Tantra Bensko

Books

Tantra Bensko

Berkeley, California, USA

Website:  floatingonsecrets.com/about

Bestseller Status: Confirmed

Rosemary Bensko—writing as Tantra Bensko—has hundreds of flashes, short stories, novelettes, and a novella in journals such as Mad Hatters Review, The Journal of Experimental Fiction, Fiction International, The Fabulist and anthologies such as Women Writing the Weird I and II, Surreal South, Holdfast, Up, Do, Not Somewhere Else But Here, Looking Back, Writing Disorder 2, Redacted Stories, Quantum Genre on the Planet of the Arts, Cellar Door 111, No Site for the Saved, Cadavre Exquis, Ironic Fantastic 3, and Triangulation: Parch. She also has a over a hundred poems in journals and anthologies, such as Chatahoochie Review, Carolina Quarterly, Florida Review, Hawaii Review, and North of Wakulla.

She has several chapbooks, such as The Cabinet of What You Don’t See (ISMs Press) and short story collections, such as Lucid Membrane (Night Publishing). She has published other people’s work as well through a magazine and LucidPlay Publishing.

She has won awards for both her poetry and fiction, including Carolina Quarterly — the Academy of American Poets Award, Punkpen, The Iowa Journal of Literary Studies award, and the Oblongata Award from Medulla Review and two awards from Cezanne’s Carrot, and many more.

Her four psychological suspense novels have garnered many industry awards, all in large categories. The first, Glossolalia: Psychological Suspense, won the gold medal from Readers Favorite in Intrigue and also the gold award from Literary Titan. Floating on Secrets won a Silver medal from eLit for Romance for all major or small press. And Encore: A Contemporary Love Story of Hypnotic Abduction won the Bronze medal from eLit for Mystery/Thrillers/Suspense, and was listed as one of the dozen best thrillers of the year by BestThrillers, beating competitors Stephen King, John Grisham, and Dean Koontz.

Rosemary earned her MA from FSU and MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop, teaching both places and at Memphis State. She has taught for years through UCLA X Writing Program and her own academy online, and maintains a resource site about experimental writing.

She lives in Berkeley.