Florida-born New Yorker S. Craig Zahler worked for many years as a cinematographer and a catering chef, while playing heavy metal and creating some strange theater pieces. His debut western novel, A Congregation of Jackals, was nominated for both the Peacemaker and the Spur awards. He has gone on to become one of the leading voices in weird westerns, starting with the screenplay The Brigands of Rattleborge which garnered him a three-picture deal at Warner Brothers after topping the prestigious Black List. His second brutal western novel, Wraiths of the Broken Land, will be a major motion picture from 20th Century Fox directed by Ridley Scott.
In addition to being the award-winning director and writer of Bone Tomahawk and the forthcoming Brawl in Cell Block 99, Zahler is also the writer of Puppet Master: The Little Reich and Asylum Blackout. His crime thriller Mean Business On North Ganson Street and cyberpunk novel Corpus Chrome, Inc. have garnered critical acclaim as well.
Zahler studies kung-fu and is a longtime fan of animation (hand drawn and stop-motion), heavy metal (all types), soul music, genre books (especially, horror, crime and hard sci-fi), old movies, obese cats and asymmetrical robots.