July 2026
Kate Maruyama, Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Committee.
The sole purpose of The Seers’ Table monthly column is to introduce HWA members to the work of underrepresented demographic writers and editors whose work might not otherwise be viewed, using the broadest definition of the word underrepresented to include, but not limited to, gender, gender identity, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disabled and neurodiverse.
You can see any of The Seers’ Table posts since inception (March 2016) by going to the HWA main page and selecting the menu item “HWA Publications / Blogs / Seers’ Table”.
Such lovely summer reading this month, so between conferences, take a gander!
Kate Maruyama recommends:
Kylie Lee Baker is the Sunday Times bestselling author of dark fantasy and horror novels such as The Keeper of Night, The Scarlet Alchemist, and Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng which is a nominee for the Shirley Jackson Award. She grew up in Boston and has since lived in Atlanta, Salamanca, and Seoul. Her writing is informed by her heritage (Japanese, Chinese, and Irish), as well as her experiences living abroad as both a student and teacher. She has a BA in creative writing and Spanish from Emory University and a MS in library and information science degree from Simmons University.
Recommended reading: Bat Eater and Other Names, Mira Books, 2025
Excerpt:
On the other side of the world, New York is so empty it echoes. You can scream and the ghost of your voice will carry for blocks and blocks. The sound of footsteps lasts forever, the low hum of streetlights, a warm undercurrent that was always there, waiting, but no one could hear it until now. Delilah says it’s unnerving, but Cora likes the quiet, likes how much bigger the city feels, likes that the little lights from people’s apartment windows are the only hint of their existence, no one anything more than a bright little square in the sky.
What she doesn’t like is that she can’t find any toilet paper at the end of the world.
Apparently people do strange things when they’re scared of dying, and one of them is hoarding toilet paper. Delilah keeps talking, but Cora can’t hear her. The world rumbles as the train draws closer. The white light is too bright now, too sharp behind Delilah, and it illuminates her silhouette, carves her into the wet darkness. Delilah has a beautiful silhouette, the kind that men would have painted hundreds of years ago. Cora thinks about the Girl with a Pearl Earring, and the Mona Lisa, and all the beautiful women immortalized in oil paint, and wonders if they said cruel things too, if their words had mattered at all or just the roundness of their eyes and softness of their cheeks, if beautiful people are allowed to break your heart and get away with it.
The man appears in a flash of a black hoodie and a blue surgical mask.
He says two words and even though the train is rushing closer, a roaring wave about to knock them off their feet, these two words are perfectly clear, sharp as if carved into Cora’s skin.
Bat eater.
Cora has heard those words a lot in the past two months. The end of the world began at a wet market in Wuhan, they say, with a sick bat. Cora has never once eaten a bat, but it has somehow become common knowledge that Chinese people eat bats just to start plagues.
Cora only glances at the man’s face for a moment before her gaze snaps to his pale hand clamped around Delilah’s skinny arm like a white spider, crunching the polyester of her pink raincoat. Lost of men grab Delilah because she is the kind of girl that men want to devour. Cora thinks the man will try to kiss Delilah, or force her up the stairs and into a cab, or a thousand things better than what actually happens next.
You can learn more about Kylie at: https://www.Kylieleebaker.com
Follow her on Instagram @kylieleebaker
Kari J. Wolfe recommends:
Luisa Colón is a born-and-raised New Yorker, writer, journalist, editor, artist, and the author of two horror novels, Bad Moon Rising (2023) and The Burning Class (2025). Her third book, Kinderlieb, will be published in November 2026!
In 2025, she founded the nonprofit I, COMIC initiative. I, COMIC is a groundbreaking book with the mission of helping justice-impacted citizens engage with reading, art, and emotional regulation skills. She also wrote The Visitor’s Guide to Prison, a handbook for families with incarcerated loved ones.
She began her career as a writer and producer at New York magazine in the late 90s, and over the past 20+ years, her work has appeared in numerous print and online publications including the New York Times, New York, McSweeney’s, Parents, Family Circle, BuzzFeed, Vulture, Latina, USA Today, Good Housekeeping, and many more.
Recommended Reading: The Burning Class, Cemetery Dance Publications (2005)
Excerpt:
I have my doll with me the whole time.
I carry it to the restaurant. The big family party is being held in a space that’s below street level and has no windows. The restaurant itself is completely empty, which feels strange. We walk through the big room, weaving in between tables, and in the back there’s a door that opens to a narrow staircase. I’m clutching my doll with one hand and holding onto my mother with the other as we make our way down the stairs. I can hear family sounds of talking and laughing, and I smell food and cigarettes and the faintly musty scent of a basement.
All the grownups at the party make a fuss over me. They ask me how old I am, and I tell them I’m four years old. I’m a big girl. My parents instruct me to hug one relative after another, and one person pretends to try to take my doll away.
“Can I have your baby?” he says. It’s my father’s oldest brother, Uncle Gene, who we don’t usually see because he lives far away. “It’s such a nice baby.”
I can feel a nervous half-smile on my face as I say, “No.”
Everyone laughs.
After that, I stay close to Uncle Gene. He’s not a tall man, and his hair is a dull brown color. His face reminds me of a rabbit’s. When he pretended to try to take the doll away, he had a big, warm smile. Then it faded away and his expression has been stern ever since—standing on line at the table where all the food is spread out, fiddling with a cigarette lighter, listening to one of the other relatives talk about a distant relative’s sudden death. His wife and their two daughters are there but he barely interacts with them at all. I think if I stick with Uncle Gene, he might smile like that again. So I sit next to him and eat spaghetti, the plate balanced on my lap and the doll stuffed in the crook of my arm. I bring him an ashtray when he asks me to, and the grown-ups laugh and one of them says Gene always had a way with the ladies. I stand by his side when a cake is brought out and everyone sings to Cousin Margot. Uncle Gene goes off to have a whispered, smirking conversation with Margot’s husband, and I’m starting to feel tired so I sit on the stairs with my doll and watch everyone milling around, smoking, talking, drinking, eating.
Then suddenly Uncle Gene is standing right there, one arm up on the wall, his body angled towards me. “Is your baby getting tired, Analie?”
You can find Luisa Colón at luisaColon.com