Paul Haines

Paul Haines (8 June 1970 – 5 March 2012) was a New Zealand-born horror and speculative fiction writer.

He lived in Melbourne with his wife and daughter.

Raised in Auckland, New Zealand, Haines moved to Australia in the 1990s after completing a university degree in Otago, where he became an Information Technology consultant.

He attended the inaugural Clarion South writers workshop in 2004 and was a member of the SuperNOVA writers group.

Haines had more than thirty short stories published in Australia, North America, and Greece.

He won the 2004 Aurealis Award (horror short story) for "The Last Days of Kali Yuga" and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2003 and 2004.

Several of his short stories received Honourable Mentions in the annual Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies, ed.

Ellen Datlow, Gavin Grant, and Kelly Link (St. Martins).

Haines won the Australian Ditmar Award three times (Best New Talent in 2005, and Best novella/novelette for "The Last Days of Kali Yuga" (2005) and "The Devil in Mr Pussy (Or How I Found God Inside My Wife)" (2007)).

Haines' first short story collection Doorways for the Dispossessed was published by Prime Books in 2006.

In 2007, he volunteered as a mentor for the Australian Horror Writers Association.

In 2007 Haines was diagnosed with cancer.

It won the New Zealand 2008 Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Collection and was nominated for the 2007 Australian Ditmar for Best Collection.

The anthology Scary Food: A Compendium of Gastronomic Atrocity (ed. Cat Sparks, Agog! Press, 2008) was put together as part of a donation drive to raise funds to partially cover the cost of Haines' medical treatment.

Authors represented include Kaaron Warren, Margo Lanagan, Robert Hood, Richard Harland, Paul Haines, Terry Dowling, Stephen Dedman, Deborah Biancotti, Lee Battersby, Lucy Sussex, Gillian Polack, Lourdes Ndaira and Anna Tambour.

Haines died in March 2012.

He was influenced by Iain Banks, Clive Barker, James Herbert, Stephen King, George R. R. Martin, Robert Silverberg, Peter Straub, and Irvine Welsh.

In praise of Haines' writing, Simon Petrie wrote "The danger of reading Haines’ stories in this vein is that the reader can come perilously close to accepting cannibalism, sexual sadism, or any of a myriad other vices as representing innately reasonable behaviour – because, in the context of Haines’ stories, this is very much the category such activity falls into. If iniquity needs a poster child (and I'm not sure, in this day and age, that it does), then the protagonist in stories such as “Slice of Life” will do just nicely, thank you."

R.J. Burgess wrote "Take a slab of Hunter S. Thompson, add some Philip K. Dick, and throw them into a blender for a while. Add a little dash of Brother's Grimm and a spoonful of American Psycho and what do you end up with? In all honesty, probably a great galumphing mess, but if anyone could come close to making such a bizarre union of styles and genres work then it's this man—Paul Haines—a young, up-and-coming author from down under."

Tim Lieder writes that Paul Haines parodied both Disney cartoons and desperate living stories, comparing him favorably to Hubert Selby Jr.. and William Kennedy.

Paul Haines, 41, died on March 5, 2012, in Melbourne, Australia of cancer.

He was survived by his wife and daughter.