Richard Laymon

Richard Laymon (1947–2001) was an American author of horror and suspense fiction, associated with the splatterpunk subgenre. Born in Chicago and raised in California, he studied English at Willamette University and Loyola University in Los Angeles, and worked as a teacher, librarian and editor before writing full time.

His first horror novel, The Cellar, appeared in 1980, and he went on to write more than thirty novels and some sixty short stories, along with a few young adult and Western titles. He served as president of the Horror Writers Association from 2000 and won a Bram Stoker Award posthumously for The Traveling Vampire Show.

He was more widely read in Europe than in the United States during his lifetime.