Twice Cursed

Twice Cursed is a 2023 anthology edited by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane, with Neil Gaiman as one of the contributing authors alongside other established writers in the dark fiction and fantasy corner. The volume is a sequel to the earlier Cursed anthology that the same editors produced, and it brings together a range of original stories built around the central concept of curses, hexes, and the various supernatural and mundane forms of bad luck that the tradition of cursed objects, cursed places, and cursed people has produced.

Neil Gaiman has been involved in many anthologies and collections across his career, contributing to volumes built around themes that range from horror and fantasy to specific literary projects to charitable benefit collections. His participation in Twice Cursed brings his name and his audience to the volume, and his contribution would fit into his wider body of short fiction that has been collected across multiple personal volumes including Smoke and Mirrors, Fragile Things, and Trigger Warning. Gaiman’s short fiction tends to take ordinary moral and emotional situations and tilt them slightly toward the strange or the mythic, with the result being stories that feel both familiar and unsettling at the same time.

The other contributors to Twice Cursed include established writers across the dark fantasy, horror, and crossover literary corners. Sarah Pinborough, Joe Hill, Adam L.G. Nevill, A.K. Benedict, Christopher Golden, Tim Lebbon, Helen Grant, and others bring their distinctive voices to the central theme. The anthology format works well for this kind of material because the variety of voices captures the variety of ways the cursed concept can be developed, with each story functioning as a complete piece while contributing to the cumulative portrait of what the tradition can do.

Neil Gaiman has been one of the most influential contemporary writers across multiple media for more than three decades. His novels including American Gods, Coraline, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and Stardust have found enormous audiences. His comics work including The Sandman is foundational to the modern graphic novel medium. His short fiction collections have been consistently respected. And his involvement in anthology projects, charitable collections, and various other literary efforts has connected him to many corners of the wider literary world.

For longtime Gaiman fans, Twice Cursed is worth investigating both for his contribution and for the wider company he is keeping in the volume. For new readers, his solo collections are the better entry point to his short fiction. For dark fantasy and horror fans, the wider Twice Cursed roster brings together some of the strongest contemporary writers in those subgenres.