HWA Please Welcome!

Please Welcome Michelle Lane and Tina Pavlik to the HWA Social Media Team We are very proud to announce the latest members to join our Social Media Team, Michelle Renee Lane and Tina Pavlik. In the short period of time that they have been here, have already made themselves indispensable members of this team, working behind the scenes to code, schedule, and upload the Black Heritage in Horror series in February, and the Women in Horror Month series in March. Michelle Renee Lane Michelle Renee Lane holds an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. She writes dark speculative fiction about…

Women in Horror: Interview with Donna Lynch

Donna Lynch is a two-time Bram Stoker Award-nominated dark fiction writer, designer, spoken word artist, and the singer and co-founder—along with her husband, artist and musician Steven Archer—of the dark electro-rock band Ego Likeness (Metropolis Records). Her written works include Isabel Burning, Red Horses, Driving Through the Desert; and the poetry collections In My Mouth, Ladies & Other Vicious Creatures, Daughters of Lilith, Witches, and Choking Back the Devil, among others. She is an active member of the Horror Writers Association, and the winner of the 2019 Ladies of Horror Fiction Awards for Best Poetry Collection—Choking Back the Devil (Raw…

Women in Horror: Interview with Sara Tantlinger

Sara Tantlinger is the author of the Bram Stoker Award-winning The Devil’s Dreamland: Poetry Inspired by H.H. Holmes, and the Stoker-nominated works To Be Devoured, Cradleland of Parasites, and Not All Monsters. Along with being a mentor for the HWA Mentorship Program, she is also a co-organizer for the HWA Pittsburgh Chapter. She embraces all things macabre and can be found lurking in graveyards or on Twitter @SaraTantlinger, at saratantlinger.com, and on Instagram @inkychaotics What inspired you to start writing? Poetry! I loved writing lyrics and poetry for as long as I can remember. Luckily, I think I burned all…

Women in Horror: Interview with Lisa Morton

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, and a world-class Halloween and paranormal expert. Her recent releases include Night Terrors & Other Tales, Weird Women 2 (co-edited with Leslie S. Klinger), and Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances; her latest short stories appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2020, Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles, and In League with…

Women in Horror: Interview with Monique Snyman

Monique Snyman’s mind is a confusing bedlam of glitter and death, where candy-coated gore is found in abundance and homicidal unicorns thrive. Sorting out the mess in her head is particularly irksome before she’s ingested a specific amount of coffee, which is equal to half the recommended intake of water for humans per day. When she’s not playing referee to her imaginary friends or trying to overdose on caffeine, she’s doing something with words—be it writing, reading, or editing. Monique Snyman lives in Pretoria, South Africa, with her husband, daughter, and an adorable Chihuahua. She’s the author of the Bram…

Women in Horror: Interview with Hailey Piper

Hailey Piper is the author of The Worm and His Kings, Queen of Teeth, Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy, and Benny Rose the Cannibal King. She is an active member of the HWA, with short stories appearing in Pseudopod, Vastarien, Cast of Wonders, Daily Science Fiction, and other publications. She lives with her wife in Maryland, where their paranormal research is classified. Find Hailey at www.haileypiper.com or on Twitter via @HaileyPiperSays. What inspired you to start writing? I've gravitated to telling stories since I was little, going on and on about all kinds of strange ideas, and eventually, early books…

On the Conflict in Ukraine

The HWA condemns the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We stand for democracy. We stand for truth. We stand for freedom of speech and freedom of the press. We support the people of Ukraine, including authors, editors, and journalists, as well as the people of Russia who are bravely protesting this attack. We hope to see a swift end to this senseless act of war. Signed, HWA Board of Trustees

Women in Horror: Interview with Nancy Holder

Nancy Holder is a New York Times bestselling author and recipient of six Bram Stoker Awards. In 2019 she was named a Grand Master by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers. She has served HWA as vice president and a member of the board of trustees. She and her co-writer Alan Philipson are writing comic book series for Moonstone and IFG, as well as a short story for the 50th-anniversary celebration of Kolchak the Night Stalker. Her most recent solo publication is “Chickens for Chompy,” a short story in the forthcoming Diablo House anthology from Clover Press. What inspired you to start writing? My…

Women in Horror: Interview with Marge Simon

Marge Simon lives in Ocala, FL, City of Trees with her husband, poet/writer Bruce Boston and the ghosts of two cats. She edits a column for the HWA Newsletter, Blood & Spades: Poets of the Dark Side. Marge’s works have appeared in Pedestal Magazine, Asimov’s, Crannog, Silver Blade. New Myths, Daily Science Fiction, more. She attends the ICFA annually as a guest poet/writer and is a founding member of the Speculative Literary Foundation. A multiple Bram Stoker award winner, Marge is the second woman to be acknowledged by the SF &F Poetry Association with a Grand Master Award. She received…

Women in Horror: Interview with Lee Murray

Lee Murray is an author, editor, screenwriter, and poet from Aotearoa-New Zealand. A USA Today Bestselling author, double Bram Stoker, and Shirley Jackson Award winner, her work includes military thrillers, the Taine McKenna Adventures, supernatural crime-noir series The Path of Ra (with Dan Rabarts), and debut collection, Grotesque: Monster Stories. Lee is the curator-editor of eighteen volumes of dark fiction, among them Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women (with Geneve Flynn). Lee’s first poetry collection, Tortured Willows, a collaboration with Angela Yuriko Smith, Christina Sng, and Geneve Flynn was released in October 2021.   What inspired you to start writing?…

