Nick Mamatas - Biography

Biography

Nick Mamatas was born on Long Island, New York and attended the State University of New York at Stony Brook and New School University. He is also a graduate of the MFA program in creative and professional writing at Western Connecticut State University, which he attended only after publishing a number of books, short stories, and articles. During his early writing career he wrote not just non-fiction, but also worked as a ghostwriter for college students needing term papers, an experience he later described in an essay called "The Term Paper Artist". His non-fiction work has appeared in Razor Magazine, The Village Voice, and various Disinformation Books and BenBella Books' Smart Pop Books anthologies.

His first published fiction book was the 2001 novella Northern Gothic (Soft Skull), which was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Long Fiction in 2002. In 2007, a signed/limited hardcover edition, illustrated and with a slipcase, was published in German by Edition Phantasia.

His first full-length novel, Move Under Ground (Night Shade Books, 2004/Prime Books, 2006), combined the Beat style of Jack Kerouac with the cosmic horror of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. This novel was nominated for both the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel and the International Horror Guild Award for Best First Novel in 2005, and made the Locus Magazine Recommended Reading List for books published in 2004.

In 2006, Move Under Ground was one of the first books to be published in paperback by the German publisher Edition Phantasia. In early 2007 he decided to distribute it online for free under a Creative Commons license.

His science fiction satire Under My Roof (Soft Skull, 2007) has been published in both Germany and Italy in addition to its American publication. The German edition was nominated for the Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis for science fiction originally published in a foreign language. It came in last place in the voting.

In August 2006, Mamatas was named co-fiction editor of Clarkesworld Magazine. In August 2008, he left Clarkesworld and began working for Viz Media to edit Haikasoru, the firm's line of Japanese science fiction, fantasy, and horror in translation. Clarkesworld's 2008 issues earned it a nomination for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine. Mamatas, along with editor Sean Wallace and publisher Neil Clarke, were named as the magazine's principals. The three were also nominated for the World Fantasy award for Clarkesworld in the nonprofessional special award category, also for the 2008 issues. Three years after leaving Clarkesworld, Mamatas was nominated for the Hugo award in the category of Best Editor, Long Form in 2010, for his work with the Haikasoru imprint of Viz Media.

Mamatas edited the posthumous collection of short fiction, Queen of the Country, by dark fantasist D. G. K. Goldberg in 2008.

A collection of short fiction, You Might Sleep..., including a new novella, was published in March 2009.

"The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft," written by Mamatas and Tim Pratt, was nominated for the Stoker award for achievement in Short Fiction in March 2009.

Mamatas co-edited the original horror anthology Haunted Legends with Ellen Datlow in 2010; the book won the Black Quill Award in the anthology category, won the 2010 Bram Stoker Award for Best Anthology, and was nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award.

His third novel, Sensation, was published in May 2011 by PM Press, and in July a collaboration with Brian Keene, The Damned Highway, was released. The Damned Highway is similar in vein to Move Under Ground, but instead of Jack Kerouac and his beat style, it is done with Hunter S. Thompson (here referred to as Uncle Lono, a reference to The Curse of Lono) in his famous gonzo journalism style.

Starve Better,a short how-to guide made up primarily of reprinted blog posts and essays from magazines such as The Smart Set and The Writer was published in 2011, and nominated for the Bram Stoker Award in the category of Achievement in Non-Fiction.