The Seers’ Table May 2025

May Seers’ Table, Kate Maruyama, Diverse Works Inclusion Committee   Geneve Flynn recommends:   Pauline Yates is the creative force behind the multi-award-winning science fiction novel, Memories Don’t Lie, recognized in awards including the 2024 BookFest Awards winner in three categories (YA – Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action Adventure; Sci-fi – Genetic Engineering), 2024 American Legacy Book Awards – Finalist (Science Fiction); 2023 Indies Today Awards – Semi-Finalist, among others. She’s also the author of the short horror read, Dream Job, the sci-fi/horror novella, Shattered, and the horror short story collection, The Connections We Keep. Her award-nominated short stories include “Blood Born”, Midnight Echo 18 (Aurealis Awards Best…

The Seers’ Table April 2025

Kate Maruyama Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Committee Linda Addison Recommends: Pedro Iniguez is a horror and science-fiction writer from Los Angeles, California. He is a Rhysling Award finalist and a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. His fiction and poetry has appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Never Wake: An Anthology of Dream Horror, Shadows Over Main Street Volume 3, Qualia Nous Vol. 2, A Night of Screams: Latino Horror Stories, Speculative Fiction for Dreamers, Worlds of Possibility, Infinite Constellations, Tiny Nightmares, Shortwave Magazine, Star*Line, Eye to the Telescope, Space and Time Magazine, and Savage Realms Monthly, among…

Women in Horror Month: Why Women in Horror Matter

  Horror has long been a genre of fear and power—one that reflects our deepest anxieties and dares to explore the unknown. Yet, for too long, the voices of women in horror have been overlooked, despite their undeniable influence in shaping the genre. Women in Horror Month is a time to celebrate these groundbreaking authors, editors, and creators who bring fresh, haunting perspectives to the page. From the gothic brilliance of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House to modern anthologies that center female terror and resilience, women have always been at the forefront of pushing horror’s boundaries. Here are…

Celebrate Women in Horror Month with These Spine-Chilling Anthologies!

    Celebrate Women in Horror Month with These Spine-Chilling Anthologies!  March is Women in Horror Month, a time to celebrate the darkly brilliant minds of female horror authors. If you're craving stories that will haunt your dreams and keep you turning the pages late into the night, check out these terrifying anthologies featuring horror’s most compelling voices: We Are Wolves – Edited by Gemma Amor, Laurel Hightower, and Cynthia Pelayo, this chilling collection showcases women’s horror fiction, with proceeds supporting charities for women. Not All Monsters – Curated by Sara Tantlinger, this anthology is packed with unforgettable horror stories written exclusively by…

Genesis – The First Black Horror Writers/Storytellers by Linda D. Addison

Horror —n: an overwhelming and painful feeling caused by something frightfully shocking, terrifying, or revolting; a shuddering fear.

Who were the first Black horror writers in a country that made enslaved Africans’ everyday life horrific? How did stories develop and what were their themes? I wanted to write this because of my own curiosity. I didn’t know where this was going to lead me but the more I dug the more I found. The yellow brick road of discovery took me away from the land of published authors to places unexpected.

Black Heritage in Horror Month: An Interview with Marc L. Abbott

What inspired you to start writing?

This is always a difficult question to answer because I have always loved writing. My imagination was always running wild and growing up, rather than paying attention to lessons in class, I was writing stories in the middle of my notebooks. I used to look forward to doing creative writing with spelling words in elementary school. But my inspiration for starting to take writing seriously was in high school. I had a teacher, Mr. Dolan, who was always encouraging me to tell my stories. One open school night he told my parents “Your son is a writer and is really good at it. You should help him nurture that talent because he can go far with it.” He was one of those teachers who always believed in what I could do. I had told my parents I wanted to be a writer, and they weren’t a hundred percent behind it as a profession with my father saying that I had to be good at the craft to make it. That was before Mr. Dolan told him this news. And until I heard Mr. Dolan say this, I thought about finding something else to pursue. But he confirmed that small belief I had in myself, and it inspired me to go forward with it.

