Paul Haines (fiction Writer)

Paul Haines (fiction Writer)

Paul Haines (8 June 1970 - 5 March 2012) was an award-winning New Zealand-born horror and speculative fiction writer. He lived in Melbourne, Australia with his wife and daughter.

Raised in Auckland, New Zealand, Haines moved to Australia in the 1990s after completing a university degree in Otago. He attended the inaugural Clarion South writers workshop in 2004 and is a member of the SuperNOVA writers group. Haines has had more than thirty short stories published in Australia, North America, and Greece. In 2007, he volunteered as a mentor for the Australian Horror Writers Association.

Haines has won the Australian Ditmar Award three times (Best New Talent in 2005, and Best novella/novelette for "The Last Days of Kali Yuga" (2005) and "The Devil in Mr Pussy (Or How I Found God Inside My Wife)" (2007)). He won the 2004 Aurealis Award (horror short story) for "The Last Days of Kali Yuga" and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2003 and 2004. Several of his short stories have received Honourable Mentions in the annual Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies, ed. Ellen Datlow, Gavin Grant, and Kelly Link (St. Martins).

Haines' first short story collection Doorways For The Dispossessed was published by Prime Books in 2006. It won the New Zealand 2008 Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Collection and was nominated for the 2007 Australian Ditmar for Best Collection.