Hollie Starling is a writer, folklorist and hobby taxidermist from the north east of England. After a graduate degree in English Literature from the University of York she worked in a series of public museums. She runs the page Folk Horror Magpie on Twitter and Instagram which seeks to collect ‘the trinkets and curios of the folk horror tradition.’ She became interested in mourning rituals and folklore customs around death and grief after she lost her father to suicide in 2020. This developed into her debut book The Bleeding Tree, a memoir and exploration of world folklore published by Rider Books in 2023. Hollie currently works in the libraries of a national museum. She lives in London with her husband and their magpies.