Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Kelsea Yu

Kelsea Yu is a Taiwanese Chinese American writer who is eternally enthusiastic about sharks and appreciates a good ghost story. Her short stories and essays appear in magazines such as Fantasy, PseudoPod, and Reckoning, and in various anthologies. Her novella Bound Feet is published with Cemetery Gates Media, and her debut novel It’s Only a Game is forthcoming from Bloomsbury Children’s in 2024. Kelsea lives with her husband, children, and a pile of art supplies in the Pacific Northwest. Find her on Instagram and Twitter as @anovelescape or visit her website kelseayu.com. What inspired you to start writing? I fell…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Nancy Kilpatrick

Nancy Kilpatrick is an Award-winning author and editor. She has published 23 novels, 3 novellas, over 250 short stories, 6 collections, and has edited 15 anthologies. She wrote the non-fiction book The Goth Bible: A Compendium for the Darkly Inclined. Much of her work has been translated into 9 languages. Her most recent project is the six-book novel series Thrones of Blood, the final volume #6 coming soon in print and ebook. The series has been optioned for film and TV. Website: nancykilpatrick.com Facebook: nancy.kilpatrick.31 Twitter: @nancykwriter Occasional Blog: http://nancykilpatrickwriter.blogspot.ca/ Instagram: nancykilpatrickauthor/ Amazon author Page: amazon.com/author/www.nancykilpatrick.com Newsletter subscription (free): nancykilpatrick.com…

StokerCon®️2023 Announces Keynote Speaker and Bram Stoker Awards®️ Emcee

StokerCon®2023 is pleased to announce Lisa Morton - multiple Bram Stoker Award® winner - as our Keynote Speaker. (photo credit Seth Ryan)   Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of non-fiction books, and prose writer whose work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror as “consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening.” She is a six-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award®, the author of four novels and over 150 short stories, a former President of the Horror Writers Association, and a world-class Halloween and paranormal expert. Her recent releases include the Calling the Spirits: A History…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Ashley Deng

Ashley Deng is a Canadian-born Chinese-Jamaican author of dark fantasy and horror. She holds a BSc in biochemistry, specializing her studies toward making accessible the often-cryptic world of science and medicine. When not writing, she is a hobbyist medical/scientific illustrator and spends her spare time overthinking society and culture. Her work has appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Fireside Magazine, Augur Magazine, and others. Her climate horror novella, Dehiscent, is available August 2023 from Tenebrous Press. You can find her at ashedeng.ca or on various social media as @ashesandmochi and @baroqueintentions. What inspired you to start writing? I was a voracious reader…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Marge Simon

  Marge Simon lives in Ocala, Florida, with her husband, poet/writer Bruce Boston. She has won multiple Bram Stoker Awards, Rhysling Awards, the Elgin, Dwarf Stars, and Strange Horizons Readers’ Awards. She received HWA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021. Marge’s works have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, New Myths, and Daily Science Fiction. Her stories also appear in anthologies such as the 2020 Bookfest Award-winning Under Her Skin, the Colorado Book Award-winning Shadow Atlas, and Sifting the Ashes, to name a few. She attends the ICFA annually as a guest poet/writer and is…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Hannah Yang

Hannah Yang is a Chinese-American speculative fiction author who writes about all things strange and surreal. Her work has appeared in Apex Magazine, The Dark Magazine, and Nightmare Magazine, among other places. Her short story “Eating Bitterness” was a finalist for the 2021 Ladies of Horror Fiction Awards. Hannah grew up writing in the rainy suburbs of Seattle and got her BA at Yale University. She now lives in Colorado, which she finds obnoxiously sunny. When she’s not writing, you can find her painting watercolors, playing guitar, or hiking in the Rockies. Follow her work at hannahyang.com or on Twitter…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Steve Rasnic Tem

