Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Horror: Interview with Michael R. Collings

Michael R. Collings, named Grand Master by the 2016 World Horror Conference, is an educator, literary scholar and critic, poet, novelist, essayist, columnist, reviewer, and editor whose work over three decades—more than one hundred published books and chapbooks, along with thousands of chapters, essays, reviews, and poems—has concentrated on science fiction, fantasy, and horror, emphasizing the works of Stephen King, Orson Scott Card, C.S. Lewis, and others. His books for Starmont House, beginning in 1984, were among the earliest serious scholarly appraisals of King. His 1990 study of Card was the first book-length exploration of Card's fictions. His wide-ranging publications…

Introduction to the Deaf/Hard of Hearing Horror Author Interview Series by Christopher Jon Heuer

Christopher Jon Heuer is the author of Bug: Deaf Identity and Internal Revolution as well as All Your Parts Intact: Poems.  He is the editor of Tripping the Tale Fantastic: Weird Fiction by Deaf and Hard of Hearing Writers.  He is a professor of English at Gallaudet University in Washington DC. Is Deaf Horror fiction a genre or a sub-subgenre? There is no misspelling above.  I’m inventing a new term for a weird situation.  When we label something a genre, such as Horror Science Fiction, or Fantasy, we are saying “This is what it is.  This is its definition.”  Horror…

Women in Horror: Interview with Tina Pavlik

Tina Pavlik is a lifelong fan of horror and working on her first book series in the genre. She publishes dark fantasy and erotica in another life for Red Sage Publishing and Changeling Press. Her horror stories sometimes draw on her experiences as a historian, tour guide, and paranormal investigator of one of the most haunted locations in the U.S. She currently works in extras casting in television and film on projects like Amazon’s upcoming show The Peripheral and HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones. As an extra, she worked on Cinemax’s Banshee and Robert Kirkman’s Outcast and on films like Masterminds,…

Women in Horror: Interview with Emma J. Gibbon

Emma J. Gibbon is originally from Yorkshire in the U.K. and now lives in Midcoast Maine. She is an award-winning horror writer, Rhysling-nominated speculative poet, and librarian. Her debut fiction collection, Dark Blood Comes from the Feet, from Trepidatio Publishing, was one of NPR’s best books of 2020 and won the Maine Literary Book Award for Speculative Fiction. Her stories have appeared in The Dark Tome and Toasted Cake podcasts, and the anthologies, The Muse & The Flame, Wicked Haunted, Wicked Weird and is upcoming in 13 Haunted Houses. Her poetry has been published in the HWA Poetry Showcase Volume VIII, Strange Horizons, Liminality, Pedestal Magazine,…

Women in Horror: Interview with Christina Sng

Christina Sng is the two-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of A Collection of Dreamscapes (2020) and A Collection of Nightmares (2017). Her poetry, fiction, essays, and art have appeared in numerous venues worldwide, including Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Interstellar Flight Magazine, Penumbric, Southwest Review, and The Washington Post. Christina’s most recent title, Tortured Willows: Bent. Bowed. Unbroken (2021), is the Bram Stoker nominated collaborative poetry collection with Lee Murray, Angela Yuriko Smith, and Geneve Flynn. Visit her at christinasng.com and connect @christinasng. What inspired you to start writing? It feels like I’ve always been writing. I always had a pen and…

Women in Horror: Interview with Cindy O’Quinn

Cindy O’Quinn is a four-time Bram Stoker Award-nominated writer. Author of “Lydia”, from the Shirley Jackson Award-winning anthology: The Twisted Book of Shadows,  “The Thing I Found Along a Dirt Patch Road”, “A Gathering on the Mountain”, and “One and Done”. She is an Appalachian writer from the mountains of West Virginia. Steeped in folklore at an early age. Cindy now lives in the woods of northern Maine, on the old Tessier Homestead, which makes the ideal backdrop for writing her dark stories and poetry. Her work has been published or forthcoming in The Bad Book, HWA Poetry Showcase Vol…

