2024 FINAL FRAME Finalists Announced
2024 FINALISTS (in alphabetical order)
13th Night
Director: Benjamin Percy Writer: Benjamin Percy UNITED STATES / 2024 / 14:32 A father will do anything to save his daughter. Anything.
Posts bynaching, Author at Horror Writers Association - Page 2 of 7 [ 124 ]
Asian Heritage in Horror Month: An Interview with Mike Chen
What inspired you to start writing?
I’ve always just loved creating stories. When I was a child, I would draw my own comics based on things I was a fan of – mostly science fiction shows and movies (shoutout to anyone who remembers the anime epic Robotech). As I got older, I learned to refine this skill in prose, and the creative writing class I took at UC Davis during my senior year was transformational.
Asian Heritage in Horror Month: An Interview with Addie Tsai
What inspired you to start writing?
I’ve written poems since I was eight years old. In third grade, I won third place for a Mother’s Day contest. So, initially, I wrote poems for my mother and stepmother. But it wasn’t until I wrote a poem about childhood trauma for an English class assignment in high school that I connected to writing as a practice to make sense of the most troubling experiences I was facing.
Asian Heritage in Horror Month: An Interview with Scott J. Moses
What inspired you to start writing?
I’ve written for as long as I can remember, but the instance that made me want to take it seriously was in middle school. We were assigned the task of writing a fictional short story. Any genre, theme, etc. I spent five hours on it and experienced “flow state” for the first time. I read somewhere that whatever gets you there, in that state where the task at hand is all you can think about, where all else melts away for a while, should be something you take seriously. Something to give you purpose and a way to make sense of the world for yourself.
Asian Heritage in Horror Month: An Interview with Eliane Boey Sum
What inspired you to start writing?
I was always a reader and didn't take the chance on my own writing until quite recently. Once I got started, I was hooked on creating worlds--and imaginary friends--and I couldn't stop.
Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage in Horror Month: An Interview with Vanessa Lanang
What inspired you to start writing?
At a young age, I’ve always had a love for books—I was that kid who finished all their summer reading plus some. I even used to make my own books with several sheets of folded paper and a stapler. Over the years, I don’t think I’ve ever outgrown that love for storytelling.
Asian Heritage in Horror Month: An Introduction by Ai Jiang
What does it mean to be API/AANHPI?
I suppose I will take a more personal approach to this question, as it is definitely one that has persistently popped up throughout my life. For me, it has always been: what does it mean to be Asian, or more specifically in my case, Chinese? As a child, I was born and spent the early years of my life in China, and even after arriving in Canada,
Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage in Horror Month: An Interview with Victory Witherkeigh
What inspired you to start writing?
I had multiple ideas of what I wanted to be as a child. I said I wanted to be a doctor, an author, and a fashion designer, and sometimes a scientist or witch. But writing and journaling were always my safe place. So, when I could have enough financial cushion to attempt it, I allowed myself to take that risk.
Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage in Horror Month: An Interview with Barb Jones
What inspired you to start writing?
Growing up in Hawaii as both a Hawaiian and Filipino, storytelling was a part of my life on my father’s side. Because I loved to tell stories that would scare my classmates, my teacher challenged me to put my stories on paper and to keep up with that challenge, she would submit my stories to different contests that the newspapers and other outlets would have. I haven’t stopped writing since.
Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage in Horror Month: An Interview with Jason Tanamor
What inspired you to start writing?
I’ve always occupied my time with stories through various mediums like television or books. It was escapism for me. It wasn’t until I started watching the cartoon Super Friends that I began to imagine “what if?” type episodes. Like, what if Superman was flying during a solar eclipse? When the moon passes between the earth and the sun, would Superman lose his ability to fly during the obscuration since the yellow sun gives him his powers? What would that story look like? The inspiration comes from stories or narratives that don’t already exist.
Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage in Horror Month: An Interview with Sloane Leong
What inspired you to start writing?
I started writing stories before I started drawing. I remember the first time I wrote a story; I was 5 or 6 at a Sunday congregation meeting with my family. My mom told me to take notes on the sermon but I interpreted that as taking notes about whatever. I ended up writing a short story about dragons and angels having a picnic.
Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage in Horror Month: An Introduction by Naching T. Kassa
The first things that probably come to mind when reading the words, “Pacific Islander,” are hula dances, grass skirts, luaus, tiki huts, and coconuts. You probably don’t think of blood, death, or fear. But you probably should.
The Ninth Annual FINAL FRAME Horror Short Film Competition is proud to present our 2024 judges.
A veritable whirlwind of talent, the competition judges for Final Frame represent the same tenacity, perseverance, ingenuity, and passion we see reflected in our finalists’ films. We can’t wait to have them preside over an evening of frights and freak-outs leading up to their selections for Grand Prize, Runner-Up, Best Writing in a Short Film, and more!
