Hailed by Booklist as "one of the most clever and original talents in contemporary horror," Kealan Patrick Burke was born and raised in Ireland. Since then, he has written numerous novels, among them the popular southern gothic Kin, and over two hundred short stories and novellas, many of which are in various stages of development for film/TV. In 2005, Burke won the Bram Stoker Award for his coming-of-age novella The Turtle Boy, the first book in the acclaimed Timmy Quinn series.

More recently, he wrote the screenplays for Sour Candy (based on his novella), and the remake of the iconic horror film The Changeling (1980), for the original film's producer, Joel B. Michaels. He also adapted Sour Candy as a graphic novel for John Carpenter's Night Terrors.

He lives in Ohio with a Scooby Doo lookalike rescue named Red.