Leonardo J. Lamanna

Leonardo J. Lamanna is an Italian archaeologist with a deep love for dark speculative fiction and poetry. His work has appeared in Carnival of Horror (Undertaker Books) and in Horrific Scribes. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His stories are forthcoming in Of Beasts and Bones (Inky Bones Publishing, April 2026) and Stories to Take to Your Grave: Tattoo Edition (Undertaker Books, July 2026). Whether set in a pre-historic jungle, an urban labyrinth, or a post-apocalyptic future, his stories explore Homo sapiens’ fragile bond with life—and its inevitable end. When he’s not writing, he spends his time studying ancient, dusty bones, wandering through the woods, or chasing imaginary (or not?) monsters with his four-year-old son.

Leonardo J. Lamanna contributed the story “How to Build a Meat Radio” to Extremely Weird Splatter.

Lamanna’s answers to the “Extremely Weird Splatter Written in Authors’ Guts” interview questions are in group two.

“I study human remains marked by disease, trauma, malnutrition, and early mortality. It’s an archaeology of the body under stress, of flesh that records violence long after it’s gone. Across different periods, the patterns repeat: exploitation, coercion, suffering embedded in bone. Slavery, labor, power imposed on the body. These are not abstract ideas: they leave marks. That perspective shapes my writing.”

Other Works

Read Lamanna’s short story “The Flesh Factory” in Horrific Scribes September 2025.

Description: “The Flesh Factory” tells the story of a human subject imprisoned in a dystopian medical facility where his body is harvested and rebuilt for profit. Stripped of autonomy, he clings to a fragile hope of escape, confronting what it means to endure when existence itself has been reduced to a commodity.