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Tag archive: interview [ 26 ]

Women In Horror Month 2024 : An Interview with Lori R. Lopez

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What inspired you to start writing?

I suspect it had something to do with following Alice down the rabbit hole. And through the Looking-Glass. Maybe all of the times I checked out Where The Wild Things Are from the Public Library (starting before I could read). Maybe listening to the grimmest Fairytales, The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow, “The Raven” and “The Highwayman”. Maybe learning to read and finding my life transformed by books — each cover I opened, a doorway to someplace new and thrilling! Possibly my Frankenstein Book Report, which I read aloud in class, and the Principal led me down the hall so I could watch him post the paper in a glass case outside the School Office. Maybe winning Third Place in a scholastic competition with a Werewolf Play in Seventh Grade. But I was already writing stories, poems, and plays at home — all illustrated. You see, it was not any one thing, nor any single defining moment. Writing has long consumed me. I started a Horror Novel in High School and never finished. The pages are lost, yet I still remember the first line: “It was the total dark of the universe.” Teachers, Librarians too, told me since I was small that I should be an artist or a writer. And I believed them. So here I am. 

What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it?

Childhood being a rather dark and murky place, a black-and-white world of intense shadows and the blinding glare of people who could not be trusted . . . the Horror Genre nonetheless appealed and consoled, whispered to me at night and told me that this was where I belonged....

Women In Horror Month 2024 : An Interview with Willow Dawn Becker

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Willow Dawn Becker

What inspired you to start writing?

I learned to read really young when I was just 3 or 4, and I had this huge imagination. I just wanted to create. The very first book I ever wrote and published, I did when I was just 5 years old. It was a book of poetry, which is funny because I don’t think I had even read any poetry at that time. I just loved words and using them to make pretty things. I guess I still do.

What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it?

When I was young, I remember that we lived in a crappy trailer. At night, the wind would howl against my window screen and make this terrible howling noise.

Women In Horror Month 2024 : An Interview with Yvette Tan

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Yvette Tan

What inspired you to start writing?

I started writing the same way a lot of authors do: I couldn’t find stories that I wanted to read, so I had to write them myself. I grew up in a Chinese Filipino Evangelical Christian household and went to a Catholic all-girls school, which means I grew up more repressed than your average lady. I was made fun of for liking to read (a cousin actually laughed at me for spending my summers reading, for example) for wanting to write, and especially for wanting to write horror. It wasn't an easy journey, but it was also fun. I actually didn't know I was writing horror. I had an interest in the paranormal so I wrote what I wanted to write. A friend had to physically take me aside and explain that what I was writing was horror. When my first story was published in a national newspaper, my mom, a devout Christian, told everyone about it without knowing what I had written. Some church people actually read it and complained to my mom that it gave them nightmares. She was horrified that her eldest daughter would shame her in that way, to the point that on the day of the launch of my first book, she said, “Why can’t you write Christian books?” Those were the only words she spoke to me that day. She's proud of me now, sure, but only because everyone else is proud of me and not because she thinks I did anything noteworthy...

Women In Horror Month 2024 : An Interview with Pamela K. Kinney

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What inspired you to start writing?

I wanted to be a writer and began writing stories as early as age eight. Mainly for myself since there were no options for getting published as a child. Years later, when I took a writing class for science fiction, fantasy, and horror in my junior year at El Cajon Valley High School, the teacher encouraged me to submit a story of mine for a writing contest he knew of. I began checking the writers’ guide in the local library to find places to submit some of my poetry. Three poems of mine, “The Horse”, “Sands of Time”, and “The Leopard” were accepted, and after signing a contract to publish them in the poetry magazine Hyacinths and Biscuits, I received my first check. I was only 17 and a couple of months from graduating high school. I began writing more poetry and short stories, publishing more poetry, and even an article that ended up in True Story Magazine in the 70s. But I did not publish my first story, which happened to be a horror story, until 2000. 

What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it?

I read horror stories; how can one not when Edgar Allan Poe and other writers of his era, Bram Stoker, Sir Author Conan Doyle, Mary Shelley, Washinton Irving, Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and J. Sheridan Le Fanu who wrote dark stories, were taught in the English classes I took from junior high to college.

Women In Horror Month 2024 : An Interview with Linda Watkins

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What inspired you to start writing?