Steve Rasnic Tem is a past winner of the Bram Stoker, World Fantasy, and British Fantasy Awards. He won the Bram Stoker Award for his novel Blood Kin and his novel Ubo was a finalist. He has published over 500 short stories in his 40+ year career. Some of his best are collected in Thanatrauma and Figures Unseen from Valancourt Books, and in The Night Doctor & Other Tales from Macabre Ink. You can visit his home on the web at www.stevetem.com. Did you start out writing or working in the horror field, and if so why? If not, what…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Simo Srinivas

Simo Srinivas lives in Colorado with their spouse and two senior, standard-issue tabby cats. Their horror fiction has appeared in Dark Matter Presents: MONSTROUS FUTURES, Deathcap & Hemlock, and The Archive of the Odd, among others. When not writing about all things weird and queer, Simo can be found on the trail intently counting pikas. You can also find them online at www.srinivassimo.com and on Twitter and Instagram: @srinivassimo. What inspired you to start writing? My father used to tell me bedtime stories about “The King and the Clown” based on South Indian folklore. After a while, he ran out…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Reggie Oliver

Reggie Oliver is an actor, director, playwright, illustrator and award-winning author of fiction. Published work includes six plays, three novels, an illustrated children’s book, The Hauntings at Tankerton Park (Zagava 2016), nine volumes of short stories, including Mrs Midnight (2011 winner of Children of the Night Award for best work of supernatural fiction), and, the biography of the writer Stella Gibbons, Out of the Woodshed (Bloomsbury 1998). His stories have appeared in over one hundred different anthologies and three “selected” editions of his stories have been published, the latest being Stages of Fear (Black Shuck Books 2020). His ninth volume…

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

K.P. KULSKI is a Hawaii-born Korean-American author, historian, and career vampire of patriarchal tears. Channeling a lifelong obsession with history and the morose, she’s managed to birth the gothic horror novel Fairest Flesh and novella House of Pungsu. She bartered nine years of her life to the U.S. Navy and Air Force for food and later taught college history to a captive audience. Trapped by a force field, she currently resides in the woods of Northeast Ohio where she (probably) brews potions and talks to ghosts. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter: @garnetonwinter or visit garnetonwinter.com. What inspired you to…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Stephen Volk

  Stephen Volk created BBC TV’s notorious Halloween mockumentary Ghostwatch and the award-winning ITV drama series Afterlife. His feature screenplays include The Awakening starring Rebecca Hall, William Friendkin's The Guardian, and Ken Russell’s Gothic starring Natasha Richardson as Mary Shelley. He is also the author of four collections – Dark Corners, Monsters in the Heart (which won the British Fantasy Award), The Parts We Play, and Lies of Tenderness. His other books include the acclaimed Dark Masters Trilogy, featuring Peter Cushing, Alfred Hitchcock, and Dennis Wheatley, while Under a Raven’s Wing teams Sherlock Holmes with Poe’s detective Dupin in 1870s Paris. You can visit Stephen’s website at www.stephenvolk.net or follow him on Twitter: @stevevolkwriter…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Wen Wen Yang

Wen Wen Yang is a first-generation Chinese American from the Bronx, New York. She graduated from Barnard College of Columbia University with a degree in English and creative writing. She listens to audiobooks at three-times speed, talks almost as fast, and misses dependable public transportation. You can find her short fiction in Fantasy Magazine, Zooscape, and more. An up-to-date bibliography is on WenWenWrites.com. What inspired you to start writing? I was always reading and imagining my own stories. Growing up poor, pen and paper are relatively cheap. When schoolwork moved to computers, my parents didn’t know if the Word document…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Kathe Koja

  Kathe Koja writes novels and short fiction and creates and produces live and virtual immersive stories. Her work has won awards, been multiply translated, and optioned for film.  DARK PARK is forthcoming in August 2023 and CATHERINE THE GHOST in Fall 2024. @kathekoja on IG and FB https://kathekoja.com/ Did you start out writing or working in the horror field, and if so why? If not, what were you writing initially and what compelled you to move into horror? The first stories I sold were to SF magazines and anthologies. When I wrote The Cipher, which was actually an offshoot of…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Catherine Kuo

