Unhallowed Gifts: Uncanny Stories of Cursed Objects with Dan Coxon, Lucie McKnight Hardy & Robert Shearman

Lucie McKnight Hardy is the author of Water Shall Refuse Them, which was shortlisted for the Mslexia Novel Competition and longlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award and the short story collection, Dead Relatives. Lucie grew up in West Wales and is a Welsh speaker. She has also lived in Liverpool, Cardiff, Zurich and Bradford, and now lives in Hay-on-Wye. Night Babies is her new novel.

Image © Sarah Haile

Robert Shearman has written six short story collections, and between them they have won the World Fantasy Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Edge Hill Readers Prize, and four British Fantasy Awards. His horror stories are regularly collected in annual ‘best of’ anthologies in the UK and the US. He began his career in the theatre, and was resident dramatist at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter, and regular writer for Alan Ayckbourn at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough; his plays have won the Sunday Times Playwriting Award, the World Drama Trust Award, and the Guinness Award for Ingenuity in association with the Royal National Theatre. His most recent play, a radical reworking of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, is currently running for its second year at the Goteborgs Stadteater in Sweden. He has been resident writer at Edinburgh Napier University and senior visiting fellow at Lincoln University. Recent television work includes being script consultant on Constellation, for Apple TV. He is best known, though, for his work on Doctor Who, bringing back the Daleks for the BAFTA winning first series of the revival starring Christopher Eccleston in an episode shortlisted for the Hugo Award.

Dan Coxon has won a Shirley Jackson Award (Unquiet Guests), a World Fantasy Award (Heartwood: A Mythago Wood Anthology), a Saboteur Award (Being Dad) and two British Fantasy Awards (Writing the Uncanny and Writing the Future, both co-edited with Richard V. Hirst). He has been shortlisted for the British Fantasy Awards a total of nine times. His second short story collection, Come Sing for the Harrowing, was reissued by CLASH Books in April 2026, and the anthologies Unearthed (Titan Books) and Unhallowed Gifts (Dead Ink) will be released in autumn 2026.