Latinx Heritage in Horror Month 2024: An Interview with Juan Martinez
What inspired you to start writing?
I loved to read. I mean, I still love to read, but I was a voracious reader, and that’s what drew me to writing. I love stories.
Tell us about your work in 25 words or less.
Strange, off-kilter, disturbing, sometimes absurd.
What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it?
I was super sick as a teenager: I was misdiagnosed with a condition and the understanding was that I had a year left to live. That year I spent mostly in bed and somehow the thing that got me through it was horror. I was still living in Colombia and did the thing a lot of people did, which was read Stephen King’s It way before I was ready for it. And also Peter Straub’s Floating Dragon. And a bunch of other fat battered paperbacks—whatever we could find. Lots of sci-fi too.
Do you make a conscious effort to include LatinX characters and/or themes in your writing and if so, what do you want to portray?
I do include Latine characters in my work, and I often try to portray them in ways that feel not so much representational as experiential. I think a lot of us do that. I mean that we try to write about what it’s like to be a particular person in a particular world—what it’s like to be me, or you, or whoever—and a lot of shared cultural baggage comes along. Some of that is broad and thematic (like, yes, family, or generational trauma, or just the fog of political instability and the violence that I grew up in), and some of it is quirky and super particular (I’ve written a ghost story that swirls around an Argentinean rock-en-español singer, and half the joke is that if you know who it is, which you only would if you grew up worshipping this particular band you totally know he’s dead right from the get-go).
What has writing horror taught you about the world and yourself?
That the whole point of horror is to help us through some awful stuff by reminding us that we can, in fact, make it through that we can make it through together. We can help each other out.
How have you seen the horror genre change over the years? And how do you think it will continue to evolve?
It’s been awesome to see so many folks breakthrough, and it’s been really cool to see the ways in which the community is enthusiastic about these breakthroughs and how deeply weird and welcoming it continues to be.
Time to daydream: what are some aspects of LatinX history or culture – stories from your childhood, historical events, etc — that you really want our genre to tackle? (Whether or not you’re the one to tackle them!)
I’m working through two of those right now that I’m going to keep to myself, but here’s one I’d love to see someone tackle: I’m obsessed with the Colonia Tovar, this old German colony in Venezuela, but there are all these odd pockets of immigrants—from the EU and the US—who have crept back into South America and the Caribbean in ways that I find fascinating. I’d love to see what someone does with that phenomenon.
Who are some of your favorite LatinX characters in horror?
The fungus in Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic! But also the humans in Moreno-Garcia’s novels, I guess? They’re pretty awesome too. Love the film Nerds in Silver Nitrate. Also the children in any Mariana Enriquez joint. Cynthia Pelayo is a Chicago writer, and it’s really cool to see how well, how thoroughly, she brings the city into her work: it’s a fully-fleshed entity, as much a character as any human or monster, and just as full of contradictions and secrets and paradoxes. And the devil in Ananda Lima’s Craft. I could go on!
Who are some LatinX horror authors you recommend our audience check out?
Everyone I just named! But also, if you happen to read Spanish, you should absolutely check out Gerardo Lima. He’s not out in English yet, which is criminal, but he’s brilliant—echoes of John Langan, Brian Evenson, Clive Barker, and Thomas Ligotti.
What is one piece of advice you would give horror authors today?
Read a lot. Read everything. Read all the horror and then read as much outside the genre as you can. And definitely, definitely read not just novels but also short stories and novellas. We’re in a genre that’s ridiculously rich at all lengths.
What is one piece of craft advice you’ve gotten that has really worked for you? Alternatively, what’s one that you’ve happily rejected?
One that has absolutely worked: writing by hand. I’ve been doing it for the last five years or so and it’s been a complete game-changer.
The one that I’ve happily rejected is this idea that you always have to be writing, or that you need long chunks of uninterrupted time. It doesn’t work for me. I teach, I have two young children, and so there’s family or professional obligations that need attention. But I write! I sneak it in when I can, and I’ve got a new novel that is fully drafted and needs one or two more passes, and I’ve got another one that is well on its way, and also a bunch of stories—and I’ve been able to do it in bits and spurts.
And to the LatinX writers out there who are just getting started, what advice would you give them?
Read. Read everything. But also: don’t think you need to write in any one way about who you are and what you’ve seen, what you’ve been through. One cool thing about being LatinX is that we’re all, almost by definition, uncategorizable and hard to pin down, and I’d ask LatinX writers who are just getting started to trust their own experiences and their own predilections, to trust themselves that their stories are interesting enough and worth sharing, even if they don’t fit neatly into what they may think people want. People want to hear from you. Let them hear you.
Juan Martinez is the author of the novel, Extended Stay, released in January 2023 from the University of Arizona Press’s Camino del Sol series. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, called it “a fresh and stunning debut.” The novel was shortlisted for the Chicago Review of Books prize, was a New York Public Library book of the day, and was one of Crimereads and Tor.com’s best horror novels of the year. His short-story collection Best Worst American was released in 2017 by Small Beer Press and won the inaugural Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award for debut speculative fiction. His work has appeared in various literary journals and anthologies, including McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, The Believer, The Chicago Quarterly Review, TriQuarterly, Conjunctions, NIGHTMARE, Huizache, Small Odysseys, The Sunday Morning Transport, NPR’s Selected Shorts, Ecotone, Shenandoah, Sudden Fiction Latino, and Norton’s Flash Fiction America, and is forthcoming in the Latinx horror anthology Ghosts Where We Are From.
