Leigh (David) Blackmore (born 1959) is an Australian horror writer, critic, editor, occultist, musician and proponent of post-left anarchy. He was the Australian representative for the Horror Writers of America (1994–95) and served as the second President of the Australian Horror Writers Association (2010–2011). His work has been nominated six times for the Ditmar Award, twice for fiction (including Best Collected Work) and four times for the William Atheling Jr. Award for Criticism. He has been a Finalist in both the Poetry and Criticism categories of the Australian Shadows Awards. He has contributed entries to such encyclopedias as S. T. Joshi and Stefan J. Dziemianowicz (eds) Supernatural Literature of the World (Greenwood Press, 2005, 3 vols) and June Pulliam and Tony Fonseca (eds), Ghosts in Popular Culture and Legend (ABC-Clio, 2016).
According to The Melbourne University Press Encyclopedia of Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy, "His name is now synonymous with Australian horror," and a Hodder & Stoughton press release stated that, "Leigh Blackmore is to horror what Glenn A. Baker is to rock and roll." He has also been recognised as "one of the leading weird poets of our era",Review of Spores from Sharnoth and Other Madnesses, Dead Reckonings 4: 83 (Fall 2008) and has been nominated for the Science Fiction Poetry Association's Rhysling Award. His fiction has appeared in Australia, the US, the UK, France, Denmark and Sweden. Translations of his poetry have appeared in French, Italian and Spanish.
Early life (1959–1976) Leigh Blackmore was born in Sydney, New South Wales, the son of Rod and Beth (James) Blackmore. Education
He was educated at North Sydney Boys High School (1971–1972) and Newcastle Boys' High School (1972–1976). In high school, after reading the science fiction anthology series "Out of This World" (edited by Mably Owen and Amabel Williams-Ellis), he graduated to devouring the works of Ray Bradbury, Peter Saxon, H. Rider Haggard, Isaac Asimov, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Leslie Charteris, and became a keen enthusiast of sword and sorcery fiction as represented by Lin Carter's Flashing Swords anthologies and Thongor series novels, Edgar Rice Burroughs's Martian tales, Michael Moorcock's Elric sequence and others, and horror fiction (especially the Weird Tales school, including Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, Frank Belknap Long, Donald Wandrei and H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos), discovering their work via anthologies edited by August Derleth, Peter Haining, Karl Edward Wagner (the Year's Best Horror Stories series), and via publications of Arkham House which he special-ordered via Space Age Books (Melbourne), then Australia's only specialist supplier of science fiction and fantasy books."Space Age Closes". Locus (Jan 1986).
The Arcane Sciences Society; The Horror-Fantasy Society; Azathoth Productions
While at high school, Blackmore co-founded the Arcane Sciences SocietyBenjamin J. Szumskyj The Terror from Australis: An Interview with Leigh Blackmore. Australian Studies in Weird Fiction 1 (Equilibrium Books, 2008) and the Horror-Fantasy Society; the journal of the societies, CathuriaLeigh Blackmore, J. Michael Blaxland (see Young Einstein and Lindsay Walker, Cathuria: The Newsletter of the Arcane Sciences Society and the Horror-Fantasy Society, Nos 1–3 (Newcastle, NSW: Blackmore/Blaxland/Walker, 1975) (named after a place in Lovecraft's story "The White Ship"), was banned after three issues by Blackmore's high school principal for quoting in a review four-letter words used by the unleashed monster in Flesh Gordon. With high school friends Lindsay Walker and Michael Blaxland, Blackmore formed a small independent movie house called Azathoth Productions. The only film made was an uncompleted version of Clark Ashton Smith's story The Double Shadow, though Blackmore also penned a screenplay for Lovecraft's story The Music of Erich Zann (never shot). The screenplay appears in his 2024 collection Nightmare Logic. Blackmore and Walker collaborated on a Lovecraftian story called "The Horror in the Manuscript" for submission to Ramsey Campbell for his anthology New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, (Cthulhu Mythos anthology), which did not appear until 1980. The tale was not accepted (though it was also read by Brian Lumley) but Campbell praised the effort and encouraged Blackmore (and Walker) to keep on writing. (This tale finally saw print in Nightmare Logic (2024)).
Early writing, fandom and occultism
Having corresponded with writers and enthusiasts in the field such as Brian Lumley, Ramsey Campbell, Glenn Lord, W.H. Pugmire and Gregory Nicoll, he began (aged 13) to write fiction and speculative poetry in the vein of Lovecraft and C.A. Smith. Fictional juvenilia included "The Last Town" (a Lord Dunsany pastiche), "The Sacrifice" (based on an image of death from Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal), and an uncompleted sword-and-sorcery novel, Starbreaker (with Ashley Morris). Several of these juvenile tales were first printed in Charles Danny Lovecraft's fanzine Avatar in the 1990s.
Blackmore was a devotee of horror movies principally from the Hammer horror and Amicus Productions era. Samuel Beckett and William S. Burroughs became lasting literary influences at this time, the latter after his high-school English teacher lent him a copy of The Wild Boys (novel).
Early career and writing (1977–1990)
Blackmore showed early interest in unconventional art practice and anti-art after reading volumes on op art, pop art, and Sol LeWitt, whose work he homaged via a Mail Art network restricted to Australia (1977). His earliest in-print appearances, discounting some juvenilia published in his high school journal The Novocastrian (1976), included a Lovecraftian sonnet "Dream Landscape" and an attendance report on the Syncon 77 convention, published in Telmar (journal of the Macquarie University SF Association) 1, No 4 (1977), a zine issue also including fiction and art by Blackmore's later partner Margaret Curtis.