The Seers’ Table March 2022

Kate Maruyama, Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Community   Rob Costello introduces: Author Photo Credit: Melanie Elise Photography LLC . Aden Polydoros is a queer, Jewish writer of speculative fiction for young readers. He grew up in Illinois and Arizona, and has a bachelor’s degree in English from Northern Arizona University. He is the author of several books for young readers, including the forthcoming Bone Weaver (Fall 2022) and The Ring of Solomon (Winter 2023). He has also contributed to the upcoming YA anthology The Gathering Dark, An Anthology of Folk Horror, edited by Tori Bovalino (Fall 2022). Aden’s current YA release, The City Beautiful, which is on…

Women in Horror: Interview with Cassondra Windwalker

Cassondra Windwalker is the author of the new gothic horror Hold My Place. She has three other published novels, two full-length poetry collections, and a melange of short-form works in literary magazines, anthologies, and art books. She's lived in the South, the Midwest, and the West, and presently writes full-time from the Frozen North. She keeps company mostly with ghosts, literary characters, unwary wild animals, and her tolerant husband.   What inspired you to start writing? I don’t know that I ever started writing. My earliest memories are of me narrating the world in my head, my mom telling me…

Women in Horror Month Interview Series: Introduction by Lindy Ryan

Women in Horror Month HWA Interview Series: Introduction by Lindy Ryan From literature to film and everywhere between, Women in Horror Month (WiHM) celebrates and amplifies the contributions of women in the genre. This annual event embraces all those in horror who identify as women—championing a special sisterhood amongst women who shine brightest in the dark. Though historically underrepresented and oft-ignored, from Mary Shelley’s creation of Frankenstein—one of the most lasting and reanimated icons of the genre—women have always been at the heart of horror. We have been victims and tropes, Final Girls and Pretty Dead Girls, and caricatures by…

Black Heritage in Horror: An Interview with Jamal Hodge

Jamal Hodge is a multi-award-winning filmmaker and writer who is a sitting Board Member of Harlem Film House and Axs Lab. Hodge is an active member of The Horror Writer's Association and The SFPA, being nominated for a 2021 Rhysling Award for his Poem 'Fermi's Spaceship' and a 2022 Rhysling Award for his poem 'Loving Venus'. While his poem 'The Silence of God' placed in the 2021 Horror Writer Association Showcase. His Poetry is Featured in the Anthology Chiral Mad 5 alongside such legends as Stephen King, Langston Hughes, Linda Addison & Josh Malerman. Jamal's screenplay 'Mourning Meal' won 5…

Black Heritage in Horror: An Interview with Nikki Woolfolk

A latchkey kid of film noir, cozy mysteries, and gritty detective novels, Nikki Woolfolk writes humorous mysteries with a bite. What inspired you to start writing? I wanted to travel the world, but my family didn’t travel during my childhood besides occasional visits to grandparents. So, I created stories as a means to research places I wanted to visit and all it cost me was paper, pencils, and a library card. I needed to write about my grief of a loss that happened when I was kid. I wrote horror, a revenge piece that allowed me to speak loudly about…

Black Heritage in Horror: An 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. What inspired you to start writing? I grew up in a reading household where everyone read, all the time. My mother…

Black Heritage in Horror: An Interview with Valjeanne Jeffers

Valjeanne Jeffers is a speculative fiction author, screenwriter, a Spelman College graduate, a member of the Carolina African American Writers’ Collective (CAAWC) and the Horror Writers Association (HWA). She is the author of ten books, including her Immortal series and her most recent Mona Livelong: Paranormal Detective series. She also co-edited the erotic speculative fiction anthologies, Scierogenous: An Anthology of Erotic Science Fiction and Fantasy Volumes I and II (with Quinton Veal). Her writing has been published in numerous anthologies including: The City: A Cyberfunk Anthology; Steamfunk!; Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia E. Butler (winner of the Locus Award, nominated…

The 2021 Bram Stoker Awards® Final Ballot Announced

The Horror Writers Association (HWA) is pleased to announce the Final Ballot for the 2021 Bram Stoker Awards®. The HWA (see https://horror.org/) is the premiere writers' organization in the horror and dark fiction genre, with more than 1,800 members. We have presented the Bram Stoker Awards in various categories since 1987 (see http://www.thebramstokerawards.com/) Works appearing on this Ballot are Bram Stoker Award® Nominees for Superior Achievement in their Category, e.g., Novel, and everyone may refer to them as such immediately after the announcement. The HWA Board and the Bram Stoker Awards® Committee congratulate all those appearing on the Final Ballot. Notes…

Black Heritage in Horror: An Interview with Chesya Burke

Chesya Burke is an Asst. Professor of English and U.S. Literatures at Stetson University. Having written and published over a hundred fiction pieces and articles within the genres of science fiction, fantasy, comics and horror, her academic research focuses primarily on the intersections of race, gender and genre. Her primary areas of study are in African American literature, race and gender studies, comics and speculative fiction. Chesya received her Master’s degree in African American Studies from Georgia State University, and she wrote several articles for the African American National Biography published by Harvard and Oxford University Press. Burke is the…