A Point of Pride: Interview with Allison Church

Allison Church (a.k.a. DONALD ALLEN KIRCH) is a Transgender Author who lives in the Midwest of the United States. She is an avid lover of horror, science fiction, and fantasy and will challenge ANYONE on her knowledge of TV “pop” culture. A die-hard fan of “Star Trek,” “Babylon 5,” and “Doctor Who,” she does not believe in the “NO Win” scenario! She LOVES everything about the Paranormal! What inspired you to start writing? I have always LOVED the role of a Storyteller. The power to hold a person’s attention is a rare and wonderful thing in our times. However, with…

A Point of Pride: Interview with C.R. Langille

C.R. Langille spent many a Saturday afternoon watching monster movies with their mother. It wasn't long before they started crafting nightmares to share with their readers. They are a retired, disabled veteran with a deep love for weird and creepy tales. This prompted them to form Timber Ghost Press in January of 2021. They are an affiliate member of the Horror Writer's Association, a member of the League of Utah Writers, and they received their MFA: Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. https://biolinks.heropost.io/CRLangille What inspired you to start writing? When I was in the 6th grade, I picked up…

A Point of Pride: Interview with Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam

Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam’s fiction has appeared in over 90 publications such as LeVar Burton Reads and Popular Science, as well as in six languages. By night, she has been a finalist for the Nebula Award. By day, she works as a Narrative Designer writing romance games. Her first horror novella and short story collection will be published in 2022. What inspired you to start writing? The strong emotions I got from hearing stories as a kid. I loved fairy tales, horror stories, sad endings, and awe-inspiring descriptions—and when I figured out that I could inspire emotions in other people, I…

A Point of Pride: Interview with Katrina Monroe

Katrina Monroe is the author of They Drown Our Daughters. She lives in Minneapolis with her wife, kids, and a ghost named Eddie who haunts their bedroom closets. Photo Credit to Bert Jones Photography What inspired you to start writing? I’ve always written—short stories when I was a kid and angsty poems when I was a teenager—but it wasn’t until I became a young mom that I decided to pursue it as something more than just an outlet for big feelings. I was in an unhealthy relationship and needed to prove to myself that I was intelligent and capable—things my…

The Seers’ Table June 2022

Kate Maruyama, Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Community It’s time for Summer Reading, and we have some new authors for you to acquaint yourself with. What’s fun this month is there are links so that you can read pieces by Phoenix Alexander and K.M. Szpara directly. Save the links on your phone and read them wherever you’re traveling! Rob Costello introduces: Phoenix Alexander (he/him) is the Science Fiction Collections Librarian at the University of Liverpool, Special Collections and Archives. He manages the largest collection of catalogued science fiction in Europe, including the archive of the Science Fiction Foundation. He completed…

A Point of Pride: Interview with Marisca Pichette

Marisca Pichette is a bisexual author, writing about all kinds of monsters. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Fireside Magazine, PseudoPod, Apparition Lit, Grimdark Magazine, Uncharted Magazine, The NoSleep Podcast, Fusion Fragment, and PodCastle, among others. She lives in Western Massachusetts, collecting fragments. What inspired you to start writing? My main inspiration when I began writing was the beauty of language. I loved creating lush imagery, drawing on the natural world and books I was reading by long-dead white men. I didn’t realize at first how limited these stories were. As my writing developed, I began searching for the…

A Point of Pride: Interview with David Demchuk

I'm David Demchuk, author of The Bone Mother and RED X, and I would be happy to be interviewed as part of the HWA Pride Month LGBTQ+ author interviews. I live in Toronto, Canada and have been writing for print, stage, digital and other media for more than 40 years. My debut horror novel The Bone Mother, published in 2017, was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Amazon First Novel Award, the Toronto Book Award, the Kobzar Book Award and a Shirley Jackson Award in the Best Novel category. It won the 2018 Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian…
A Point of Pride Series

A Point of Pride Series

E.F. Schraeder is the author of the queer gothic novella Liar: Memoir of a Haunting (Omnium Gatherum, 2021), the queer monster tale As Fast as She Can (Sirens Call Publications, 2022), a story collection, and two poetry chapbooks. Recent work has appeared in Dancing in the Shadows: A Tribute to Anne Rice, What Remains, Lost Contact, Mystery Weekly Magazine, Strange Horizons, and other journals and anthologies. Schraeder’s nonfiction has appeared in Vastarien: A Literary Journal; Radical Teacher; the American Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom blog, and elsewhere. Current creative projects include a monster’s coming-of-age novella and a full-length manuscript of poems.…

HWA Mental Health Initiative

In June 2022, the Horror Writers Association launched its Mental Health Initiative, comprising, resources, and activities intended to promote positive mental health, foster the concept of hope, and challenge the stigma of mental illness in the horror genre. The initiative, run by the organisation’s Wellness Committee, is an ongoing programme of work. In the initiative’s first year a dedicated webpage for resources was established on the HWA website, and Of Horror and Hope, a downloadable anthology of poems, flash fiction, and personal reflections on mental health by HWA members was published. Ongoing activities include “Holistic Horrors”, a monthly column in…

