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…

Women in Horror: Interview with Tina Pavlik

Tina Pavlik is a lifelong fan of horror and working on her first book series in the genre. She publishes dark fantasy and erotica in another life for Red Sage Publishing and Changeling Press. Her horror stories sometimes draw on her experiences as a historian, tour guide, and paranormal investigator of one of the most haunted locations in the U.S. She currently works in extras casting in television and film on projects like Amazon’s upcoming show The Peripheral and HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones. As an extra, she worked on Cinemax’s Banshee and Robert Kirkman’s Outcast and on films like Masterminds,…

Women in Horror: Interview with Emma J. Gibbon

Emma J. Gibbon is originally from Yorkshire in the U.K. and now lives in Midcoast Maine. She is an award-winning horror writer, Rhysling-nominated speculative poet, and librarian. Her debut fiction collection, Dark Blood Comes from the Feet, from Trepidatio Publishing, was one of NPR’s best books of 2020 and won the Maine Literary Book Award for Speculative Fiction. Her stories have appeared in The Dark Tome and Toasted Cake podcasts, and the anthologies, The Muse & The Flame, Wicked Haunted, Wicked Weird and is upcoming in 13 Haunted Houses. Her poetry has been published in the HWA Poetry Showcase Volume VIII, Strange Horizons, Liminality, Pedestal Magazine,…

Women in Horror: Interview with Christina Sng

Christina Sng is the two-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of A Collection of Dreamscapes (2020) and A Collection of Nightmares (2017). Her poetry, fiction, essays, and art have appeared in numerous venues worldwide, including Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Interstellar Flight Magazine, Penumbric, Southwest Review, and The Washington Post. Christina’s most recent title, Tortured Willows: Bent. Bowed. Unbroken (2021), is the Bram Stoker nominated collaborative poetry collection with Lee Murray, Angela Yuriko Smith, and Geneve Flynn. Visit her at christinasng.com and connect @christinasng. What inspired you to start writing? It feels like I’ve always been writing. I always had a pen and…

Women in Horror: Interview with Cindy O’Quinn

Cindy O’Quinn is a four-time Bram Stoker Award-nominated writer. Author of “Lydia”, from the Shirley Jackson Award-winning anthology: The Twisted Book of Shadows,  “The Thing I Found Along a Dirt Patch Road”, “A Gathering on the Mountain”, and “One and Done”. She is an Appalachian writer from the mountains of West Virginia. Steeped in folklore at an early age. Cindy now lives in the woods of northern Maine, on the old Tessier Homestead, which makes the ideal backdrop for writing her dark stories and poetry. Her work has been published or forthcoming in The Bad Book, HWA Poetry Showcase Vol…

Women in Horror: Interview for Jennifer McMahon

Jennifer McMahon is the New York Times bestselling author of eleven novels, including Promise Not to Tell and The Winter People. Her latest, The Children on the Hill, will be out in April. She lives in Vermont with her partner, Drea, and their daughter, Zella. What inspired you to start writing? I wrote my first short story in third grade, “The Haunted Meatball.” I still remember that rush I got when I realized I could sit down and create a world on paper where anything could happen – even a little boy being chased through the woods by a glowing meatball. I was hooked. I have been…

Women in Horror: Interview with Becky Spratford

Becky Spratford trains library staff all over the world on how to match books with readers through the local public library. She writes book reviews for Booklist and a horror review column for Library Journal. Known for her work with horror readers, Becky is the author of three books, most recently, The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Horror, Third Edition [ALA Editions, 2021]. She is a proud member of the Horror Writers Association and currently serves as the Association’s Secretary and organizer of their annual Librarians’ Day. You can follow Becky on Twitter @RAforAll. What inspired you to start writing? As long as I can remember…

Women in Horror: Interview with EV Knight

EV Knight is the author of the Bram Stoker Award-winning debut novel The Fourth Whore. She released her sophomore novel Children of Demeter as well as a novella, Partum in 2021. EV lives in one of America’s most haunted cities—Savannah, Ga. She is a huge fan of the Savannah Bananas and the beauty of Bonaventure Cemetery. When not out and about searching for the ghosts of the past, EV can be found at home with her husband Matt, her beloved Chinese Crested Gozer Augustus, and their three naughty sphynx cats. What inspired you to start writing? I found horror as…

Women in Horror: Interview with Geneve Flynn

Geneve Flynn is an award-winning fiction editor and author. Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women, which she co-edited with Lee Murray, won the 2020 Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson awards and shortlisted for the British Fantasy, Aurealis, and Australian Shadows awards. Geneve’s short stories have been published in various markets, including Flame Tree Publishing, PseudoPod, Crystal Lake Publishing & Black Spot Books, and Things in the Well. Her poetry appears in Tortured Willows: Bent, Bowed, Unbroken, a Bram Stoker Award-nominated collaboration with Christina Sng, Angela Yuriko Smith, and Lee Murray, and she has been nominated for both the Rhysling and…

Women in Horror: Interview with Jessica McHugh

Jessica McHugh is a novelist, poet, and internationally-produced playwright running amok in the fields of horror, sci-fi, young adult, and wherever else her peculiar mind leads. She's had twenty-five books published in thirteen years, including her bizarro romp, "The Green Kangaroos," her YA series, "The Darla Decker Diaries," and her Bram Stoker Award-Nominated blackout poetry collection, "A Complex Accident of Life." For more info about publications and blackout poetry commissions, please visit McHughniverse.com. Strange Nests at Apokrupha: https://apokrupha.com/product/strange-nests/ Strange Nests ebook/print at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Nests-Jessica-McHugh-ebook/dp/B09BBKQZSH IG/Twitter/TikTok: theJessMcHugh What inspired you to start writing? Reading! As a voracious reader of pretty much every genre since I…

Women in Horror: Interview with Gwendolyn Kiste

Gwendolyn Kiste is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens, Reluctant Immortals, Boneset & Feathers, And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe, Pretty Marys All in a Row, and The Invention of Ghosts. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Vastarien, Tor's Nightfire, Black Static, The Dark, Daily Science Fiction, Interzone, and LampLight, among others. Originally from Ohio, she now resides on an abandoned horse farm outside of Pittsburgh with her husband, two cats, and not nearly enough ghosts. Find her online at gwendolynkiste.com What inspired you to start writing? It feels like I’ve always been writing. I’ve been telling stories in…

Women in Horror: Interview with Brianna Malotke

Brianna Malotke is a freelance writer and member of the Horror Writers Association. Some of her most recent work can be found online at The Crypt, Witch House Amateur Magazine, and Sirens Call Publications. She has poetry in The Spectre Review and The Nottingham Horror Collective. She has work in the anthologies Beneath, Cosmos, The Deep, Beautiful Tragedies 2, and The Dire Circle. In April 2022 her poetry was included in the Women in Horror Poetry Showcase, Under Her Skin, published by Black Spot Books. In 2023 she will be a “Writer in Residence” at the Chateau d’Orquevaux in France. What inspired you to start writing? I had a wild childhood imagination and…