Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Doungjai Gam

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doungjai gam is the author of glass slipper dreams, shattered  and watch the whole goddamned thing burn. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in LampLight, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Wicked Haunted, The Dystopian States of America, among other places. She’s co-written stories with her partner, author Ed Kurtz, that have appeared in Lost Highways and The Bad Book.

gam—a Thai-Lao-Eastern European blend—was born in Thailand and currently resides in southern New England.

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with K.P. Kulski

K.P. Kulski is the author of Fairest Flesh, from Strangehouse Books and House of Pungsu, from Bizarro Pulp Press. Her short fiction has appeared in various publications including Fantasy Magazine, and anthologies, Not All Monsters, from Strangehouse Books and The Dead Inside, from Dark Dispatch. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii to a Korean mother and American-military father, she spent her youth wandering many places both inside and outside the United States. She’s a veteran of the U.S. Navy and Air Force and as a former history professor, she often draws inspiration from the stories of the past. Find her at garnetonwinter.com and on Twitter @garnetonwinter. What inspired you to…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Gabriela Lee

Gabriela Lee teaches creative writing and children's literature at the Department of English & Comparative Literature at the University of the Philippines. Her fiction has been published in the Philippines and abroad, most recently in the Bram Stoker Award-winning anthology, Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women (New Zealand, 2020). She received the 2019 PBBY-Salanga Grand Prize, which was published as the picture book Cely’s Crocodile: The Story and Art of Araceli Limcaco-Dans (Tahanan Books, 2020). She recently contributed the chapter "Digital Liminality and Identities in Philippine Young Adult Speculative Fiction" to Asian Children’s Literature and Film in a Global Age:…

The HWA Honors Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Horror Writers

Dear HWA Members and Horror Writing Community, May is Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in the United States. Over the past several weeks, as I have engaged in conversations with friends, colleagues, and even relatives (as I grew up in Hawaii from age 11 onward and have cousins who are Native Hawaiian) I have come to realize that I have inadvertently contributed to the erasure of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders by not explicitly including them in the call for Asian & Asian Diaspora horror writers this May. Pacific Islandera, Pacificer, Pasifika, or Pasefika are the…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Paul Loh

Paul Loh is a musician/actor/author. He has written around 100 songs. He has also appeared in several movies. He has written two novellas: 'The Nocent part 2: Advent of the Scathing' and 'The Greater Number' and edited a trilogy of horror anthologies of short horror stories called 'Possessions'. His story, 'Smart Phone' is in post-production to be made into a movie. He has a collection of his own short horror fiction out, called Solace In Solitude. A second collection of his stories called, Pockets Of Humanity will be out by the end of 2022. He is currently working on a…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Kiyomi Appleton Gaines

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Kiyomi Appleton Gaines is a writer of fairy tales and other fantastical things. She was a 2018 Contributing Editor at Enchanted Conversation, and contributor to Mad Scientist Journal 2019 Spring Quarterly. Her work has also appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, and The Grimm Reaper. Find more of her writing at a work of heart and follow her on Twitter @ThatKiyomi. Kiyomi is an Asian-American of Japanese descent. She lives in New Orleans with her husband, two marmalade cats, and a snake.

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Lee Murray

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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 short fiction 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, is a collaboration with Angela Yuriko Smith, Christina Sng and Geneve Flynn. Read more at https://www.leemurray.info/

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Nadia Bulkin

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Nadia Bulkin is the author of the short story collection She Said Destroy (Word Horde, 2017). She has been nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award five times. She grew up in Jakarta, Indonesia with her Javanese father and American mother, before relocating to Lincoln, Nebraska. She has two political science degrees and lives in Washington, D.C.

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Grace Chan

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Grace Chan is an Aurealis and Norma K Hemming Award-nominated speculative fiction writer. She can’t seem to stop scribbling about brains, minds, space, technology, and identity. Her short fiction can be found in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Fireside, Aurealis, and many other places. Her debut novel, Every Version of You, will be published in August 2022.

Grace was born in Malaysia and lives in Melbourne, Australia. Her other interests include salt-and-vinegar anything and secretly filming her friends’ NYE karaoke highlights. In a decaffeinated state, she may cease to exist. You can find her online at www.gracechanwrites.com and on Twitter as @gracechanwrites.

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Elaine Cuyegkeng

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Elaine Cuyegkeng is a Chinese Filipino writer. She grew up in Manila where there are many, many creaky old houses with ghosts inside them. She loves eldritch creatures both real and imaginary, ’80s pop stars, and caffeinated drinks with too much sugar. She now lives in Melbourne with her partner, their faerie child and their two small cat children. She is the 2021 Eugie Foster Award recipient for “The Genetic Alchemist’s Daughter” and has been nominated for the BSFA, Aurealis and Ditmar Awards. She has been published in the Bram Stoker winning anthology Black Cranes:Tales of Unquiet Women, in Pseudopod, Strange Horizons, Lackington’s, The Dark, and Rocket Kapre. You can find her on @layangabi on Twitter.

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with J.A.W. McCarthy

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Photo by Jenny Jimenez

J.A.W. McCarthy is the author of Sometimes We’re Cruel and Other Stories (Cemetery Gates Media, 2021). Her short fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including Vastarien, LampLight, Apparition Lit, Tales to Terrify, and The Best Horror of the Year Vol 13 (ed. Ellen Datlow). She is Thai American and lives with her husband and assistant cats in the Pacific Northwest. You can call her Jen on Twitter @JAWMcCarthy, and find out more at www.jawmccarthy.com.