Mental Health Initiative Charter

From the HWA Wellness Committee The aim of the Horror Writers Association’s Mental Health Initiative is to bring hope and promote inclusion for those who endure mental illness. The initiative wants to challenge a climate within the horror genre that has traditionally focused on poor and ill-informed representations of mental illness, and this is known to be a vehicle to perpetuate stigma in wider society. The Wellness Committee will focus on the following core elements when designing and developing its promotions and activities: To promote a positive image of mental illness/health To challenge and reduce the stigma associated with mental…

HWA MENTAL HEALTH INITIATIVE RESOURCES

This listing is non-exhaustible and will be updated regularly so that members have access to the most current materials as we gain access to them. For the purposes of this initial list, the contents are established resources readily available on the internet but condensed here for the purpose of ease. There will be an ongoing process of review and there are planned future additions of lived-experience reflections from members and recommended reading materials. NATIONAL HELPLINES/INFORMATION WEBSITES National helplines in territories where the HWA has a membership of 5 people or more. Those sites that feature any kind of paid service…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Usman T. Malik’s

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Usman T. Malik’s fiction has been published at Al-Jazeera, WIRED, Center for Science and Imagination (Arizona State University), in New Voices of Fantasy and several year’s best anthologies including The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy series. He has been nominated for the World Fantasy, Locus, and Eugie Foster awards, and has won the Bram Stoker and the British Fantasy awards. Usman’s debut book Midnight Doorways: Fables from Pakistan won the 2022 Crawford Award from the International Association for the Fantastic in Arts (IAFA) and was on Washington Post’s 2021 list of best new science fiction and fantasy collections.

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Doungjai Gam

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doungjai gam is the author of glass slipper dreams, shattered  and watch the whole goddamned thing burn. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in LampLight, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Wicked Haunted, The Dystopian States of America, among other places. She’s co-written stories with her partner, author Ed Kurtz, that have appeared in Lost Highways and The Bad Book.

gam—a Thai-Lao-Eastern European blend—was born in Thailand and currently resides in southern New England.

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with K.P. Kulski

K.P. Kulski is the author of Fairest Flesh, from Strangehouse Books and House of Pungsu, from Bizarro Pulp Press. Her short fiction has appeared in various publications including Fantasy Magazine, and anthologies, Not All Monsters, from Strangehouse Books and The Dead Inside, from Dark Dispatch. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii to a Korean mother and American-military father, she spent her youth wandering many places both inside and outside the United States. She’s a veteran of the U.S. Navy and Air Force and as a former history professor, she often draws inspiration from the stories of the past. Find her at garnetonwinter.com and on Twitter @garnetonwinter. What inspired you to…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Gabriela Lee

Gabriela Lee teaches creative writing and children's literature at the Department of English & Comparative Literature at the University of the Philippines. Her fiction has been published in the Philippines and abroad, most recently in the Bram Stoker Award-winning anthology, Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women (New Zealand, 2020). She received the 2019 PBBY-Salanga Grand Prize, which was published as the picture book Cely’s Crocodile: The Story and Art of Araceli Limcaco-Dans (Tahanan Books, 2020). She recently contributed the chapter "Digital Liminality and Identities in Philippine Young Adult Speculative Fiction" to Asian Children’s Literature and Film in a Global Age:…

The HWA Honors Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Horror Writers

Dear HWA Members and Horror Writing Community, May is Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in the United States. Over the past several weeks, as I have engaged in conversations with friends, colleagues, and even relatives (as I grew up in Hawaii from age 11 onward and have cousins who are Native Hawaiian) I have come to realize that I have inadvertently contributed to the erasure of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders by not explicitly including them in the call for Asian & Asian Diaspora horror writers this May. Pacific Islandera, Pacificer, Pasifika, or Pasefika are the…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Paul Loh

Paul Loh is a musician/actor/author. He has written around 100 songs. He has also appeared in several movies. He has written two novellas: 'The Nocent part 2: Advent of the Scathing' and 'The Greater Number' and edited a trilogy of horror anthologies of short horror stories called 'Possessions'. His story, 'Smart Phone' is in post-production to be made into a movie. He has a collection of his own short horror fiction out, called Solace In Solitude. A second collection of his stories called, Pockets Of Humanity will be out by the end of 2022. He is currently working on a…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Kiyomi Appleton Gaines

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Kiyomi Appleton Gaines is a writer of fairy tales and other fantastical things. She was a 2018 Contributing Editor at Enchanted Conversation, and contributor to Mad Scientist Journal 2019 Spring Quarterly. Her work has also appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, and The Grimm Reaper. Find more of her writing at a work of heart and follow her on Twitter @ThatKiyomi. Kiyomi is an Asian-American of Japanese descent. She lives in New Orleans with her husband, two marmalade cats, and a snake.

2021 Bram Stoker Awards® Winners

Denver, Colorado, May 16, 2021 The Horror Writers Association (HWA), the premier organization of writers and publishers of horror and dark fantasy, announces this year’s Bram Stoker Awards® winners at its first in-person ceremony during StokerCon™ at Denver, Colorado’s Curtis Hotel. “The Horror genre continues its amazing renaissance. We are truly in a golden period, with every category overflowing with tremendous works,” said John Palisano, HWA President. “The winners and finalists show a diverse group of amazing voices from new and veteran creators. Our HWA members and awards juries have shown dedication and objectivity to the selection process for outstanding…