Women in Horror: Interview with Lauren Elise Daniels

What inspired you to start writing? My parents said I could read anything I wanted, so long as we discussed it. That tactic had me reading collections like The Fourth Galaxy Reader edited by H. L. Gold, and the novels Dragon’s Egg by Robert L. Forward and Stephen King’s Firestarter—and trying to move things with my mind—before I was twelve. I also had a stutter but when I wrote, I was free. I could use any language I wanted without getting tangled in the briar of certain vowel and consonant combinations. Then, I found I could conjure justice in my…

Women in Horror: Interview with Jo Kaplan

Jo Kaplan is the author of It Will Just Be Us and When the Night Bells Ring. Her short stories have appeared in Fireside Quarterly, Black Static, Nightmare Magazine, Vastarien, Haunted Nights edited by Ellen Datlow and Lisa Morton, Miscreations edited by Doug Murano and Michael Bailey, and elsewhere (sometimes as Joanna Parypinski). Currently, she is the co-chair of the HWA LA chapter and teaches English and creative writing at Glendale Community College. Find more at Jo-Kaplan.com. What inspired you to start writing? When I was a child of the ‘90s, I was obsessed with the Goosebumps books—and before I…

Women in Horror: Interview with Kathryn Ptacek

Kathryn Ptacek has published numerous short stories, novels, and articles in many genres. She edited the landmark anthologies, Women of Darkness I and Women of Darkness II, which came out at a time when few anthologies had women contributors. She edits the HWA Newsletter, the monthly publication for the international organization. Interesting teapots and Gila monster stuff make up some of her many collections, and she likes to garden in her always-messy yard (she loves black flowers); she has four cats. Contact her at gilaqueen@att.net or through her Facebook page. What was it about the horror genre that drew you…

Women in Horror: Interview with Ai Jiang

Ai Jiang is a Chinese-Canadian writer and an immigrant from Fujian. She is a member of HWA, SFWA, and Codex. Her work can be found in Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Dark, Uncanny, among others. She is the recipient of Odyssey Workshop's 2022 Fresh Voices Scholarship and the author of Linghun. Find her on Twitter (@AiJiang_) and online (http://aijiang.ca). What inspired you to start writing? Instead of speaking about what inspired me to start writing, I want to talk a little about what inspires me now to continue writing and the direction that my writing has now taken. I’ve been…

Women in Horror: Interview with Rachel Harrison

Rachel Harrison is the national bestselling author of Cackle, Such Sharp Teeth, and The Return, which was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. Her short fiction has appeared in Guernica, in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, as an Audible Original, and in her debut story collection Bad Dolls. She lives in Western New York with her husband and their cat/overlord. Her fourth novel, Black Sheep, is out September 19th from Berkley. What inspired you to start writing? It’s something I’ve always done. I used to dictate stories to my mother before I could physically…

Women in Horror: Interview with Lindy Ryan

Lindy Ryan is an award-winning author-editor of Into the Forest, Under Her Skin, and others. She is the founder of Black Spot Books, a small press that aims to amplify women’s voices in horror, and a contributor to Rue Morgue, Booktrib, and LitReactor. Lindy is an active member of HWA, ITW, the Brothers Grimm Society of North America, and one of Publishers Weekly’s 2020 Star Watch Honorees. She previously served on the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) Board of Directors and is currently co-chair of the HWA Publishers Council. Her debut horror novel, Bless Your Heart, is forthcoming from Minotaur…

Women in Horror: Interview with L. Marie Wood

L Marie Wood is an award-winning dark fiction author, screenwriter, and poet with novels in the psychological horror, mystery, and dark romance genres. She won the Golden Stake Award for her novel The Promise Keeper. She is a recipient of the MICO Award and has won Best Horror, Best Action, Best Afrofuturism/Horror/Sci-Fi, and Best Short Screenplay awards in national and international film festivals. Wood, a Brand New Weird nominated author, has penned short fiction published in groundbreaking works, including the Bram Stoker Award Finalist anthology, Sycorax’s Daughters, and Slay: Stories of the Vampire Noire. She is also part of the…

