Gemma Files was born in England and raised in Toronto, Canada. She has been a film critic, teacher and screenwriter. She won the 1999 International Horror Guild Best Short Fiction award with her story "The Emperor's Old Bones," and the 2006 ChiZine/Leisure Books Short Story Contest with her story "Spectral Evidence." Her fiction has been published in two collections (Kissing Carrion and The Worm in Every Heart, both from Prime Books), and five of her stories were adapted into episodes of The Hunger, an anthology TV show produced by Ridley and Tony Scott's Scot Free Productions. She has also published two chapbooks of poetry, Bent Under Night (Sinnersphere Productions) and Dust Radio (Kelp Queen Press). In 2009, her story "each thing I show you is a piece of my death" (co-written with her husband Stephen J. Barringer) was featured in Clockwork Phoenix 2, from Norilana Books, while her short story "The Jacaranda Smile" appeared in Apparitions, edited by Michael Kelly, from Undertow Publications. Both "each thing" and "The Jacaranda Smile" were nominated for Shirley Jackson Awards in the novelette and short story categories. Her first novel, A Book of Tongues: Volume One of the Hexslinger Series, was released by ChiZine Publications in early 2010. It has since won a DarkScribe Magazine Black Quill award for "Best Small Press Chill" in both the Editor's and Readers' Choice categories, and been short-listed for the Bram Stoker Award in the Best Achievement in a First Novel category. Its sequel, A Rope of Thorns, will be released in May, 2011, and will be followed by a third book, A Tree of Bones. You can find out more about her at http://musicatmidnight-gfiles.blogspot.com.