Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco in 1916. She first received wide critical acclaim for her short story The Lottery, which was published in The New Yorker in 1948. She is the author of six novels, including The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, two works of nonfiction, Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons, and hundreds of short stories. She died in 1965.

Laurence Jackson Hyman (editor), the eldest child of Shirley Jackson and Stanley Edgar Hyman, has spent most of his professional life in publishing as a writer, photographer, editor, art director, and publisher. He is the author, editor, or co-editor of dozens of books and monographs, including two posthumous collections of Jackson’s stories: Just an Ordinary Day and Let Me Tell You.

Bernice M. Murphy (academic consultant) is an associate professor/lecturer in popular literature at the School of English, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. She edited the collection Shirley Jackson: Essays on the Literary Legacy and has written several articles and book chapters on Jackson’s writing. She is also an expert on American horror and Gothic narratives. Her current work in progress is a monograph entitled California Gothic.