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.
Tell us about your work in 25 words or less.
My novels and short stories are a hybridization of genres, in which magical realism, horror, fantasy, and realism coexist, with everyday life as the anchor.
What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it?
On the one hand, the constant observation of reality, in which horror is part of our lives; the readings of classic and new authors of the genre and the privilege of listening to them live every year, since, for 16 years, creating and directing the Sui Generis Madrid festival, a festival dedicated to genres such as gothic, horror, science fiction, and fantasy, in which authors such as Stephen Graham Jones and S. T. Joshi, among others, as well as Spanish and European authors, have been present, keeps my passion for the genre in constant renewal and amazement.
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 would not say it is a conscious effort but something inevitable. I am from Colombia and I grew up listening to terrifying stories told by nannies, cousins, and friends, also some members of my family practiced spiritism, and in conversations the living and the dead were constantly mixed. Portraying all that flows naturally to me, plus the very reality of a country marked by the violence of a war of many decades in which the news during my childhood and adolescence began with attacks and deaths, makes you think that horror is a part of life. So you speak and write from a place where the “unfamiliar”, which is theoretically one of the expressions to define horror, becomes something familiar.
What has writing horror taught you about the world and yourself?
It has taught me to accept that duality is part of human nature and to live with it. Our world and the universe in general are terrifying and surprisingly beautiful, all at the same time. Light and darkness coexist in us just like everything around us, it is a reality that is undeniable and obvious, so we have no choice but to embrace it.
How have you seen the horror genre change over the years? And how do you think it will continue to evolve?
From gothic novels to the present day, the genre has evolved at the same time as we ourselves as a species. Stories are updated as the environment and ways of seeing the world are updated. Fears also evolve, they change as the world changes, but some remain unchanged: the unknown and the paranormal will always be there. The horror genre will continue to adapt to changing times but the visceral will remain unchanged.
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!)
Write horror stories in the context of the conquest of the Americas and the wars of independence of Latin American countries. Narrate them from the point of view of terror, which in reality was what was experienced in both historical moments, or use them as a starting point to create horror stories with fantastic characters.
Who are some of your favorite LatinX characters in horror?
Definitely the characters of Indigenous mythologies. Magical beings like the Patasola, a monstrous woman who is a kind of vampire in Colombian mythology, or ghosts like the Tulevieja of Costa Rica and the Llorona of Mexico.
Who are some LatinX horror authors you recommend our audience check out?
Classics such as Amparo Dávila, Horacio Quiroga, or Juan Rulfo, and current ones such as Agustina Bazterrica, Mónica Ojeda, and Mariana Enríquez.
What is one piece of advice you would give horror authors today?
To be attentive to reality, to listen to conversations in the subway, to observe people and places carefully. Any object, place, person, or circumstance is susceptible to be narrated from horror. A woman in the supermarket may be buying food for someone she has locked in her basement; a man is hurrying down the street because he is actually being chased by a ghost; a girl talks on her cell phone with a being from the underworld. You have to let yourself be pushed to the limit.
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?
“Writing is a muscle that you have to exercise every day,” a screenwriter told me and it seemed logical to me. The more you write the more you stimulate and develop that muscle.
“You must have everything planned before sitting down to write a story”, a writer told me and it doesn’t work for me, I don’t believe in detailing every action to the maximum, I believe in planning a little and then giving some freedom to the characters, that in the end, they take control of their story.
And to the LatinX writers out there who are just getting started, what advice would you give them?
Make the most of all the resources at your disposal. The history of each Latin American country is extremely rich in extraordinary narratives, the mythology of each one is full of beings that deserve attention. I often see that some writers are influenced by Anglo- Saxon literature and want to imitate the style and in many cases, the stories told, when they are surrounded by unexplored resources that are part of their cultural heritage. One must look around and explore one’s own history, there is great material there that deserves to be explored, turned upside down, and narrated without fear of going beyond logic.
Marjorie Eljach (Barranquilla, Colombia, 1971) directs and produces the Sui Generis Madrid Alternative Culture Festival and has directed the Besarilia Cultural Association since 2019. She is a Professional in Literary Studies, a Master in Information and Documentation, Specialist in Organizational Development and Marketing. For more than twenty years she has worked in parallel in Cultural Management from Besarilia and in Marketing and Communications as a project manager.
She directed the Karl C. Parrish Library at the Universidad del Norte (Barranquilla, Colombia), and was a professor of Literature at the same institution for which she continues to provide her services as a consultant, teacher of creativity and cultural management workshops, in addition to organize the Great Mysteries of Europe section within the framework of the annual Cátedra Europa event.
Throughout her career, she has been an advisor on numerous projects related to higher education, cultural management, performing and audiovisual arts, bibliographic editing, literature, library management, marketing, and communications. She is also co-editor of the academic journal Herejía y Belleza and director of the Congress on Art, Literature and Alternative Culture. She has published essays, poetry, short stories in several horror anthologies, and articles in various magazines. In 2020 she published her first novel Elisa y el escarabajo (Herejía y Belleza) and the essay Batman y Joker, duelo en Gotham (Archivos Vola) in which she shares authorship with the writer Alberto Ávila Salazar. In 2023 she published her last novel Diosa Fortuna (Apache Libros). She has co-written a film project and a television project and is currently serving as executive producer of a feature film that is currently in production.