Women in Horror: Interview with Stephanie M. Wytovich

Stephanie M. Wytovich is an award-winning poet, novelist, and essayist. She is the Poetry Editor for Raw Dog Screaming Press, and a recipient of the Elizabeth Matchett Stover Memorial Award, the 2021 Ladies of Horror Fiction Writers Grant, and the Rocky Wood Memorial Scholarship for nonfiction writing. Follow her at http://stephaniewytovich.blogspot.com/ and on Twitter and Instagram @SWytovich​ and @thehauntedbookshelf. You can also find her essays, nonfiction, and class offerings on LitReactor. What inspired you to start writing? I could answer this question a million different ways—and I have—but I think the simplest way to explain it is that I just…

Women in Horror: Interview with Alma Katsu

Alma Katsu has been writing novels since 2011. Her work has received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal, been featured in the NY Times and Washington Post, and won awards in the U.S. and internationally. THE HUNGER (2018) is probably her best-known novel, was named one of NPR’s 100 favorite horror stories, was on numerous Best Books of the Year lists. She also writes spy novels, with RED LONDON being the latest in the series. almakatsubooks.com What inspired you to start writing? I was one of those introverted kids who always had her nose in a book and I…

Women in Horror: Interview with Premee Mohamed

Premee Mohamed is a Nebula, World Fantasy, and Aurora award-winning Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta. She is an Assistant Editor of the short fiction audio podcast Escape Pod and the author of the Beneath the Rising series of novels as well as several novellas. Her short fiction has appeared in many venues and she can be found on Twitter at @premeesaurus and on her website at www.premeemohamed.com. What inspired you to start writing? I’ve always loved telling stories—I think that’s a very clichéd thing to say but it’s often true of writers. We like seeing…

Women in Horror: Interview with Lisa Kroger

Lisa Kröger is the author of Monster, She Wrote and Toil and Trouble: A Women’s History of the Occult, as well as co-host of the Know Fear and Monster, She Wrote podcasts. She’s won the Bram Stoker and the Locus Award for nonfiction. She sometimes uses her Ph.D. in Gothic literature to teach, but mostly she uses it to write horror, science fiction, and thrillers. She’s contributed fiction and nonfiction to numerous anthologies and essay collections.  Lisa is a core member of the NYX Horror Collective, a group focused on women-created genre content for film, television, and new media. With…

Beating a Dead Cliché: Women in Horror Month Series Intro by Meghan Arcuri

Meghan Arcuri is a Bram Stoker Award®-nominated author. Her work can be found in various anthologies, including Borderlands 7 (Borderlands Press), Madhouse (Dark Regions Press), Chiral Mad, and Chiral Mad 3 (Written Backwards). She is currently the Vice President of the Horror Writers Association. Prior to writing, she taught high school math, having earned her B.A. from Colgate University—with a double major in mathematics and English—and her masters from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She lives with her family in New York’s Hudson Valley. Please visit her at meghanarcuri.com, facebook.com/meg.arcuri, or on Twitter (@MeghanArcuri). Welcome to the HWA’s Women in Horror Month…

Black Heritage in Horror: Interview with Paula Ashe

Paula D. Ashe (she/her) is an author of dark fiction. Her debut collection — We Are Here to Hurt Each Other — was released in early ‘22 by Nictitating Books. She is a member of the Horror Writers Association and an Associate Editor for Vastarien: A Literary Journal. She lives in the Midwest (which is best) with her family. What inspired you to start writing? I’ve had the compulsion since childhood. I never wanted to do anything else. What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it? Since childhood I’ve been drawn to things that have a…