I’ve been writing in some fashion or other ever since I was a kid. My older sister and I used to write scripts (mostly parodies) for some of the more popular TV shows of the day. When I got older, I wrote poems or songs for my family or myself. In my work for the Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at Stanford, I used my writing talent to write “long forms.” These were documents that were used for appointments and promotions in the professoriate. My boss hated writing them, so I would draft them for him. I could mimic his style perfectly and no one ever knew that it was me who wrote them! I didn’t start doing anything seriously until after I retired and moved with my dogs to an unconnected island off the coast of Maine. The creation of my first novel, Mateguas Island coincided with the invention of the iPad. Living on a small island and being dependent on ferry service, gives one a lot of downtime – waiting for the ferry, riding on the ferry, etc. With the iPad, I could use this time to write, and write I did. The setting for the story of Mateguas Island was patterned on the island I lived on. Actually, the house the Andersen’s inherit is based on the 150-year-old house that I lived in. I published Mateguas in 2014 and was surprised by its success. After that, it’s been about a book a year for me. ...More...

Women In Horror Month 2024 : An Interview with J.L. Delozier

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What inspired you to start writing? 

Burnout and boredom. Seriously, though, I always loved to write – submitted my first sci-fi short story to Asimov’s Magazine when I was in elementary school! (It was kindly rejected.) Then I got busy with my medical training and career, and only after I was nearing middle age and retirement did I decide I’d damn well get that book written – I wasn’t getting any younger! ...More...

Women In Horror Month 2024 : An Interview with Gwendolyn N Nix

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What inspired you to start writing?

It’s difficult to pinpoint that definitive moment when the lightbulb went on, I picked up the quill, and I decided I was going to become a writer. But I do remember being very, very young, enamored with books, and was devoted to certain literary characters. There was a lot of inspiration building in the background, some of which seem quite obvious when I look back on it. Dragonlance books where the evil mage became my favorite; watching the film 13 Ghosts and loving what I perceived to be the tarot-esque identities of the ghosts; a Girl Scouts camping trip where we discovered an abandoned cabin rife with haunted house vibes and I entered it alone; folklore told around a campfire about the monsters lurking in our state’s backyard. I remember wanting these stories (even my own experiences) to go deeper, darker, to be even more one-of- a-kind. I love that little thrill, that feeling of discovery where things take a turn into the unexpected. Sure, perhaps the knight is the darling of the realm, but what if he’s secretly bound to an endless god of destruction? Soon, it was like all these experiences and stories had gathered into my brain’s immense magpie-bird treasure chest with nowhere to go, and no outlet. The only solution was to let them free with the pen. And, then I had the liberty to take those stories where I’d always wanted them to go: a place where the anticipation and build-up became immense and I could create things I’d never ever thought possible. ...More...

Women In Horror Month 2024 : An Interview with Eda Easter

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What inspired you to start writing?

Growing up an only child on an isolated horse farm in Texas, I amused myself reading and wandering in nature. The farm animals and barn cats became my captive audience, I’d either read stories to them or tell them stories I made up. Writing the stories down became the next step for me. ...More...

Women In Horror Month 2024 : An Interview with Kate Maruyama

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What inspired you to start writing?

I was telling stories, and acting out plays with friends before I could write. Then when I could write, my mom started paying me $2 a page to egg me on. I haven’t been paid so well since! Once I got to about four pages, she stopped paying. I never stopped writing. ...More...

Latinx Heritage in Horror: Interview with Ashley Dioses

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Ashley Dioses is a writer of dark poetry and fiction from southern California.  She is the author of Diary of a Sorceress, a collection of dark fantasy and horror poetry, and The Withering, a collection of psychological horror and supernatural horror poetry.  Her third and latest collection, Darkest Days and Haunted Ways was just released from Jackanapes Press.  Her poetry has appeared in Weird Fiction Review, Cemetery Dance Publications, Weirdbook, Black Wings VI: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror, and others.  Her poem “Cobwebs,” was mentioned in Ellen Datlow’s recommended Best Horror of the Year Volume Twelve list. She has also appeared in the Horror Writers Association Poetry Showcases 2016 and 2020 for her poems “Ghoul Mistress” and “Her Heart that Flames Would Not Devour” respectively.  She was also a nominee for the 2019 Pushcart Prize.  She is an Active member in the HWA and a member of the SFPA. ...More...

