Sumiko Saulson (ze/hir or they/them) is the author Bram Stoker Nominated and Elgin Nominated The Rat King: A Book of Dark Poetry (Dooky Zines, 2022) Happiness and Other Diseases (Mocha Memoirs Press 2022), and the Ladies of Horror Fiction Reader’s Choice Award-winning collection Within Me Without Me (Dooky Zines, 2022). An award-winning author of Afrosurrealist and multicultural horror and speculative poetry, and a comic zine maker. Winner of the HWA Scholarship from Hell (2016) BCC Voice "Reframing the Other" contest (2017), Mixy Award (2017), Afrosurrealist Writer Award (2018), HWA Diversity Grant (2020), LOHR Fiction Grant (2021), and the HWA Richard Laymon President’s Award (2021). They have an AA in English from Berkeley City College, write a column called "Writing While Black" for a national Black Newspaper, the San Francisco BayView is the host of the SOMA Leather & LGBT Cultural District's "Erotic Storytelling Hour," and teach courses at the Speculative Fiction Academy.