About Us

Vivian Nosti —Co-Founder

Vivian Nosti is co-founder of The Capital Horror. She has worked in the space of Arts and Culture all her life in various capacities in film, fashion, set and costume design and as an Arts journalist for various magazines. 

Her love of Horror can be traced back to her childhood when her father would read the obituaries to the family over breakfast. At a young and impressionable age her sister introduced her to The Exorcist while she was attending a Catholic School, a seismic moment in her young life that sparked her fascination with the genre. Her influences in literature and film are far-reaching and diverse. From Sara Waters, Henry James, Shirley Jackson, Barbara Vine, Gabino Iglesias, Patricia Highsmith to the films of David Lynch, Nicholas Roeg, Ken Russell, Peter Greenaway, Rene Clement, Claude Chabrol, Ari Aster and her personal favorite, Alfred Hitchcock.  Vivian is also greatly influenced by the depiction of Horror in fine arts in the works of Hieronymus Bosch, Francisco Goya, Edvard Munch and Peter Paul Reubens, who all masterfully depicted horrific scenes in many of their works of art. 

Vivian’s view of horror comes from personal experiences in the world where she has been able to see the way that the human psyche can be twisted into many forms that morph into an outward manifestation. From the banality of evil to the actual horror of violence against others. Her fascination with all the dark, unseen, supernatural and mysterious has been with her since early childhood.  She believes that by understanding all these dark and mysterious corners that co-exist within ourselves and others can we better understand the human condition and the suffering from which all acts of violence and horror arise. 

 

John Mark King — Co-Founder

John Mark is a writer, educator, and co-founder of The Capitol Horror, a multi-armed creative collective devoted to the dark, the uncanny, and the beautifully grotesque.

A lifelong devotee of horror in all its forms, John Mark’s work draws on the surreal nightmares of David Lynch, the cold formalism of Stanley Kubrick, and the transgressive weirdness of 1980s horror cinema, but also from the literary worlds of Shirley Jackson, Grady Hendrix, Richard Laymon, and Mariana Enriquez. His fiction explores the fragile boundaries between body and mind, the hidden terrors of parenthood, and the strange comfort of decay.

Beyond horror, John Mark brings over 25 years of experience as an educator, program manager, and instructional designer. His career has spanned leadership roles in global education, curriculum design, and community-building, all of which now fuel his mission to make The Capitol Horror not just a brand, but a living, breathing community.

At The Capitol Horror, he leads initiatives including The Final Draft (a book and film club for readers and watchers of the strange), the quarterly literary journal The Bleeding Margin, and a forthcoming horror podcast. His ultimate vision is to build a space where emerging and established voices meet, where stories push beyond safe boundaries, and where an annual horror festival in Washington, D.C., becomes the beating heart of a new horror movement.

John Mark believes horror is at its best when it is unflinching, deeply human, and unafraid to reflect the anxieties and wounds we all carry. Through The Capitol Horror, he invites others to join him in the margins, where the real monsters live.