Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Horror: Interview with Kris Ringman

Kris Ringman (she/they) is a deaf queer author, artist, and wanderer. Her multicultural, lyrical fiction plays along the boundaries of magical realism, fantasy, and horror. She is the author of two Lambda Literary finalist books: I Stole You: Stories from the Fae (Handtype Press, 2017) and Makara: a novel (Handtype Press, 2012), and the upcoming Sail Skin: poems (Handtype Press, 2022). They received their MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. http://krisringman.com

What attracted you to the horror genre, and what do you think the genre has taught you about yourself and the world?

My fascination with horror started probably too young, but has never abated. At the age of seven, my cousins and I used to sneak into my uncle’s stash of horror movies and watch them under a blanket fort in their basement while our mothers played cards upstairs. This prompted me to write horror plays from then on that my cousins and I would act out. We also spent every Halloween together trick-or-treating and watching as many horror movies as we could. The first longer work of fiction I wrote when I was thirteen was a horror story based on a true account of two fishermen who drowned in the lake I’ve gone to every summer of my life. Due to the depth of the lake at its center, their bodies were never found, so I reimagined a host of what I called “people in the lake” who drag people underwater if they’re out swimming or fishing after dark.

I feel the horror genre has always been a way that people can explore their deepest fears and face them. In real life, we don’t always do this well, but in fiction, we can transform our characters in ways that we wish we could also transform, and for me this can prompt intense healing and strengthen me emotionally. Horror teaches us that our worst fears are inside ourselves, not outside, but the key to facing those fears is in our imagination as well.

To what degree does your writing deal with deafness or being hard of hearing, and how does it present in your work?

As a deaf person, I always feel it is important that at least one of my main characters is deaf or hard-of-hearing because there are not enough authentically-written deaf characters in any genre of writing, and the world needs more of them written by authors who understand what it is like to actually be deaf or hard-of-hearing. This doesn’t mean that the book or story necessarily focuses on their deafness, but I think the important thing is to bring it into focus when it can highlight an experience most hearing people don’t realize that we have in our daily lives. Most days, if I am surrounded by family or friends who use ASL to communicate with me, I don’t even notice my own deafness, but when I go out in public and have to deal with strangers who get flustered, upset, overly nice, or act rude to me because of my deafness, then those are the kinds of moments I try and bring into my fiction for readers to understand the full experience of a deaf or hard-of-hearing person in life and art.

Have you had any special challenges at events with accessibility? Conversely, were there any particular successes you’d like to share?

Certain writing events/conferences like AWP have done things like put a Deaf-centered event in a back room that is hard to find and access. This has felt like they were trying to push us into the background and it was frustrating. Also, I’ve often had to pick all of my events for a writing conference ahead of time, so they can get interpreters for only those events, which is never something hearing people have to worry about – they can just be spontaneous – so this was upsetting, too.

One amazing writing retreat called AROHO that I’ve been to multiple times had instead given me two interpreters that followed me wherever I decided to go for the week. This feels like the best scenario for deaf or hard-of-hearing attendees because it offers us an equal chance to make spontaneous decisions like everyone else and allows us to always have accessibility at our fingertips, for lunches and social moments as well.

Are there any things that panelists, and other people who are working with deaf and hard of hearing individuals can do to make things more accessible for the deaf and hard of hearing?

I’ve loved it when panelists and authors doing a reading have used a huge overhead projector to put the words they are speaking on the wall or a screen behind them. This erases the need for deaf and hard-of-hearing people to always have to look back and forth between the interpreter and the panelist/reader, and we can also see visually how they have laid out their words on the page. This is also a good option for an event that cannot afford interpreters.

If this is not possible, I always ask a panelist/author to give me a paper copy of their presentation/reading ahead of time, which interpreters usually like to see ahead of time, too, so they can prepare for interpreting. Many hard-of-hearing people do not use ASL, so this is something they can benefit from as well.

As a writer in the horror genre, are there any portrayals of deaf and hard of hearing characters that you particularly like, or dislike, or would like to talk to our readers about?

I don’t actually know of any deaf characters in horror except the ones I’ve written myself, so I would like hearing authors to sit back and allow deaf authors to write more of these characters into existence so I could actually have characters to choose from and be able to answer a question like this.

As a writer in the horror genre, what advice would you have to give to up-and-coming writers?

Keep writing anything and everything that you want to read that you have not yet found on the shelves.

If you are hearing and able-bodied, please don’t write deaf or hard-of-hearing or disabled characters unless you personally know deaf or disabled people in your life and they could act as sensitivity readers for your work.