Dubbed the "reigning queen of Generation-X splatterpunks," by a contributor to Publishers Weekly, Poppy Z. Brite is the author of a clutch of horror novels and numerous short stories in anthologies and magazines. Brite is one of the "central figures of the 20th century's fin de siécle," according to an essayist in St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost, and Gothic Writers. "Her horror fiction attempts to test the limits that have never been tested before," the St. James essayist further commented, "despite the difficulty of discovering any such limits in an era when literary censorship is dead and buried." Brite has entertained, shocked, and titillated with titles such as Lost Souls, Drawing Blood, Exquisite Corpse, and The Lazarus Heart, pushing the bounds of the genre with tales of hyper-erotic vampires and gay serials killers. As Diana Price noted in Terror Tales, "Trying to pin one label...