Colin Dickey grew up in San Jose, California, a few miles from the Winchester Mystery House, the most haunted house in America. As a writer, speaker, and academic, he has made a career out of collecting unusual objects and hidden histories all over the country. He’s a regular contributor to the LA Review of Books and Lapham’s Quarterly and is the co-editor (with Joanna Ebenstein) of The Morbid Anatomy Anthology.
He is also a member of the Order of the Good Death, a collective of artists, writers, and death industry professionals interested in improving the Western world’s relationship with mortality. With a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Southern California, he is an associate professor of creative writing at National University.
Books in order of publication:
Failure! Experiments in Aesthetic and Social Practices (edited with Nicole Antebi and Robby Herbst) – 2007
Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius, stories of notable grave robberies, including Haydn and Beethoven – 2009
Afterlives of the Saints: Stories from the Ends of Faith – 2012
The Morbid Anatomy Anthology (co-edited with Joanna Ebenstein), a collection of works by “scholars, artists and writers working along the intersections of the history of anatomy and medicine, death and the macabre, religion and spectacle.” – 2014
Ghostland (2016)
The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession With the Unexplained – 2020
Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy – 2023
Oak Lawn Library Friends 