Vivian Shaw wears too many earrings and likes edged weapons and expensive ink. She was born in Kenya and has lived in Cardiff, Oxford, and Baltimore. She has a BA in art history, an MFA in creative writing and publishing arts, and works as a freelance editor and proofreader. She writes about monsters in and out of classic horror literature; machines, extant and fantastical; disasters and their causes; and found family. She is the author of the Dr. Greta Helsing contemporary fantasy trilogy. She reviews for the Washington Post, and her short sci-fi/horror fiction has appeared in Uncanny and Pseudopod.