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Frances Lu-Pai Ippolito

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Frances Lu-Pai Ippolito is a Chinese American writer, judge, and mother based in Portland, Oregon. When she’s not spending time with her family outdoors, she’s crafting short stories in horror, sci-fi, fantasy, or whatever genre-bending she can get away with. Her work can be found in Nailed Magazine, Red Penguin’s Collections, Buckman Journal’s Issue 006, Flame Tree Press’s Asian Ghost Stories, Strangehouse’s Chromophobia, Moms Who Write’s Order of Us, and Death’s Garden Revisited. www.francesippolito.com.

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Yi Izzy Yu

In 2011, Yi Izzy Yu left Northern China for the US. Since then, she has taught Chinese and English in high schools and colleges, given birth to the now eight-year-old visual artist Frankie Lu Branscum, and published work in magazines ranging from New England Review to Samovar and in the collections of translated Chinese weird fiction: The Shadow Book of Ji Yun and Zhiguai. Currently, she lives outside of Pittsburgh, where she teaches and translates Chinese and investigates shadows. What inspired you to start writing? I love language. Always have. At the end of my undergraduate studies in China, for example, I spent six months in the…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Tori Eldridge

Tori Eldridge is the SCIBA national bestselling author and Anthony, Lefty, and Macavity Awards finalist of the Lily Wong mystery thriller series—THE NINJA DAUGHTER, THE NINJA’S BLADE, and THE NINJA BETRAYED. Her shorter works appear in the inaugural reboot of WEIRD TALES magazine and horror, dystopian, and other literary anthologies. Her horror screenplay THE GIFT—which inspired DANCE AMONG THE FLAMES—earned a semi-finalist spot for the Academy Nicholl Fellowship. Before writing, Tori performed as an actress, singer, dancer on Broadway, television, and film, and earned a 5th degree black belt in To-Shin Do ninja martial arts. She is of Hawaiian, Chinese,…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Priya Sharma

Priya Sharma’s fiction has appeared venues such as Interzone, Black Static, Nightmare, The Dark and Tor. “Fabulous Beasts” was a Shirley Jackson Award finalist and won a British Fantasy Award for Short Fiction. Priya is a Shirley Jackson Award and British Fantasy Award winner,  and Locus Award finalist,  for “All the Fabulous Beasts”, a collection of her some of her work, available from Undertow Publications. “Ormeshadow”, her first novella (available from Tor), won a Shirley Jackson Award and a British Fantasy Award. Her stories have been translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Czech, and Polish. She has a novella out later this year from PS Publishing called "Pomegranates". More…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Ai Jiang

Ai Jiang is a Chinese-Canadian writer, an immigrant from Fujian, and an active member of HWA. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in F&SF, The Dark, PseudoPod, Jellyfish Review, Hobart Pulp, The Masters Review—among others. Find her on Twitter (@AiJiang_) and online (http://aijiang.ca). What inspired you to start writing? When I was younger, I was drawn to the fantastical romances I could never live, and so I started writing what I had imagined love and relationships would be like during earlier years in high school and found myself on Wattpad. But I left writing aside when I discovered love wasn't…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Vanessa Fogg

Vanessa Fogg is an American writer of Thai and Chinese descent, born and raised in the American Midwest. After years as a research scientist in molecular cell biology, she now works as a freelance scientific/medical writer and editor. She writes fantasy and science fiction as well as horror, and stories that bleed across genres. Her short fiction has appeared in Lightspeed, Daily Science Fiction, GigaNotoSaurus, The Future Fire, Translunar Travelers Lounge, and The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 4. Her fantasy novelette, The Lilies of Dawn, is available in print and ebook from Annorlunda Books. For a complete…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Geneve Flynn

Geneve Flynn is an award-winning speculative fiction editor and author. She co-edited Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women with celebrated New Zealand author and editor Lee Murray. The anthology won the 2020 Bram Stoker Award® and 2020 Shirley Jackson Award. It also shortlisted for the British Fantasy, Aurealis, and Australian Shadows awards. Black Cranes is listed on Tor Nightfire’s Works of Feminist Horror and Locus magazine’s 2020 Recommended Reading List. Geneve was assistant editor for Relics, Wrecks, and Ruins, a speculative fiction anthology which is the legacy of Australian fantasy author Aiki Flinthart, and is in support of the Flinthart…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Yvette Tan

Yvette Tan is one of the Philippines’ most celebrated horror writers. She’s written two collections, one in English and one in Tagalog, a feature film, and a ballet libretto, among others. Waking the Dead, her English collection, has just been reissued with a new cover and an extra story. Her story “The Last Moon” was part of the Philippine pavilion’s design in the 2021 Frankfurt Book Fair. She is currently a creative consultant to a game that highlights Filipino mythological creatures. Her works have been translated into Spanish, Czech, and Hungarian. What inspired you to start writing? I love reading,…

Asian Heritage in Horror: Interview with Rin Chupeco

Rin Chupeco is a nonbinary Chinese-Filipino writer born and raised in the Philippines. They are the author of several speculative young adult series, including The Bone Witch, The Girl from the Well, The Never-Tilting World, Wicked as You Wish, and the adult vampire fantasy series Silver Under Nightfall. Formerly a 9-to-5 grunt, they now write fiction full-time and live with their partner and two children in Manila. Find them and their upcoming works at rinchupeco.com. What inspired you to start writing? I have always wanted ever since I was seven years old and it’s been a lifelong dream since. I…