Latinx Heritage in Horror: Interview with Leticia Urieta

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Leticia Urieta (she/her/hers) is a Tejana writer from Austin, TX. She is a teaching artist in the greater Austin community and the Program Director of Austin Bat Cave, a literary community serving students in the Austin area, as well as the co-director of Barrio Writers Austin and Pflugerville, a free creative writing program for youth. Leticia is also a freelance writer. She is a graduate of Agnes Scott College and holds an MFA in Fiction writing from Texas State University. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Chicon Street Poets, Lumina, The Offing, Kweli Journal, Medium, Electric Lit and others. Her chapbook, The Monster was published in 2018 from LibroMobile Press. Her hybrid collection, Las Criaturas, was a finalist for the Sergio Troncoso Award for Best First Book of Fiction 2022 from the Texas Institute of Letters, and is out now from FlowerSong Press. ...More...

Latinx Heritage in Horror: Interview with Pedro Iniguez

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Pedro Iniguez is a Mexican-American horror and science-fiction writer from Los Angeles, California. He is a Rhysling Award finalist and has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Award for his speculative poetry. His fiction and poetry has appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Never Wake: An Anthology of Dream Horror, Shadows Over Main Street 3, A Night of Screams: Latino Horror Stories, Worlds of Possibility, Tiny Nightmares, Star*Line, Speculative Fiction for Dreamers, and Infinite Constellations, among others. He can be found online at www.pedroiniguezauthor.com ...More...

Latinx Heritage in Horror: Interview with Fernanda Castro

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Fernanda Castro is a Brazilian writer from Recife, also a freelance translator and copyeditor. Her work has appeared before in Strange Horizons and The Dark Magazine. You can find her on social media as @fernandaversa.

Photographer’s credit: Thais Lima

What inspired you to start writing?

I read a lot as a child, especially fantasy, under the influence of my older sister. Being always immersed in stories, writing was a natural development for me. I made fanfics where my school friends and I lived adventures in fictional worlds (Legolas, sorry to break your heart, sweetie, but I’ve grown up). However, the idea of writing professionally and sharing these stories with the world only came much later, as an adult, when I started to have contact with professionals in the field. Here in Brazil, the publishing market is a very restricted niche, it is not a career option that you can choose at college, for example. ...More...

Latinx Heritage in Horror: Interview with Lisa M. Bradley

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Originally from South Texas, Lisa M. Bradley now lives in Iowa, the traditional homeland of the Iowa, Meskwaki, and Sauk Nations, among others. Her work has been featured on the LeVar Burton Reads podcast and in venues such as Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Uncanny, and The Moment of Change: An Anthology of Feminist Speculative Poetry. She has poetry forthcoming in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Her short fiction and poetry collection is The Haunted Girl (Aqueduct Press). Her debut novel is Exile (Rosarium Publishing). Learn more at her website or follow her on Bluesky @cafenowhere.bsky.social. ...More...

Latinx Heritage in Horror: Interview with John C. Mannone

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John C. Mannone has poems in Windhover, North Dakota Quarterly, Poetry South, Baltimore Review, and others. He won the SFPA Dwarf Stars Award (2020), was awarded an HWA Scholarship (2017) and a Jean Ritchie Fellowship (2017) in Appalachian literature, and served as celebrity judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018). His full-length collections are Disabled Monsters (Linnet’s Wings Press, 2015), Flux Lines (Linnet’s Wings Press, 2022), Sacred Flute (Iris Press, 2023), and Song of the Mountains (Middle Creek Publishing, 2023). He edits poetry for Abyss & Apex and other journals. He’s a college professor of physics & chemistry, who just accepted a more challenging assignment to teach mathematics to high schoolers in a Knox County magnet academy in Tennessee. ...More...

Latinx Heritage in Horror: Interview with Luisa Colón

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Photo credit: Stephanie Augello

Born and raised in New York City, Luisa began her career as a journalist in the late 90s; her work has appeared in numerous print and online publications such as New York, Latina, USA Today, The New York Times, and many more. Her other creative work includes illustration and two murals currently displayed at the World Trade Center. Inspired by her fascination with the cinema, Luisa also made a brief but successful foray into acting, starring in the award-winning 2006 indie film Day Night Day Night as well as the titular role in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2007 short film Anna. ...More...

Latinx Heritage in Horror: Interview with Samaire Wynne

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Samaire Wynne is a Puerto Rican author of over 20 novels in various genres, including horror and urban fantasy. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Black Raven Books. A longtime Californian, you can find her skulking about in southern Virginia. If you were to visit her at twilight, she might serve you flower tea or butter whiskey on her back deck. If she excused herself and strolled into the forest, you might be tempted to wander after her. Past a stream, you’d see a stone well at the edge of her property, and you might hear voices coming from deep inside. ...More...

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