Zealia B. (Zealia Brown) Bishop

Born in 1897, Zealia Brown-Reed Bishop was an American writer of short stories whose name is also sometimes given as Zelia Bishop. While she wrote mainly romantic fiction, she is most often remembered now for three horror stories associated with H. P. Lovecraft.

Those tales — including The Curse of Yig, Medusa’s Coil, and The Mound — became the center of her literary reputation. Accounts of her career note that Lovecraft revised her work very heavily, and in some cases readers and scholars have viewed the collaboration as close to ghostwriting.

Even so, Bishop remains an interesting figure in pulp-era fiction: a writer whose name sits at the crossroads of romance magazines, Weird Tales, and the lasting fascination surrounding Lovecraft’s circle. She died in 1968, but her stories continue to be reprinted and discussed by horror readers.