Black Heritage in Horror Month 2025: An Interview with Jamal Hodge

What inspired you to start writing?

Pain, uncertainty, and hope. Honestly, I was a naive child, filled with joy at the thought of meeting another face. But when homelessness found my family in the South Bronx, I quickly learned that people weren’t always safe. Being exposed to ‘American history’ in school further revealed what it meant to be Black in this country, a trauma, in my view, that demands mental health support, like counseling, in schools. These harsh realities made me dream of a better world. I found that place within the pages of books, the ink of a pen, and the boundless depths of my own imagination.

The Seers’ Table February 2025

Linda D. Addison, Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Community   You can see any of The Seers’ Table posts since inception (March 2016) by going to the HWA main page and selecting the menu item “HWA Publications/Blogs/Seers’ Table.”   Geneve Flynn recommends: Author photo credit: Ayida Shonibar Ayida Shonibar (she/they) is an Indian-Bengali immigrant who grew up in Europe and currently works in North America. They write dark and wistful speculative fiction about misfits, monsters, mischief-makers. Spanning genres and age categories, Shonibar’s short stories, essays, and poetry have appeared in various publications. Their writing has been supported by a…

Something New, Something Old, Something Different: HWA Celebrating Black History Month 2025

The worldview of horror writers, editors, screenwriters, etc. population is a plethora of different groups. The definition of groups within a demographic is large and multi-faceted. One thing horror creators have in common is they want their work to generate a sense of fear or discomfort in the reader or viewer. This work is influenced by the experiences of the group in the world and their individual lives. Each creator’s work is flavored by the disturbing aspects of their life and the world around them. The HWA runs a monthly series each year highlighting horror writers and editors, etc. from different marginalized groups.

The Seers’ Table December 2024

  Kate Maruyama, Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Committee.   We have some rich reading in time to buy gifts for friends, dig in! You can see any of “The Seers’ Table” posts since inception (March 2016) by going to the HWA main page and selecting the menu item “HWA Publications / Blogs / Seers’ Table.” Linda D. Addison recommends: Ao-Hui Lin enjoys finding terror in the day-to-day of domestic life, particularly in motherhood, which is why she doesn’t want her children reading her fiction. The truth was frightening enough. When she’s not at her day job, writing AI…

The Seers’ Table November 2024

The Seers Table! November 3, 2024 by HWAWeb Linda B. Addison, Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Community You can see any of The Seers’ Table posts since inception (March 2016) by going to the HWA main page and selecting the menu item “HWA Publications / Blogs / Seers’ Table.” Tish Jackson recommends: Sami Ellis is a queer horror writer from the Carolinas with a message. Her debut novel, Dead Girls Walking, can be considered a slasher novel but encompasses themes of coming of age, bullying, and problematic family dynamics. The main character is on a mission to find out…

The Seers’ Table October 2024

Kate Maruyama, Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Community Spooky season is here with a wonderful variety of flavors of horror! Dig into stirring poetry, creep through some short stories, sample some body horror of a debut novelist, and enter a slow burn of a thriller horror just as it gets hot.   Linda Addison recommends: Screenshot Corey Niles was born and raised in the Rust Belt. His debut novel, Blood & Dirt, was released in August 2022. His poetry and short fiction have appeared in over twenty publications, including Nightmare Magazine, Ghost Orchid Press, and Lycan Valley Press. He…

Latinx Heritage in Horror Month 2024: An Interview with Iona Wayland

What inspired you to start writing?

To be honest, it was a group of alley cats. Even before I could write, I’d literally scribble and loopity-loop in a composition notebook about the cat families I saw outside from my window. The way I portrayed their stray lives was often like an anthropomorphized telenovela and I remember being frustrated when no one could read what I’d written.

Latinx Heritage in Horror Month 2024: An Interview with Ericca Chavez

What inspired you to start writing?