Women in Horror: Interview for Jennifer McMahon

Jennifer McMahon is the New York Times bestselling author of eleven novels, including Promise Not to Tell and The Winter People. Her latest, The Children on the Hill, will be out in April. She lives in Vermont with her partner, Drea, and their daughter, Zella. What inspired you to start writing? I wrote my first short story in third grade, “The Haunted Meatball.” I still remember that rush I got when I realized I could sit down and create a world on paper where anything could happen – even a little boy being chased through the woods by a glowing meatball. I was hooked. I have been…

Women in Horror: Interview with Becky Spratford

Becky Spratford trains library staff all over the world on how to match books with readers through the local public library. She writes book reviews for Booklist and a horror review column for Library Journal. Known for her work with horror readers, Becky is the author of three books, most recently, The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Horror, Third Edition [ALA Editions, 2021]. She is a proud member of the Horror Writers Association and currently serves as the Association’s Secretary and organizer of their annual Librarians’ Day. You can follow Becky on Twitter @RAforAll. What inspired you to start writing? As long as I can remember…

Women in Horror: Interview with EV Knight

EV Knight is the author of the Bram Stoker Award-winning debut novel The Fourth Whore. She released her sophomore novel Children of Demeter as well as a novella, Partum in 2021. EV lives in one of America’s most haunted cities—Savannah, Ga. She is a huge fan of the Savannah Bananas and the beauty of Bonaventure Cemetery. When not out and about searching for the ghosts of the past, EV can be found at home with her husband Matt, her beloved Chinese Crested Gozer Augustus, and their three naughty sphynx cats. What inspired you to start writing? I found horror as…

Women in Horror: Interview with Geneve Flynn

Geneve Flynn is an award-winning fiction editor and author. Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women, which she co-edited with Lee Murray, won the 2020 Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson awards and shortlisted for the British Fantasy, Aurealis, and Australian Shadows awards. Geneve’s short stories have been published in various markets, including Flame Tree Publishing, PseudoPod, Crystal Lake Publishing & Black Spot Books, and Things in the Well. Her poetry appears in Tortured Willows: Bent, Bowed, Unbroken, a Bram Stoker Award-nominated collaboration with Christina Sng, Angela Yuriko Smith, and Lee Murray, and she has been nominated for both the Rhysling and…

Women in Horror: Interview with Jessica McHugh

Jessica McHugh is a novelist, poet, and internationally-produced playwright running amok in the fields of horror, sci-fi, young adult, and wherever else her peculiar mind leads. She's had twenty-five books published in thirteen years, including her bizarro romp, "The Green Kangaroos," her YA series, "The Darla Decker Diaries," and her Bram Stoker Award-Nominated blackout poetry collection, "A Complex Accident of Life." For more info about publications and blackout poetry commissions, please visit McHughniverse.com. Strange Nests at Apokrupha: https://apokrupha.com/product/strange-nests/ Strange Nests ebook/print at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Nests-Jessica-McHugh-ebook/dp/B09BBKQZSH IG/Twitter/TikTok: theJessMcHugh What inspired you to start writing? Reading! As a voracious reader of pretty much every genre since I…

Women in Horror: Interview with Gwendolyn Kiste

Gwendolyn Kiste is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens, Reluctant Immortals, Boneset & Feathers, And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe, Pretty Marys All in a Row, and The Invention of Ghosts. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Vastarien, Tor's Nightfire, Black Static, The Dark, Daily Science Fiction, Interzone, and LampLight, among others. Originally from Ohio, she now resides on an abandoned horse farm outside of Pittsburgh with her husband, two cats, and not nearly enough ghosts. Find her online at gwendolynkiste.com What inspired you to start writing? It feels like I’ve always been writing. I’ve been telling stories in…

Women in Horror: Interview with Brianna Malotke

Brianna Malotke is a freelance writer and member of the Horror Writers Association. Some of her most recent work can be found online at The Crypt, Witch House Amateur Magazine, and Sirens Call Publications. She has poetry in The Spectre Review and The Nottingham Horror Collective. She has work in the anthologies Beneath, Cosmos, The Deep, Beautiful Tragedies 2, and The Dire Circle. In April 2022 her poetry was included in the Women in Horror Poetry Showcase, Under Her Skin, published by Black Spot Books. In 2023 she will be a “Writer in Residence” at the Chateau d’Orquevaux in France. What inspired you to start writing? I had a wild childhood imagination and…

