Black Heritage in Horror Month 2024: An Interview With Kenya Moss-Dyme
What inspired you to start writing?
Probably my love for reading! I’ve always loved books and learned to read at age four. I was one of the kids who read every book in the classroom library and got special permission to read at advanced levels. So, when my elementary school held a writing contest, I was eager to enter a story that I’d handwritten about a cricket astronaut who wanted to go to the moon (I’ll never forget that!). I won the contest and went on to enter each year – usually winning at least 1st or 2nd place throughout my school years. My first adult piece was the short story “Patchwork”, which I typed (on a typewriter) one day at work. I snail-mailed it to my retired high school teacher in Arizona and she gave me valuable feedback and lovingly kept it in her files for over 25 years. When we reconnected on Facebook, she sent it back to me and I published it as a “novelette” back in 2013. It now resides in my collection titled The Mixtape (2016).
