Mort Castle

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Mort Castle (1946 - )
Horror author and writing teacher, Mort Castle, has more than 350 short stories and a dozen books to his credit, including Cursed Be the Child (Leisure Books, 1994) and The Strangers. Castle's first novel was published in 1967. Since then he has had pieces published in all sorts of places ranging from traditional lit mags to more off the wall or risqué markets.

A dedicated and talented writing teacher, Castle has been a working musician, a standup comic, a stage hypnotist, a high school English teacher (for 11 years), a magazine and comic book editor. He is currently a "freelance language arts consultant." In that capacity, Castle is a writer in residence for three high schools, and teaching "Researching and Writing Historical Fiction" and "Critical Reading and Writing: First Novels" at Chicago's Columbia College. Castle takes pride in the fact that more than 2,000 of his students, ranging in age from six to 93, have seen their work in print. He is a frequent keynote speaker at writing conferences and has given over 800 presentations to writers, would-be writers, and teachers of writing. His latest book, Writing Horror, for which he served as editor, has become the "bible" for aspiring horror authors. It also includes interviews with some of horror's top stars, such as Stephen King. He is also the Executive Editor of Thorby Comics.

Castle has been nominated for a lot of awards: the Pulitzer Prize, the Pushcart Prize, the Bram Stoker Award, the DeMarco Prize, the Emerson Fiction Award, Leaders in the Arts for Chicago.

He and his wife, Jane, live in Crete, Illinois.