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Marni Scofidio

Marni Scofidio, known as Marni Scofidio Griffin and currently Marni Scofidio, is an American-born ghost story writer, illustrator, animator and cartoonist.

She was born in San Francisco, California at Letterman Army Hospital at The Presidio. She was raised in Buffalo, N.Y., but returned to California when she was 20.

Personal Life

Scofidio is the great-times-eight granddaughter of John Alden, who arrived in Massachusetts in 1620 via Rotherhithe and Plymouth, England. She moved from Buffalo, NY to London, England in 1991 and became a British Citizen in 1998, giving her multiple citizenship. She also received her BA (Hons) Applied Arts from Coleg Menai, University of Wales in Ceramics. Since 1998 she has suffered with incapacitating ME/CFS which has curtailed her output and kept her largely confined to her home. She is married with one stepson.

Early Work

Her first ambition was to become an entertainer; early jobs included artist's model, actress and singer. She performed with Kevin Moore before he became Keb' Mo' and with Harold Payne, amongst others. In 1978 she also appeared in a San Francisco production of Let My People Come and with the Rocky Horror Picture Show tribute group Double Feature, aka Celluloid Jam, in the role of Frank N Furter (1978-81). The group was hired by San Francisco's The Strand Theatre to promote the film's midnight showing; it was one of the first to use props, spotlights, and scenery. Double Feature was written about in the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner and Bill Henkin's book The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Writing and Art

Scofidio's short fiction was originally published in the American small press, predominantly Mark McLaughlin's critically-acclaimed American magazine The Urbanite, then reprinted in anthologies such as Year's Best Fantasy & Horror and Best New Horror. Her short story 'Last Train to Arnos Grove' was nominated for a British Fantasy Society Award for Short Fiction in 1998. In 1997 the American writer Chet Williamson wrote of her work, '(She) has an inspired and unique way of looking at the world... her story touches both the brain and the heart, while still giving us that delicious frisson that is the pulse of every great ghost story... She is fully there in every word. She knows. And she can make us see.’ (Williamson)

Scofidio has also published cartoons, caricatures, and illustrations in magazines in the UK, Japan, and the USA. These included a cartoon strip, 'Men from Mars', which poked fun at the L.A. music scene through the adventures of a fictional heavy metal band called Rat Dü. She also made early animated films based on the work of Ralph Kidson whose cartoons are currently animated by Wildseed Studios, appearing on BBC3.

Because her work has not always been easily obtainable, in 2012 a collection of her best supernatural tales, Sometimes Dead, was published as a free ebook on Smashwords.com. Doctor Knife, a Frankenstein-themed novella set in Deptford Strand, south London, in the early 1990s, was inspired by her anger at an industry that causes some of its workers to be treated like slaves. It was accepted for publication in 1999 in The Urbanite (which finished before it could be published).

In August 1997 Scofidio's first novel, Knucklebones, a psychological thriller in both crime and horror genres, was published by PS Publishing.

Fiction

• 'Playing With', The Urbanite, 1992. Reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror Vol. 6, 1993.
• 'I Have Never Seen the Stars So Bright', The Urbanite, 1993.
• 'Cupboard Love', 'Sonnet IV: The Cat in the Dutch Cap Comes Back', The Urbanite, 1994.
• 'The Road To Hell', The Urbanite, 1994. Honourable Mention in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror.
• 'Death of the Party', Bloodsongs, 1994. Reprinted in
• ‘In the Bleak Mid-Winter, Long Ago’, The Urbanite, 1995. Honourable Mention in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror.
• 'Last Train To Arnos Grove', The Urbanite, 1996. Reprinted in Best New Horror, 1997.
• 'Under Elysium', The Urbanite, 1997.
• 'Outside the Gates', Midnight Never Comes (hardback anthology, Ash-Tree Press), 1997.
• ‘Imbroglio’, The Urbanite, 1997. Honourable Mention in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror. Reprinted under the title 'Little Wooden-head' in Cambrensis: Short Story Wales, 2004.
• 'The Swans', The Urbanite, 1998. Honourable Mention in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror.
• 'What the Young Don't Know', Sackcloth & Ashes, 1999.
• 'A Slap in the Face', The Urbanite, 1999.
• 'September Brings Another Change,', The Unruly Sun, 2000.
• 'What Must You Think of Us?', Roadworks, 2000 (collaboration with Mark McLaughlin).
• 'Opening Up', winner of Roadworks Short Story Competition, August 2000.
• Doctor Knife, a novella originally accepted by The Urbanite in 1999 but published on and distributed by Smashwords in 2012.
• Knucklebones, a crossover psychological thriller novel, published by PS Publishing in August 2017.

Collection

Sometimes Dead, published on and distributed by Smashwords in 2012

Contents:

• 'Playing With'
• 'I Have Never Seen the Stars So Bright'
• 'A Slap in the Face'
• 'Opening Up'
• 'Little Wooden-head'
• 'Outside the Gates'
• 'Last Train To Arnos Grove'

A new print edition of Sometimes Dead, with several extra stories (two previously unpublished) and one poem is due from Byddwch Gryf Be Strong Press.

Non-Fiction

• ‘'True Magicians”’: A Glimpse behind the Horror Scene in England', Scavenger's Newsletter, 1993. An interview with some of Britain's up-and-coming, original horror writers of the time, including Nicholas Royle, D.F. Lewis, Mark Morris, Gary Couzens, Paul Pinn, and Michael Marshall Smith.
• 'D.F. Lewis: The Wizard of Odd', Deathrealm, 1993.
• 'Ramsey Campbell: Grand Old Man of Horror', Deathrealm, 1995.
• '"Countless Little Miracles": A Time on Foula', Cambrensis: Short Story Wales, 2000.

Illustration

• 'Men from Mars', Music Connection, 1985.
• 'Rainbow Kidz' for the World Tribune, Nichiren Shoshu of America newspaper, 1988.
• Barnet Under-5s, illustrations for parents' guide for Barnet Libraries, 1997.
• 'E3: Beneath The Banner of Lions' was a collaboration in cartoon and verse with Mark McLaughlin. In it a futuristic Elizabeth I runs an advertising agency with bloodthirsty aplomb. Its first installment appeared in Trevor Denyer's Legends in 2001.

Karloff Blue Plaque

Reading an entry in The Penguin Encyclopaedia of Horror and the Supernatural mentioning that Boris Karloff was born in south London, Scofidio noticed there was nothing commemorating his birth or life. She wrote a letter to English Heritage who replied (2) and as a result, in 1998 a blue plaque was placed on the house in 36 Forest Hill Road, Dulwich, south London, England, where Karloff was born William Henry Pratt in 1887 (2) (q.v. Blue Plaques org). The ceremony was attended by Karloff's daughter Sarah-Jane as well as luminaries of stage and screen and descendants of the people who had worked for the actor.

References

Category:People from San Francisco Category:People from Buffalo, New York Category:Ghost story writers Category:American horror writers Category:American cartoonists Category:American caricaturists Category:People with chronic fatigue syndrome