I was inspired to start writing because of the ghost stories I would hear as a kid, in particular, La Llorona; they sparked my imagination. I made up worlds in my mind and found myself lost in them—still am most days. Then one day, I decided to bring these worlds to life by actually putting them down on paper.

Latinx Heritage in Horror Month 2024: An Interview with Erick Mancilla

What inspired you to start writing?

For a long time, I wanted to be a comic book writer/creator. I wrote various stories in the comic book medium. Unfortunately, the search for an artist/collaborator was a difficult task. After quite some time of fruitless searches, I did some deep soul-searching and made the jump to writing genre fiction where I had no one but myself to rely on. It has turned out to be the best decision I could have ever made for my creativity.

Latinx Heritage in Horror Month 2024: An Interview with Victor H. Rodriguez

What inspired you to start writing?

It was a combination of two things: reading, and my day job. After I started working full-time, I developed the terrible habit of not reading anything longer than a magazine article. Then, per my mother’s recommendation – which is odd, considering how not into horror she is – I picked up The Books of Blood, short story collections by Clive Barker, those slim American paperback editions with the monstrous faces on them. The stories The Midnight Meat Train, The Forbidden, and In the Hills, the Cities tore a hole in my brain. I could barely believe people could write such things. I became a lifelong fan of his work. Meanwhile, my career took me in the direction of audio production for TV, movies, and video games. If you combine high-concept short-form story ideas and my fascination with sound, you get the lion’s share of my fiction.

Latinx Heritage in Horror Month 2024: An Interview with Valentina Cano Repetto

What inspired you to start writing?

I’ve always been a voracious reader, and I dabbled a bit in high school with a creative writing class, but I never really considered tackling anything substantial until I went through a bout of major depression that left me grasping for anything that could bring a bit of relief. Writing did that for me. I began with free writing, choosing a word at random and scribbling everything that came to my mind without stopping or correcting myself for five minutes. I’d then try to transform the themes I spilled on the page into poetry. It was purely therapeutic at first, but as I started filling notebooks, I began sending some poems out to a variety of journals and e-zines. Surprisingly, editors liked them. It all kind of spiraled from there.

Latinx Heritage in Horror Month 2024: An Interview with Monique Beasley

What inspired you to start writing?

What actually inspired me to start writing was my sister. She has two children’s books out. One is called, I’m Hungry but No Bugs, Please, and Hello, Pretty Cloud, both available on Amazon. She was trying to write her first horror book and asked for my help. I gave her advice and helped with the editing. She asked me why I had never tried to write a book myself. She knows how much I love to read. I couldn’t believe I’d never thought of trying this before. I was also about to undergo major surgery and would have weeks of recovery time. I used that time to start brainstorming plot ideas. I instantly fell in love with writing and have been making time for it ever since.

Latinx Heritage in Horror Month 2024: An Interview with P.A. Cornell

What inspired you to start writing?,/p>

My parents are avid readers, so they instilled that in me from an early age. We always had lots of books in the house, and they would often read to me. Trips to the public library were frequent, and something I very much enjoyed. By age five I asked where books and stories came from, and my mother explained that there were these people called “writers” who created stories in their imaginations and wrote them down for other people to read. I knew instantly that this was what I wanted to do with my life.

Latinx Heritage in Horror Month 2024: An Interview with Marjorie Eljach

What inspired you to start writing?

When I was 12, I became addicted to John Le Carré’s novels. At that age, I had read everything because at home my parents didn’t censor my reading. I read Flaubert, García Márquez, Zola, and Homer, terrifying stories about the Tower of London, and comics about Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Snoopy. And all this mishmash of heterogeneous readings added to Le Carré’s novels, created in me the need to write a spy novel that mixed suicidal women, walled-up children, incestuous relationships, and of course, a political crisis. I read it to my friends at school who didn’t pay much attention to me and I think the manuscript, which was in several ring-bound notebooks, was lost during a move.