Catherine Kuo is an Asian American writer who lived and worked in Taiwan and Japan for several years before returning to the United States. She graduated from the University of California, Davis, where she was selected as one of the winners of the university’s 2010-2011 “Prized Writing” competition. She is an HWA member and participated in the HWA mentorship program. Her short stories can be found in the Bloodless anthology, published by Sliced Up Press, and the forthcoming anthology Monstrous Futures, published by Dark Matter Ink. She currently lives in Arlington, Virginia, and can be found on Twitter at @catherinekuo531.…

2022 HWA Lifetime Achievement and Service Awards

2022 HWA Lifetime Achievement and Service Awards The Horror Writers Association (HWA) is pleased to announce the recipients of its various special awards: the Lifetime Achievement Award, the Specialty Press Award, the Richard Laymon President’s Award, the Silver Hammer Award, and the Mentor of the Year Award. These will be presented June 17, 2023 during the Bram Stoker Awards® Presentation at StokerCon®2023 in Pittsburgh, PA. Lifetime Achievement Award The recipients of the HWA’s Lifetime Achievement Award are:  Elizabeth Massie, Nuzo Onoh, and John Saul.  The Lifetime Achievement Award is presented periodically to an individual whose work has substantially influenced the…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Jessica Amanda Salmonson

Jessica Amanda Salmonson is a recipient of the World Fantasy Award, Lambda Award, and ReaderCon Certificate. She loves rats and chihuahuas (they're the same thing) and currently has three big monitor lizards. She's vegetarian, but no longer radically so, and strives to be something of a Zoharic scholar. Did you start out writing or working in the horror field, and if so why? If not, what were you writing initially and what compelled you to move into horror? I always wrote fantasy and horror. These few questions are all about being old, which is not primary in my life or…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with David Kuraria

Bryce Stevens w/a David Kuraria has edited and collaborated with some of the biggest names in the Australian and international horror fiction field. A former editor of Terror Australis Magazine and Bloodsongs Magazine with Christopher Sequeira and Steve Proposch, he has edited three volumes of Cthulhu Deep Down Under, Cthulhu Land of the Long White Cloud, War of the Worlds: Battleground Australia, and Caped Fear: Superhuman Horror Stories. Stevens has also written for international magazines and anthologies since the mid-1990s to much acclaim, with his work selected many times to appear on Ellen Datlow’s Years Best Horror Honourable Mention and…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Joe R. Lansdale

Joe R. Lansdale is the author of fifty novels and four hundred shorter works, including stories, essays, reviews, film and TV scripts, stage plays, introductions, and magazine articles, as well as a book of poetry. His work has been made into films, animation, and comics, and he has won numerous awards, including the Edgar, Raymond Chandler lifetime award, numerous Bram Stoker Awards, Lifetime Horror Award, and the Spur Award. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas with his wife, Karen, and pit bull, Rudy. The viewpoints expressed in this interview are the opinions of the individual being interviewed and do not necessarily…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Thomas Ha

Thomas Ha is a husband, father, and writer, roughly in that order. He primarily writes dark fantasy, with some elements of horror, and occasionally lighter fantasy and sci-fi. His work often focuses on family, home, and the surreal and disturbing nature of the banal. What inspired you to start writing? I’ve written on and off for most of my life, but I don’t think I started writing seriously until the last few years when my kids were born. I know it’s a cliché—that parenthood brings some kind of meaning or clarity—but in many cases, and I guess in my case,…

Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Graham Masterton

Graham Masterton was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1946. He is mainly recognized for his horror novels, but he has also been a prolific writer of thrillers, disaster novels, and historical epics, as well as one of the world’s most influential series of sex instruction books. He became a newspaper reporter at the age of 17 and was appointed editor of Penthouse magazine at only 24.  His first horror novel, The Manitou, was filmed with Tony Curtis playing the lead, and three of his short horror stories were filmed by Tony Scott for The Hunger TV series. Ten years ago,…