathtripping: The Extreme Underground and Naked Lens: Beat Cinema (like Deathtripping now in its third English language edition). His forthcoming book Flesh and Excess on Underground Film is due for publication in late 2015. He has written on film and culture for numerous books, anthologies and journals, and introductions for books by Lydia Lunch, Romain Slocombe, Joe Coleman and for William Burroughs’s Unforgettable Characters. He writes a regular column for FilmInk, and has written for The Wire, Xochi 23, Fortean Times, World Art, Real Time and many other publications. Jack has frequently appeared as a documentary interviewee in films including Blank City, The Advocate for Fagdom and Llik Your Idols. He is regularly called upon to assist in research for television and film documentaries. In addition to writing, Sargeant has lectured on underground film and culture, beat culture, William Burroughs and many other topics across the world. He has curated numerous film and art events, including co-curating the critically acclaimed ‘Sex’ at Melbourne’s Strange Neighbour gallery. He is currently program director for the Revelation Film Festival in Western Australia.
Jacqueline Castel
Jacqueline Castel is a filmmaker, curator, archivist, and co-director of the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies. Her work as a writer and director has screened at Sundance, SXSW, Sitges, & Fantasia, and has featured collaborations with cult auteurs John Carpenter, David Lynch, and Jim Jarmusch. Castel’s archival work has extended to the estates of artists Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and H.R. Giger, and she has guest programmed for SXSW, the Alamo Drafthouse, New Beverly, Close-Up Film Centre, and Spectacle Theater.
She is currently in production on a documentary about international anticult Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth and in pre-production on an erotic thriller set in Tokyo co-written by herself and Sasha Grey.
James Riley
James Riley is author of The Bad Trip: Dark Omens, New Worlds and the End of the Sixties (Icon Books, 2019), a cultural history of the late-1960s and early 1970s. He is Fellow of English Literature at Girton College, University of Cambridge where he works on modern and contemporary literature. Previous publications have included a multi-volume collection on the work of film-maker and novelist Peter Whitehead and his next book will be Playback Hex, a study of William Burroughs and the tape recorder. James has lectured on his work internationally and has performed spoken word shows in London, Vienna and Coney Island, New York. He has written for Vertigo, The i, Fortean Times, Monolith and blogs at Residual Noise.
Jane Giles
Lecturer Jane Giles was programmer at the Scala from 1988-1992, and has since worked in film distribution and exhibition for the likes of Tartan Films, the ICA and the BFI. She teaches at the London Film School and the National Film & Television School, and is the author of four books including The Scala Cinema, 1978-1993, for publication in September 2018 by FAB Press.
Jared Rivet
Jared Rivet is a horror screenwriter, producer, director, author, and voice actor. He wrote the screenplay for the Kevin Greutert-directed feature film Jackals (released by Scream Factory in 2017). Since 2014, he has written, directed and acted in multiple episodes of Earbud Theater, an award-winning audio drama anthology series specializing in horror and sci-fi. In 2016, he received an Audio Verse Award nomination for his performance in the Earbud Theater episode On the Line, which he also wrote and directed. He served as a guest lecturer at the Drexel University Great Works Symposium’s “Zom Con” in 2015; contributed an essay to the 2018 collection My Favorite Horror Movie; and he has co-hosted the monthly trivia event “Dead Right Horror Trivia” with Dr. Rebekah McKendry since 2015. He has multiple film, television, and audio drama projects in development and is currently in post-production on his latest Earbud Theater podplay, Tales from the Dead of Night, premiering in October of 2018. He can be found on Twitter at @jaredrivet1.
Jasper Sharp
Jasper Sharp is a critic, curator and co-founder of the long-running Midnight Eye.com (2001-2015) website. He book publications are The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film (2003, with Tom Mes), Behind the Pink Curtain (2008), The Historical Dictionary of Japanese Film (2011) and The Creeping Garden: Irrational Encounters with Plasmodial Slime Moulds, (2015). He is the co-director, with Tim Grabham, of The Creeping Garden (2014), an award-winning documentary about slime moulds and the people who study them.
Jean-Charles Ray
Jean-Charles Ray is an independent researcher and lecturer specializing in video games. With a PhD in film studies and comparative literature, his fields of expertise are horror and the articulation between narrative and game. He maintains a creative practice in tabletop role-playing.
Jeff Barnaby
Jeff Barnaby was born on a Mi’gmaq reserve in Listujug, Quebec. He has worked as an artist, poet, author and filmmaker. His work uses unsettling elements of the horror and sci-fi genres to paint a stark and scathing portrait of post-colonial aboriginal life and culture. His short films File Under Miscellaneous (2010), From Cherry English (2004) and The Colony (2007) led to his two feature films, Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2014) and Blood Quantum (2019).
Jennifer Wallis
Jennifer Wallis is Lecturer in Cultural and Intellectual History at Queen Mary University of London where she teaches modules on the history of psychiatry, Victorian values and controversies, and the history of the supernatural. She also writes on film and music and has contributed to several volumes in recent years including Are You in the House Alone? (2016) and Gathering of the Tribe: Music and Heavy Conscious Creation (2013). She is the editor of Fight Your Own War: Power Electronics and Noise Culture (Headpress, 2016).