These highly rated lesser-known authors may not be familiar to some members of the general public, but they’ve all been highly praised by readers, and the literary community. They’re all published authors, with some receiving nominations for prestigious literary awards. Several have been the recipient of numerous nominations, while others have won major literary prizes for their exceptional work.
This list includes critically-acclaimed poets, novelists, as well as those specializing in short stories, prose and flash fiction. Writers of nonfiction are also represented below.
Take a moment to search out the noteworthy work of these talented folks. You might discover a favorite new short story, poem, or novel. If you’re lucky, perhaps you’ll find a new favorite author whose entire body of work resonates with you.
A
AJ Aberford (Bodies in the Water; Bullets in the Sand; Hawk at the Crossroads)
Jean Marc Ah-Sen (In the Beggarly Style of Imitation; Grand Menteur; Kilworthy Tanner)
Kathryn Aldridge-Morris (Hope is The Thing: An Anthology; Awakenings: Stories of Body & Consciousness)
L. R. J. Allen (On the Moor; Summerside Lake Massacre)
Maurice X. Alvarez (The Trouble With Thieves; The Trouble With Love)
Robert Nazar Arjoyan (Drunk in the Graveyard; Beneath the Shadow of a Butterfly)
Pierre C. Arseneault (Maple Springs; Oakwood Island; Sleepless Nights)
B
Sudha Balagopal (There are Seven Notes; A New Dawn; Missing and Other Stories)
Hilly Barmby (From My Cold Dead Hands; The Pact; Got What Was Coming; Life Lessons)
David Barrick (Nightlight, Incubation Chamber; Two Dreams: Stratford and The Copyist)
François Bereaud (San Diego Stories; A Question of Family)
Jerome Berglund (Bathtub Poems: drum beats on a typewriter; Funny Pages; And Mash: Warm Rejections)
C. Anthony Biron (After Oxygen; Atlas Arch; Ouch! Brain Splinters)
Frances Boyle (Openwork and Limestone; This White Nest; Seeking Shade)
Teresa Tumminello Brader (Letting In Air and Light; Secret Keepers)
Ruth Brandt (No One Has Any Intention of Building a Wall)
Ann E. Brockbank (On a Distant Shore; Waiting for the Harvest Moon; The Blue Bay Cafe)
Melissa Llanes Brownlee (Bitter Over Sweet; Kahi and Lua: Tales of the First and the Second; Hard Skin)
J. Drew Brumbaugh (Child of Prophecy; Key to Tirumfall; War Party; Bula Bridge; Shela; Shepherds; Fall of the Western Kings)
Christopher J. Burke (Burke’s Lore Briefs: A Heavenly Date/My Damned Best Friend; In a Flash 2020)
Keith Burke (The Last Goodbye)
Rex Burke (Orphan Planet; Star Bound; Twin Landing)
Jane Burn (Be Feared; A Thousand Miles from the Sea)
Dave Buzan (In the Lair of Legends; In the Wrath of Legends)
C
Mary Camarillo (The Lockhart Women; Those People Behind Us)
Eibhlís Carcione (Welcome to Dead Town Raven McKay; The Midnight House; Black Gables)
Kevin Carey (Junior Miles and The Junkman; Olympus Heights co-written by Colleen Michaels)
Scott Carlin (A Falling Of Snow; After The Snow Melts; You Have No Idea)
Katya Cengel (From Chernobyl with Love: Reporting from the Ruins of the Soviet Union; Exiled: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to California and Back; Bluegrass Baseball: A Year in the Minor League Life)
Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar (Morsels of Purple; Skin over Milk)
Lucian Childs (Dreaming Home)
John Chrostek (Boxcutters; Feast of the Pale Leviathan; founder of Cold Signal Magazine)
Christopher Citro (If We Had a Lemon We’d Throw It and Call That the Sun; The Maintenance of the Shimmy-Shammy)
Michael Amos Cody (Streets of Nashville; Gabriel’s Songbook; A Twilight Reel)
G G Collins (Dead Editor File; Reluctant Medium; Skinwalker Medium)
Annie Cowell (Birth Mote(s); Splashing Pink co-written with Sam Szanto)
Cormac Culkeen (The Boy With the Radio)
Rebecca Cuthbert (In Memory of Exoskeletons)
D
J. Dalton (John Marsh) (Words from a Broken Heart; The Gates to the Galaxies; The Tales of Mordratha; The Dead Ship; Planet of Diamonds)
César L. de León (Speaking With Grackles by Soapberry Trees)
John Deal (Under a Blood Moon; Beautiful Death; All the Natural Beauties)
Daren Dean (Shelter Me; I’ll Still Be Here Long After You’re Gone: Stories; Far Beyond the Pale; The Black Harvest; This Vale of Tears; Roads)
Kit Derrick (Lorelei; The Raven Sound; Hope Is A Six Letter Word)
Shiksha Dheda (The Tragedy of Touch; Washed Away: a collection of fragments; We Are All Pretty Bizarre: Ramblings About the Movies)
Stuart Dischell (The Lookout Man; Good Hope Road; Children with Enemies; Backwards Days; Dig Safe; Evenings & Avenues)
Dave Dobson (Got Trouble; Daros; Kenai; What Grows From the Dead)
Jenzo DuQue (The Best American Short Stories 2021; Best Microfiction 2022; The Rest of Us)
Jonathan Edward Durham (Winterset Hollow)
E
Tara A. Elliott (Whorl)
Angele Ellis (Arab on Radar; Spared; Under the Kaufmann’s Clock)
F
Deirdre Fagan (Phantom Limbs; Find a Place for Me: Embracing Love and Life in the Face of Death)
Ivanka Fear (The Dead Lie; What Lies in the Cornfield?; Where is My Husband?)
