Crawford, Gary W(illiam) 1953-

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CRAWFORD, Gary W(illiam) 1953-

PERSONAL: Born January 1, 1953, in Baton Rouge, LA; son of William H., Jr. (in insurance sales) and Betty (a bank officer; maiden name, Stutzman) Crawford. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: Louisiana State University, B.A., 1975; Mississippi State University, M.A., 1977. Politics: "Liberal Democrat." Religion: Roman Catholic.

ADDRESSES: Home—1701 Lobdell Ave., No. 32, Baton Rouge, LA 70806. Office—Gothic Press, 2272 Quail Oak Dr., Baton Rouge, LA 70808. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer. Gothic Press, Baton Rouge, LA, editor, 1979–.

MEMBER: Modern Language Association of America, Science Fiction Poetry Association.

WRITINGS:

(Compiler, with others) The 1980 Bibliography of Gothic Studies, Gothic Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1983.

Ramsey Campbell, Starmont House (Mercer Island, WA), 1988.

Poems of the Divided Self, Nashville House (Nashville, TN), 1992.

J. Sheridan Le Fanu: A Bio-Bibliography, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1995.

In Shadow Lands (poetry), Nashville House (Nashville, TN), 1998.

Gothic Fevers, Nashville House (Nashville, TN), 2000.

Robert Aickman: An Introduction, Gothic Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 2003.

Mysteries of Von Domarus (poetry), Forbidden Fruit, 2004.

The Shadow City, (poetry), Naked Snake Press (Pawleys Island, SC), 2005.

Editor of the periodicals Gothic, 1979–87, and Night Songs, 1991–97.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A critical study of Bruce Boston; an essay on the theme of death in Fritz Leiber's works; online bibliographies of Le Fanu, Fritz Leiber, and Ramsey Campbell.

SIDELIGHTS: Gary W. Crawford once told CA: "Most of my life has been devoted to Gothic literature. As a boy I was led to horror authors through the horror film. I read Bram Stoker's Dracula and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein at age eleven. When in college, I discovered the works of J. Sheridan Le Fanu. I began to write my own fiction and poetry in the horror vein when I was twenty-one. As a graduate student, I began a bibliography of Le Fanu and wrote my thesis on his work In a Glass Darkly.

"While I have written some fiction, most of my work has been poetry. I am basically a confessional horror poet, because I have drawn from my own experience of paranoid schizophrenia, the emergence of which precluded my working toward a doctoral degree. I have since founded and edited Gothic Press. David Punter has called Gothic fiction 'paranoic fiction,' and most of my poetry reflects this."

More recently Crawford commented: "I have always been fascinated with the reasons people have believed in the supernatural over the ages. While I have my own ideas about God and the supernatural, I maintain a distance from organized religion. My poetry, like the works of Le Fanu, questions the supernatural."