Women in Horror: Interview with Linda D. Addison

Linda D. Addison, the author of five award-winning collections, including The Place of Broken Things written with Alessandro Manzetti, & How To Recognize A Demon Has Become Your Friend, recipient of the HWA Lifetime Achievement Award and SFPA Grand Master of Fantastic Poetry. Her site:  www.LindaAddisonWriter.com. What inspired you to start writing? From the first time that I saw a book and realized it was a story that someone made up I knew I wanted to do the same thing. I had an active imagination and all my daydreaming involved things that weren't quite real: things with wings that weren't birds,…

Women in Horror: Interview with Bridget Nelson

Once an operating room registered nurse, Bridgett Nelson so enjoyed playing with human organs, she decided to turn her macabre interest into a horror writing career. She loves bubble baths (because nothing says spooooky writer like orange-scented bubbles), hates not knowing what’s swimming in the water with her, lives for Halloween season (but loathes chainsaw-wielding dudes in haunted houses), adores her West Virginia University Mountaineers, is very pro-Oxford comma, and thinks bananas are absolutely disgusting. Bridgett has contributed to multiple anthologies and her debut collection, A BOUQUET OF VISCERA, is coming soon! More tidbits! Bridgett is a(n)… HWA: WV Chapter…

Women in Horror: Interview with Candice Nola

Candace Nola is a Pittsburgh author with 3 published novels currently on Amazon. Breach was her debut novel, published in November 2019, followed by Beyond the Breach, published December 22, 2020. Her third novel, Hank Flynn, was published in July of 2021.  She also had a short story published in the Secondhand Creeps anthology in May of 2021, that she co-authored with Sam Hill of the U.K. She is a new member of the Horror Authors Guild and recently joined The House of Stitched magazine as an editor and writer. She began her horror website in January of 2020 to…

Women in Horror: Interview with Mercedes M. Yardley

Mercedes M. Yardley is a dark fantasist who wears red lipstick and poisonous flowers in her hair. She is the author of Beautiful Sorrows, the Stabby Award-winning Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love, Pretty Little Dead Girls, and Nameless. She won the Bram Stoker Award for her story Little Dead Red and was a Bram Stoker Award nominee for her short story “Loving You Darkly” and the Arterial Bloom anthology. Mercedes lives and works in Las Vegas with her family and strange menagerie. You can find her at mercedesmyardley.com. What inspired you to start writing? I always wrote, but I needed to give myself permission to…

Women in Horror: Interview with Cynthia Pelayo

Cynthia “Cina” Pelayo is an International Latino Book Award-winning and two-time Bram Stoker Awards® nominated poet and author. She is the author of LOTERIA, SANTA MUERTE, THE MISSING, and POEMS OF MY NIGHT, all of which have been nominated for International Latino Book Awards. POEMS OF MY NIGHT was also nominated for an Elgin Award. Her recent collection of poetry, INTO THE FOREST AND ALL THE WAY THROUGH explores true crime, that of the epidemic of missing and murdered women in the United States, and was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award and Elgin Award. Her modern-day horror retelling of…

Women in Horror: Interview with Ellen Datlow

Ellen Datlow has been editing sf/f/h short fiction for four decades. She was fiction editor of OMNI Magazine and SCIFICTION and currently acquires short stories and novellas for Tor.com and Nightfire. She has edited numerous anthologies for adults, young adults, and children, including The Best Horror of the Year annual series, Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories, Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles. Forthcoming are When Things Get Dark: Stories inspired by Shirley Jackson and the reprint anthology Body Shocks. Her next original anthology is Screams From the Dark: 19 Tales of Monsters and the…

Women in Horror: Interview with Rhonda Jackson Garcia

Rhonda Jackson Garcia, AKA RJ Joseph, is a Stoker Award™ nominated, Texas based academic and creative writer/professor whose writing regularly focuses on the intersections of gender and race in the horror and romance genres and popular culture. She has had works published in various applauded venues, including the 2020 Halloween issue of Southwest Review and The Streaming of Hill House: Essays on the Haunting Netflix Series. Rhonda is also an instructor at the Speculative Fiction academy. She occasionally peeks out on Twitter @rjacksonjoseph or at www.rhondajacksonjoseph.com Thank you so much for chatting with me today!  What inspired you to start writing? I think I sprang…