Beginning a 25-year career as a bookseller in 1978, he then worked in his spare time as an editorial assistant on The Australian Horror and Fantasy Magazine in the early 1980s; Blackmore went on to publish and co-edit its successor, Terror Australis magazine from 1987 to 1992.
In 1983, Blackmore met writer and poet (Danny) Charles Lovecraft through the letter column of Crypt of Cthulhu; Lovecraft would later found P'rea Press which published Blackmore's first poetry collection. He attended Syncon '83, a science fiction convention at which the Guests of Honour were Harlan Ellison and Van Ikin, and where he first met writer Terry Dowling. Blackmore learned the art of first edition book collecting through his association with fan, DUFF-winner and collector Keith Curtis. While attending Sydney University,(1983-84, where he majored in Semitic Studies), Blackmore came in contact with Don Boyd, then editor of (Australian) Futuristic Tales. Blackmore joined R. Alain Everts' 'Necronomicon' amateur press association, contributing several issues of his zines Red Viscous Madness, and Forbidden Dimensions, Nameless Dreams.
In 1984, Blackmore published bibliographies on Brian Lumley (Sydney: Dark Press) and H.P. Lovecraft (the latter in collaboration with S.T. Joshi)(West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press). He lent researcher Mike Ashley assistance with information for Frank H. Parnell's and Ashley's Monthly Terrors (Greenwood Press, 1985). Parnell, Frank H. and Mike Ashley (compilers). Monthly Terrors: An Index to the Weird Fantasy Magazines Published in the United States and Great Britain. London and Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985, p. (xi).
His first published story was "The Infestation", adapted for graphic form by Gavin O'Keefe and published in the fourth issue of Phantastique (1986), an Australian horror comic which attracted notoriety (questions were asked in Australian Federal Parliament) for being government-funded via an Arts Council grant while containing visceral images and story content.
His first publications outside of Australia included six Lovecraftian sonnets in R. Alain (Randy) Everts' magazine The Arkham Sampler (new series) 3, No 4 (1986) and another in Everts' Weird Tales tribute magazineEtchings and Odysseys No 10 (1987). Blackmore came to be a well-regarded Lovecraft scholar, carrying on correspondence with other Lovecraft fans in countries including USA, the UK, New Zealand, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Russia. He was a member of the early Esoteric Order of Dagon under Mollie Werba. (He rejoined the EOD around 2000 under S.T. Joshi, contributing continuous quarterly zines such as Mantichore (65 issues to late 2025). His EOD zine The Unreverberate Blackness of the Abyss began publication in Feb 2026.)
He worked as a bookseller in Sydney for 25 years (1979–2004), primarily managing specialist science fiction & fantasy departments within larger bookstores such as Dymocks 1995-2000 and Collins Superstore Broadway (2001-2004). Authors hosted by Blackmore for events and signings at Dymocks George St included Storm Constantine, Harlan Ellison, Terry Dowling, Richard Harland, Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Bill Congreve, Simon Brown, Kyla Ward, Robert Hood, Cat Sparks, and Bryce J. Stevens.
Music
Blackmore had classical piano training, but his formative musical influences were The Beatles, Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, David Bowie, Roxy Music, The Stooges, Genesis, Queen, Rick Wakeman, King Crimson, Television, XTC and such experimental bands as Henry Cow, Can and The Residents, along with Australian bands such as The Church, The Reels, The Models, Midnight Oil, MEO 245, Allniters, Outline and Voight 465. He had jammed with garage bands in his high school years in Newcastle, New South Wales including sessions at Newcastle Cathedral underground studio with Lindsay Walker (guitar), Paul Beal (drums) and Ashley Morris (bass).
On moving back to Sydney in 1977, Blackmore played synthesisers and drums (and occasionally sang) with Sydney New Wave band Worm Technology and other bands. From a mixture of influences including prog and experimental rock, pop and punk, Worm Technology evolved their unique sound while living together in an old schoolhouse in Rozelle in Sydney. Walker was a primary school friend of Blackmore's; meanwhile Walker had befriended guitarist and synth player (an early user of synthesisers, including the Steiner-Parker Synthacon) at high school.
Tiploid Grundy & the Rabid Slime Moulds One of their earliest recordings (1977) includes a reggae version of "Kookaburra", played strictly for laughs. A cassette-only album of punk-style acoustic and vocal originals, "If You Don't Care for Your Scalp You Get Rabies" (1977) (its title a line uttered by Terry Jones in the Monty Python episode "Mr Neutron"), performed by Blackmore, Walker and Smith, was released under the band name Tiploid Grundy and the Rabid Slime Moulds. "Boils" was a parody of then-fashionable punk music by Blackmore, with a riff possibly cribbed from Paul McCartney's song "Smile Away". Simultaneously, with Smith, Blackmore initially concentrated on composing electronic music using sequencers, including the Robert Fripp and Brian Eno-influenced "Music for Bookshops" (1979), and a concept-cycle, recorded on reel-to-reel tape, called "The Guardian", based on a collaborative fantasy story written by the duo. When John Gardner (bass) joined, the band also released some cassette-only recordings including The Loungeroom Tapes and The Christmas Tapes.
Worm Technology