Jeff Fearnside (Ships In The Desert; A Husband and Wife Are One Satan)
Joel Flanagan-Grannemann (Talia: Heir to the Fairy Realm; Talia: On the Shore of the Sea; Fairy Court in Exile; Mother of Exiles)
Fiona Forsyth (The Third Daughter, Death and the Poet, Poetic Justice)
Tim Frank (Delusions To Live By)
Darren Freebury-Jones (Shakespeare’s Borrowed Feathers; Shakespeare’s Tutor: The Influence of Thomas Kyd)
Matthew Freeman (I Think I’d Rather Roar; Dopamine and the Devil; Exile: Poems)
G
Adam Gibbs (Existentialism at the Wheel; Dumb Luck)
Stephen J. Golds (Shadows Slow Dancing in Derelict Rooms; Say Goodbye When I’m Gone; I’ll Pray When I’m Dying; Always The Dead)
Phil Goldstein (How to Bury a Boy at Sea)
Diane Gottlieb (2023 Best Microfiction; editor of Awakenings: Stories of Body & Consciousness)
Iain C.M. Gray (The Ruined Road: A Collection of Short Stories; Doctor Oadwin: The Making of a Maniac; Zombies Wha Hae)
Shannon Frost Greenstein (An Oral History of One Day in Guyana; Through the Lens of Time)
Drew Gummerson (Saltburn; The Lodger; Me and Mickie James; Seven Nights at the Flamingo Hotel)
Kari Gunter-Seymour (Alone in the House of My Heart; Dirt Songs; Serving)
H
Bex Hainsworth (Walrussey; Circulaire)
Justin Hamm (Drinking Guinness with the Dead; The Inheritance: Poems and Photos; American Ephemeral; Lessons in Ruin)
David Hankins (Death and the Taxman; Grimsworld Tales; Death and the Dragon)
David Hay (Doctor Lazarus; A Spontaneous Prayer; On the Edge of the Asylum; How High the Moon: Saxon Suite)
Jon Herrera (Emma and the Minotaur; Emma and the Prince of Shadows)
Peter “Pedro” Brown Hoffmeister (American Afterlife; Graphic the Valley; Too Shattered For Mending)
Laura Reece Hogan (Butterfly Nebula; Litany Of Flights; I Live, No Longer I; O Garden-Dweller)
Richard Holeman (The Boy Who Glowed in the Dark; The Firefly Lantern; Gypsy Leathers: Biker Poetry and Other Rhymes; Evergreen Christmas)
Lucy Holme (Temporary Stasis)
Stephenson Holt (Alien Affair; What Katie Didn’t Know; No Reason To Rhyme; Evolution In Sand: Poems and short prose)
Nick Horvath (Sledge vs. The Labyrinth)
Damon Hubbs (The Day Sharks Walk on Land; Coin Doors & Empires)
Allan Hudson (The Alexanders; Father; Shattered Lives; Code Name: Iron Spear 1941)
Celso Hurtado (The Devil’s Promise; The Ghost Tracks)
I
Pedro Iniguez (Fever Dreams Of A Parasite; Echoes and Embers: Speculative Stories)
J
James Jenkins (Sun Bleached Scarecrows; Parochial Pigs; Life in Dirt: Stories)
Jane Jesmond (On The Edge; Cut Adrift; Her; A Quiet Contagion)
Strider Marcus Jones (Pomegranate Flesh; Wooded Windows; Aspects Of Love; Inside Out)
K
Vipanjeet Kaur (Surreal Morning: Poems)
Marie Keates (Time & Tide; Plagued; Land Fit For Heroes; Seventh Daughter; A Dish Best Served Cold)
Alex Kenna (What Meets The Eye; Burn This Night)
Winona Kent (Ticket to Ride; Cold Play; Jason Davey Mysteries)
Carmella de Keyser (The Liminal Light of the Night)
Shawn M. Klimek (Hungry Thing)
Bob King (And & And; And/Or)
Koss (Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect)
Jonathan Koven (Palm Lines; Below Torrential Hill; Mystic Orchards)
Gary Kruse (Badlands; Bleak Waters; Mistress of the Crows)
L
Gopal Lahiri (Return to Solitude; Silent Steps; Alleys are Filled with Future Alphabets)
Lynne Jensen Lampe (Talk Smack to a Hurricane)
Huw Langridge (The Tolworth Beacon; The Sapling Method; Hoodwink’s Folly; The Axiom Few; The Train Set: Six Ghost Stories)