NUTS & BOLTS: Interview With Ellen Datlow, Editor and Shaper of Multiple Genres
Over her long and influential career, editor and anthologist Ellen Datlow has played a major role in shaping not just the genre of horror, but fantasy and science fiction as well. During her pioneering stint as fiction editor at Omni magazine in the 1980s, she acquired and edited stories from writers including William Gibson, Octavia Butler, William Burroughs, and George R.R. Martin. Her Best Horror of the Year, on which she’s currently wrapping up the sixteenth volume, remains essential reading for anyone with a personal or professional interest in the genre. In this month’s edition of Nuts & Bolts, Ellen shares advice about the craft and business of short-story writing, geared especially toward beginning writers.
HWA SPECIALTY AWARD WINNERS ANNOUNCED
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Columbus, OH – The Horror Writers Association (HWA) is pleased to announce the recipients of its Specialty Awards. These will be presented on June 1st, 2024, during the Bram Stoker Awards® Presentation at StokerCon®2024 in San Diego, CA.
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD WINNERS ANNOUNCED
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Columbus, OH – The Horror Writers Association (HWA) is pleased to announce the recipients of its Lifetime Achievement Award. These will be presented on June 1st, 2024, during the Bram Stoker Awards® Presentation at StokerCon®2024 in San Diego, CA.
Lifetime Achievement Award The recipients of the HWA’s Lifetime Achievement Award for 2024 are:
Women in Horror Month 2024: An Interview with L.S. Johnson
What inspired you to start writing? I started reading at a very early age, and like many other writers, I was voracious. I was also a very introverted and anxious only child. Thus my earliest writing projects were fanfiction: taking scenes from my favorite books and rewriting them to include one of my characters as part of the group, as the love interest, as the hero. Of course, this was all before the internet, so it was a solitary exercise, just me and my notebooks, or just writing in my head at night. After a while, it became one of the ways I could get myself to sleep: imagining the words of a particularly immersive scene.
Going from the privacy of my mind to putting those words out in the world, however, was a much more fraught journey, tangled with working-class expectations, a poorly-timed MFA program, and years working in book production. It was only when I finally crashed from the stress of my publishing job that I started writing again, and all the years of reading and thinking about words (and missing those childhood stories) finally coalesced into a voice.
Women in Horror Month 2024: An Interview with Sarah Walker
What inspired you to start writing? Temporal lobe epilepsy inspired me to begin to write. I have temporal lobe epilepsy and the specific kind I have gives me constant anxiety. Things like heartbeat acceleration for no reason, shaking, memory disorders, and unwanted images in my head, (kind of like dreaming) and my favorite, not recognizing places or familiar faces that I should. It is not a pleasant feeling. It is distracting. It is also frightening. For a time, it ran me. I wasn’t able to do much other than get pummeled by my own bleeding brain. But then something magnificent happened. I learned early on that I could temper it if I did something creative. I discovered it was a ravenous electrical beast. It did not care what it did to me, it only wanted to be fed. It had no rhyme or reason. It was governed by things as hidden as the tide. When I accepted there was no cure, I started to understand that it would eat me unless I fed it. It needed to be occupied or it would turn on me. And writing or artwork seems to work best, plus it brings me joy like no other. I don’t understand it. But for some reason it all goes away as long as I do something creative, write, speak, paint. Things like that. As long as I feed it, I am let be.
What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it? I have always been attracted to dark imagery. I never was a ‘normal’ girl. I rode motorcycles and hiked around mountains and explored mines, and I remember feeling the breath of those mines and how it terrified me, but I remember how this kind of fear felt good. It silenced that real-world losing-my-mind fear that the stupid seizures caused. Growing up away from civilization I think also taught me to love horror. Anyone who has been out in those woods alone will begin to sense there are presences out there.
Women in Horror Month 2024: An Interview with Melissa Pleckham
What inspired you to start writing? Ever since I learned to read, writing has been a part of my life. As an only child, I often needed solitary ways to entertain and amuse myself, and I think writing gave me an outlet for my imagination that was easy to indulge in while alone in my bedroom. Instead of acting out scenarios with other kids via toys or games, I would write them down on paper. All of this is far less sad than it sounds, by the way — I still cherish my alone time!
What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it? I’ve always gravitated toward dark subject matter, even when I was very young. Part of this is because my parents would watch horror movies with me and tell me (allegedly…?) true ghost stories from their own childhoods, but I also think I have an innate inclination toward the macabre. I was officially hooked once I got my hands on all of the “gateway horror” titles a nascent ghoul could find at the typical Scholastic book fair in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s: Christopher Pike, RL Stine, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and the (incredibly underrated) Tales for the Midnight Hour series.
Nuts & Bolts: Career Planning for Writers – Interview with Author and Editor Jennifer Brozek
Congratulations, you’ve achieved your dream of becoming a professional writer. Now what? According to author and editor Jennifer Brozek, that’s a question many beginning writers neglect to ask, let alone formulate an answer to. In this month’s edition of Nuts & Bolts, Jennifer talks about how proper career planning can go a long way toward ensuring your long-term success as a publishing professional.
Q: What factors should you consider when you're thinking of writing as a career? A: Most writers don’t start off thinking about a career in writing. If they do, they think of it in academic terms — as in that is what they have gone to school for. Once a writer has been writing and submitting their work for a while, they should have an honest conversation with themselves on what they want out of their career. What is their mountain? What are they striving for?
