The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, volume 15

Glen Hirshberg lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife and children. He is the author of a novel, The Snowman’s Children, and a collection of ghost stories, The Two Sams, both published by Carroll & Graf in the United States.

His work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Dark Terrors 6, Trampoline: An Anthology and The Dark: New Ghost Stories, where “Dancing Men” made its original appearance. Both this story and The Two Sams received International Horror Guild Awards in 2004. He is currently completing a new novel and a second set of ghost stories.

“It’s gratifying and a relief to see ‘Dancing Men’ finding some sort of home for itself,” admits the author. “It took dozens of drafts and most of a year to complete, and remains an uncomfortable piece for me. I think I was so concerned with honouring the subject matter that I kept strangling the fiction.

“In terms of people lost, the Holocaust touched my family far less directly than it did so many millions of others. But it has been impossible not to notice the scars that event has left in people I love, the ongoing effects it has had on the way nations interact, the jagged holes it has ripped in language and cultural perspective and our mutual sense of what we can expect from each other.”