Dr. Chris Laoutaris (Shakespeare’s Book: The Story Behind the First Folio and the Making of Shakespeare; Bleed and See)
Scott Laudati (Play The Devil; Bone House; Camp Winapooka; Hawaiian Shirts in the Electric Chair)
Maud Lavin (Push Comes to Shove; Cut with the Kitchen Knife; Clean New World)
Whiskey Leavins (A Turkey Danced Death; Murder in Greasepaint: A Rock Cobbler Case)
Richard Leise (Being Dead; Dry The Rain)
Douglas Lumsden (The Blood Moon Feeds on My Dreams; A Specter Raps on My Windowpane; A Troll Walks into a Bar)
Ken Lussey (A Tangled Web; The High Road; Bloody Orkney; Hide and Seek)
M
Andrew Cyril Macdonald (op.cit./urbes; Poetic cityscapes collected)
Gary J Mack (The Secret Magpie; Impossible Fruit; The Ghostly Menagerie; The Raven’s Message)
Mary Mackey (In This Burning World: Poems of Love and Apocalypse; Creativity: Where Poems Begin; The Village of Bones; The Year The Horses Came)
Bryce Main (Love & Coffee; A Time for Dying; Heaven Help Us)
Frank Malley (The Hit List; The Killing Circle; The 13th Assassin)
Axl Malton (Tapped; Dead Man’s Heart; Cries of Joy)
Aoife Mannix (Heritage of Secrets; The Trick of Foreign Words; The Elephant in the Corner; Growing Up An Alien)
David E. Manuel (Molly Malice in Alterland; Killer Protocols; Thunder Road of the Cosmos: and other oddities)
Helen Matthews (Lies Behind the Ruin; Brief Encounters; The Girl in the Van; Girl Out of Sight)
A-M Mawhiney (Spelldrifts; Spindrifts; Fugitive Rifts)
Jahmal Mayfield (Smoke Kings)
Chris McGinley (Once These Hills; Coal Black: Stories)
N L McLaughlin (American Nomads; Lost Boys; Imaginary Dragons; True North)
Paul McMahon (Bourdon; The Devil at the Door; The Glasshouse; The Blueprint)
Tom Mead (Cabaret Macabre; The Murder Wheel; Death and the Conjuror: A Locked-Room Mystery)
Cyndee Melzow (When Tender is the Heart)
Tom Mock (Moon Song & Other Stories; The Long Nights)
Tim Moder (All True Heavens; The Angel of Coincidence; American Parade Routes)
Steven Gonzalez Monserrate (Sordidez written under pen name E.G. Condé)
Jack Moody (Crooked Smile; The Monotony of Everlasting; Dancing to Broken Records)
Lawrence Moore (The Breadcrumb Trail; Aerial Sweetshop)
Ellen Birkett Morris (Beware the Tall Grass)
R. N. Morris (A Gentle Axe; A Vengeful Longing; A Razor Wrapped in Silk; The Cleansing Flames and Law of Blood)
Harrison Murphy (Chrysalis; Dandelion; Elephant)
N
Rasheed Newson (My Government Means to Kill Me)
Wayne Ng (The Family Code; Letters From Johnny; Johnny Delivers)
O
Rohan O’Duill (Cold Rising; Cold Blooded)
Robert Okaji (Buddha’s Not Talking; My Mother’s Ghost Scrubs the Floor at 2 a.m.; From Every Moment a Second; I Have a Bird to Whistle)
Patricia M Osborne (The Woodhaerst Triangle; The Woodhaerst Women; The Woodhaerst Reunion; House of Grace: A Family Saga; The Granville Legacy; The Coal Miner’s Son; The Oath)
P
Jean Paetkau (Blood on the Breakwater; The Sinking of Souls)
Aimee Parkison (Body of Evidence; Refrigerated Music For A Gleaming Woman; Girl Zoo, co-authored with Carol Guess)
Frances Peck (The Broken Places; Uncontrolled Flight)
Ed Perratore (The Knock from Nobody; Hindred Spirits; The Coven Tree; One Man’s Journey: A Walk Along the Croton Aqueduct Trail)
M. P. Powers (The Initiate; Hallucinogenic Dragonfly Intermezzo; Fortuna Berlin)
R