Black Heritage in Horror: Interview with Tamika Thompson

Tamika Thompson is a writer, producer, and journalist. She is author of speculative fiction collection, Unshod, Cackling, and Naked (Unnerving Books, 2023), which Publishers Weekly calls “powerful,” “unsettling,” and “terrifying,” as well as author of horror novella Salamander Justice (Madness Heart Press). Her work has appeared in several speculative fiction anthologies as well as in Interzone, Prairie Schooner, The New York Times, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. She has producing credits at Clear Channel Media and Entertainment, as well as at NBC and ABC News. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Columbia University…

Black Heritage in Horror: Interview with Tracy Cross

Tracy Cross’s work has been featured in several podcasts and mass market anthologies. Her first book, Rootwork, was published by Dark Hart Publishing in 2022. She lives in Washington, DC, and is an active member of the HWA. She loves disco and shares her latest exploits and information on my blog: tracycwritesonline.com. She is on instagram as tracycrosswrites and twitter as tracycwrites. What inspired you to start writing? Subconsciously, it was a lack of representation and a lack of finding the books I wanted. I grew up in the 80's and there were hardly any black writers, outside of academia.…

Black Heritage in Horror: Interview with Mo Moshaty

Mo Moshaty is an Afro-Latina screenwriter, author and producer. Raised within the clash of her mother's Yaqui heritage and her father's strict Southern Baptist upbringing, Mo's work contains worlds in which characters of color strive for identity, sentiment, and belonging within the dark psychological horror genre. Co-founder of the Nyx Horror Collective, she’s partnered with Stowe Story Labs to provide a fellowship for women genre writers over 40 and has also partnered with horror streaming giant, Shudder Channel, to co-produce the 13 Minutes of Horror Film Festival 2021 and 2022. Still engaging with her first love, short horror literature, her…

Black Heritage in Horror: Interview with Candace Nola

Candace Nola is an award-winning horror & dark fiction author. Her work includes Breach, Beyond the Breach (2021 novel of the year from the Horror Authors Guild), Hank Flynn, Bishop, and Earth vs The Lava Spiders. She curated and edited The Baker’s Dozen, the Splatterpunk award-winning, extreme horror anthology, in Dec. 2021. She has various poems and short stories published in several magazines and anthologies with more set to release in the next year. She owns and operates the horror website UncomfortablyDark.com which showcases her work and supports the indie horror community as a whole. The website features weekly author…

Black Heritage in Horror: Interview with Donyae Coles

Donyae Coles is a horror author who has been published in a variety of short fiction venues. She devotes her free time to her other great love, art. Her debut, Midnight Rooms, is forthcoming from Amistad. You can find more of her work on her website, www.donyaecoles.com and follow her on Twitter @okokno. What inspired you to start writing? Writing was always something that I’ve wanted to do, that have been doing, for a long time. Forever, maybe. There’s no moment outside of me where it was like, oh, I can do that? It’s always been, I wanna tell stories…

Black Heritage in Horror: Interview with Ashon Ruffins

Ashon Ruffins is a native New Orleanian and a military Veteran. He earned a Master’s Degree in Business Administration, while also holding certifications for several other pro-fessions. He loves the art of storytelling in all genres and believes the best lessons in life can be told through fiction. Descent of a Broken Man is his debut novel. Ashon is also a huge mental health advocate. Ashon is married and the father of two beautiful children. He also has a passion for the culinary arts. He has to go now—his kids are waiting for him to cook. Social Media: Twitter: @lifethrufiction…

Black Heritage in Horror: Interview with KC Loesener

I’m KC Loesener, author of The Eve of Darkness and several horror short stories. Proud introvert, bird lover, and a huge horror fan. On Youtube and Instagram, I am @kcfinalgirl, a horror content creator and writing coach, teaching new writers to focus and write their manuscripts in four months via kcloesener.com Besides writing horror, I love a good ghost story. The paranormal, vampires, and werewolves exhilarate me. I love punk and grunge, and I desperately miss the 90s. Superhero movies and comics are a necessity. I enjoy creating complex characters that rise to discover themselves.   What inspired you to start…