The Restorative Artist

by Cecil Fenn

Embalmer Graham Creer has spent his life helping others face loss, but when he’s struck down by a corpse-carried illness, he is forced to confront his own mortality. Trapped convalescing in the apartment inside his funeral home, Graham is haunted by the dead resting in his basement mortuary and plagued by fevered visions of his recently deceased lover. Graham pulls apart his relationships, his funeral home, and his past in an attempt to escape the pain of grief, but who is he without the dead?

200 pages, Paperback

Expected publication September 17, 2026

About the author

Cecil Fenn is a writer, designer, and former funeral professional. Originally from New York, he apprenticed in embalming before moving across the Atlantic and retraining in theatre technology. Now, he lives in the UK with two cats and a small vinyl collection, but his work still centres grief and the body.

Cecil’s short fiction has appeared in Scrawl Place, Canthius, and The Dread Machine, among others, and has been shortlisted for the Aurora Prize. In 2019, he was a writer-in-residence at Islington Pride and the ruckus! archives. The Restorative Artist is his first novel.