Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Christine Sng

Christina Sng is the three-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of A Collection of Nightmares, A Collection of Dreamscapes, and Tortured Willows. Her poetry, fiction, essays, and art appear in numerous venues worldwide, including Interstellar Flight Magazine, New Myths, Penumbric, Southwest Review, and The Washington Post. FB, Instagram, Twitter: @christinasng What inspired you to start writing? When I played as a child, I was always telling a story. Writing allowed me to immortalize it on paper.   What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it? I grew up with it. The 80s was the golden age of…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Bryan Thao Worra

Bryan Thao Worra is the author of 10+ books. One of the first Lao Americans to arrive in the US in 1973, and the first Lao American to hold a professional membership in the Horror Writers Association. He holds over 20 national and international awards for his writing and community leadership. He served as the president of the International Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association from 2016-2022. He has presented at the Smithsonian and the 2012 London Summer Games on the role of the imagination and memory in creative writing as a poet and prose writer, focusing on the creative…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Tracie McBride

What inspired you to start writing? My origin story is probably a very familiar one to most writers. It started early in childhood with a love of books and a reverence for those who created them. Then, in primary school, praise came from teachers for my early efforts at written storytelling. High school hit, then adulthood, and somewhere along the line, I shelved the childhood dream of becoming a writer. I picked it up again when my first child started school and I undertook online study to earn a Creative Writing Diploma, naively thinking I might have time to devote…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with L. Chan

L CHAN hails from Singapore. He spends most of his time wrangling a team of two dogs, Mr Luka and Mr Telly. His work has appeared in places like Clarkesworld, Translunar Travellers Lounge, Podcastle, the Dark and he was a finalist for the 2020 Eugie Foster Memorial Award. He tweets inordinately @lchanwrites and can be found on the web at https://lchanwrites.wordpress.com/ What inspired you to start writing? I’ve always been a voracious devourer of stories - books, comics, games, movies. I guess we all start telling ourselves stories in our heads, our own heads. Oddly enough, my writing did get…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Maria Dong

Maria Dong is the author of Liar, Dreamer, Thief. Her short fiction, articles, and poetry have been published in dozens of magazines, like the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Lightspeed, Augur, Nightmare, Khoreo, Fantasy, Apex, and Apparition Literary Magazine. She is represented by Amy Bishop at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. What inspired you to start writing? I was in a car accident about ten years ago, and while I was recovering I was in a house that did not have internet or cable. And I was really bored, and I was bed-bound, so I started writing stories to entertain…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Dan Rabarts

Dan Rabarts (Ngati Porou) is an award-winning author and editor living in Porirua, Aotearoa New Zealand. He is a four-time recipient of New Zealand’s Sir Julius Vogel Award and three-time winner of the Australian Shadows Award. His short stories have been published worldwide, and he is the author of the steampunk-grimdark-comic fantasy series Children of Bane (Brothers of the Knife, Sons of the Curse, Sisters of Spindrift, Daughters of Dust). Together with Lee Murray, he co-wrote the Path of Ra crime-noir thriller series (Hounds of the Underworld, Teeth of the Wolf, Blood of the Sun) and co-edited the anthologies Baby…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Catherine Yu

Catherine Yu writes dark speculative fiction. She was born in Nanjing and is now based in New York. She is a graduate of Odyssey Writing Workshop. Direwood is her debut novel from Page Street Publishing. Helga, a YA Frankenstein reimagining, is coming out in 2024. She can be found at catherineyuwrites.com. What inspired you to start writing? An early love of reading definitely helped. (And honestly, Scooby Doo fanfiction was where I started.) What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it? Horror is a great way to delve into and investigate scary stuff. Monsters are horrifying…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Angela Liu

Angela Liu is a Chinese American writer from NYC. She studied East Asian Studies at New York University and researched mixed reality at Keio University’s Graduate School of Media Design in Japan, with a focus on new narrative platforms and tangible interfaces for remote communication. She now works in IT consulting and Japanese-to-English translation while raising a monster-obsessed toddler. Her stories and poetry are published/forthcoming in Strange Horizons, The Dark, Nightmare Magazine, Clarkesworld, Cast of Wonders, Fusion Fragment, and Dark Matter Magazine among others. Check out more of her work at liu-angela.com or find her on Twitter/Instagram: @liu_angela What inspired…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.…

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…

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,…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Introduction by 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.   API/ANHPI Heritage Month…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Usman T. Malik’s

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Usman T. Malik’s fiction has been published at Al-Jazeera, WIRED, Center for Science and Imagination (Arizona State University), in New Voices of Fantasy and several year’s best anthologies including The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy series. He has been nominated for the World Fantasy, Locus, and Eugie Foster awards, and has won the Bram Stoker and the British Fantasy awards. Usman’s debut book Midnight Doorways: Fables from Pakistan won the 2022 Crawford Award from the International Association for the Fantastic in Arts (IAFA) and was on Washington Post’s 2021 list of best new science fiction and fantasy collections.