I’m Cecil Fenn–a writer, designer, and former funeral professional. Originally from New York, I apprenticed in embalming before moving across the Atlantic and retraining in literature and theatre. I live in Brighton, now, with an enormous cat and a small vinyl collection, but my work still centers grief and the body.
The themes in my work are often dark, but centered around human connection. Whether literary or speculative, hopeful or horror, my writing explores anxieties around the body. In my stories, you’ll find the strangeness of embodiment in all its beauty and abjectness: death, illness, sex, physical connection, queerness, and the ways we can find meaning in a world we only experience through our limited senses.
The Restorative Artist
Haunted by the loss of his first love, an accomplished mortician pulls apart his relationships and his funeral home to escape the pain of grief — but who is he without the dead? My debut novel coming September 2026.
Station-Keeping
A young man goes on a quest. There is a burden he cannot put down. An editor's pick at Gavagai.
One Who Helps
An escaped thrall shelters from a cruel Norse winter in the home of an outcast healer. First appeared in Fiction on the Web.
Sideshow
A technoir novelette. Two couples from different worlds, both brought to their knees by the needs of their bodies. First appeared in Palisatrium's Short Story Substack.
House & Helvete
A horror story set in a record store closed by the influence of a cursed cassette tape. First appeared in The Dread Machine 3.3.
Holy Land
A young embalmer accompanies his photographer roommate to document Holy Land, USA in Waterbury, Connecticut. This short story appears in Scrawl Place & Canthius 12.
A Sacrifice
A minimalist dark fantasy TTRPG about dependence and betrayal.
Thought-Stone
Swallow your grief, eat a heart. A prose-poem in Fantômes Issue 1.
TRVE
A one-page zine about black metal, death, and transmasculinity.