The 85 Weirdest, Day 64: Tanith Lee

The 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days!

Comic young-adult author, robust adventure fantasy novelist, gothic poetess: TANITH LEE (1947– ) has more writing personas than Sybil. But in her short fiction, much of it published in Weird Tales, all aspects of her various writing modes come together. Such pieces as “La Vampiresse,” “Antonius Bequeathed,” and “The Persecution Machine,” with their death-defying mixture of prose poetry, genre trope reversals and ominous wit, could be written by no one else.