Scott R.S. Raphael (Spruce Road; A Little Slice; The Hill at the Top of the Mountain; Asher’s Palace)
Catherine Raven (Fox and I)
Jonaki Ray (Firefly Memories; Lessons in Bending)
Caroline Rebisz (A Mother’s Deceit; A Mother’s Loss; A Costly Affair; The Café at Kate’s)
Niles Reddick (Drifting Too Far From The Shore; If Not for You & Other Stories; Road Kill Art and Other Oddities; Reading the Coffee Grounds and Other Stories)
Ron Riekki (Blood / Not Blood Then the Gates: Poems; U.P.: a novel; We Look Down At The Body)
Heather Robinson (Wall of Stone; Juno’s Peacock)
Rod Carlos Rodriguez (A History of Echoes: Poems; Exploits of a Sun Poet; Cantos, Incandescent; Lucid Affairs; Native Instincts)
Jen Rouse (Riding with Anne Sexton; A Trickle of Bloom Becomes You)
Barry Ryerson (The Magic Circle; The Child of Fire and Earth)
S
Elizabeth St.John (The King’s Intelligencer: The Discovery of the Missing Princes in the Tower; The Lady of the Tower; The Godmother’s Secret; COUNTERPOINT: Barbara, Lady Villiers; COUNTERPOINT: Theo, Earl of Suffolk)
Greg Santos (Ghost Face; Blackbirds; The Emperor’s Sofa; Rabbit Punch!)
GJ Scobie (The Kill Chain: This is the Digital Dark Age)
Heidi Seaborn (tic tic tic; Marilyn: Essays & Poems; An Insomniac’s Slumber Party)
Andrew Sharp (The Guardian Of Magic, The Power Of A Connected)
Alex Shenstone (Elegies for People, Feelings, and Other Mortal Shit; The Deep: An Anthology of Dark Microfiction)
Kathryn Silver-Hajo (Wolfsong; Roots of the Banyan Tree)
Anne M. Smith-Nochasak (A Canoer of Shorelines; The Ice Widow: A Story of Love and Redemption; River Faces North; River Becomes Shadow)
C. Matthew Smith (Twentymile; Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir Vol. 3)
Nick Snape (Hostile Contact; Return Protocol; The Wrecking Squad; A Dragon of the Veil; A Queen In Blood)
Caleb Stephens (Feeders; The Wallpaper Man; The Girls in the Cabin; If Only a Heart)
Cheryl Skory Suma (Habitan: The Parallel Place; gods Playground: 201’s Account)
Daniel B. Summerhill (Mausoleum of Flowers; Divine, Divine, Divine)
Eleanor Swift-Hook (The Fugitive’s Sword: Lord’s Learning Book 1; The Soldier’s Stand; The Mercenary’s Blade (Lord’s Legacy Book 1); The Traitor’s Apprentice; The Devil’s Command; The Physician’s Fate; The Alchemist’s Plot; The Cavalier’s Oath)
Sam Szanto (If No One Speaks; Splashing Pink co-written with Annie Cowell)
T
Ann Christine Tabaka (Pondering the Shoreline of Existence; I No Longer Hear You Sing; Children Of The Storm)
Peter Topside (Preternatural: A Psychological Horror Book: Preternatural Evolution; Preternatural Reckoning; Last Meal: A Deliciously Paranormal Horror Story)
Manny Torres (Dead Dogs; Father Was A Rat King; Perras Malas; Cabrones Perros)
Rebecca Turkewitz (Here in the Night)
Mark Turnbull (Charles I’s Private Life; Prince Rupert of the Rhine)
S.S. Turner (The Connection Game; Secrets of a River Swimmer; Golden: A Novel)
V
John A. Vanek (Heart Murmurs: Poems; Deros: A Father Jake Austin Mystery; Absolution; Miracles; Bedeviled; Epiphany)
W
K. R. Wilson (Call Me Stan: A Tragedy in Three Millennia; An Idea About My Dead Uncle)
S. L. Wilton (Queen of Crows; Crows and Wyverns; On Orion’s Shoulder)
Y
Larry Yoke (Soul Pieces; Second Chances; Broke Girl: A Detective Gloria Ramos Novel)
John Reid Young (The Journalist; The Skipping Verger and Other Tales; A Shark in the Bath and Other Stories)
Z
Stephen Zimmerman (The Missing; The Holiday Killer)