Welcome back for the final installment of our Women in Horror Month roundtable! February went far too quickly this year!

The last couple weeks, we’ve discussed favorite female authors writing today along with challenges that women in horror face in the industry. Today, to wrap things up, let’s talk about the future of horror and what these seven amazing authors have in the works!

What are your hopes for the future of horror? In what ways could we all be striving to make the industry more equitable for everyone? 

CHRISTINA SNG: I hope to see exciting new ideas and stories bringing horror to the masses, like how Linda Addison’s poem inspired Jamal Hodge’s film MOURNING MEAL and how Josh Malerman’s BIRD BOX was simply revolutionary to me. And on that note, blind readings. That’s the most equitable way really. Let the work sell itself.

STEPHANIE M. WYTOVICH: I want to see a horror genre that is more inclusive and diverse (especially with our anthology TOCs), and I think we’re making strides to get there, but I also think we need to continue to be welcoming and supportive of book reviewers and all the work that they do for us. For instance, Ladies of Horror Fiction is doing a magnificent job of promoting and supporting women in the field, and then services like Nightworms, which is a monthly curated horror-to-read-and-review delivery service, is a unique approach to reading/reviewing, not to mention a wonderful marketing tool to/for our genre.

S.P. MISKOWSKI: We can all recognize that the genre has room to grow. Competitiveness in horror is self-defeating. It makes people look stupid and bitter. More diversity, a wider range of styles and approaches and experiences, can only make things more interesting.

Accept the fact that change requires action. A correction is needed before things become equal (and once that happens, we can stop trying so hard). This is where we are, on the verge of great changes, but we’re not there yet. To get there, you do have to plan some outreach. If you want talented women and people of color to contribute to your anthology, you might have to introduce yourself. You might have to be explicit in stating how open you are to diversity in fiction.

JULIA BENALLY: My hopes for the future of horror is that regardless of gender, people can publish good horror stories that send chills up the spine, that there won’t be anymore of this backbiting, statement-making, and offended-at-everything-under-the-sun bull crap that’s going on now, and that strong male and female characters can be accepted together, along with the weak ones, be whatever gender they may, and that writers can follow the one rule of writing that’s been torn down, that we can create whatever we want, and that every mold, old and new, can just be obliterated along with those who try to make molds. I think the best way is in the individual author’s hands. We don’t have to submit to this.

SABA SYED RAZVI: I’ve been really delighted by the popularity of spooky poetry and stories, lately. I hope that we continue to see more books of poetry, more collections of short fiction, more anthologies, and more novellas in the future. I’m pleased, too, that more films, television shows, and graphic novels are including the efforts of women. I love the idea that the horror industry can move toward a more equitable space. I hope that the field of horror continues to embrace the marginalized, the nonconformists, the weird, the rebellious, the unexpected. I hope it continues to embrace notions of intersectionality, transcendence, transgression, multiculturalism, gender equality in its topics, texts, and artworks in addition to its authors. The more we start to hear these varied voices tell stories, the more we are likely to hear what it is they are saying, too. I think that Speculative Literature in general, and Horror in particular, have always asked us to consider the things that challenge our senses of comfort, safety, and stability — and as long as we continue to push that envelope and do just that, instead of falling into formulaic traps that ask us to consider only purity of approach, or scarcity of expression, or conformist attitudes toward what frightens and delights us, we have a good chance of discovering newer kinds of horror — not just new monsters, but new approaches to the feeling of being alive, afraid, and energized by the fear that all of those things are as precarious as our ideas of what the world should be. As our world changes — and isn’t it always changing? — our awareness of what scares us in the world should change, too.

SARAH READ: I want to make sure Women in Horror Month is inclusive for all who identify as female in any way, to any extent, and it needs to work at being inclusive for women of color and women with disabilities, too. It needs to keep its focus intersectional, or it does more harm than good and shouldn’t exist at all. I hope that inclusiveness will enrich the genre with delicious new horrors of diverse imaginations.

EMILY B. CATANEO: Gatekeepers are so important. We are all socialized to respond to specific stories about specific types of characters, and oftentimes, that socialization corresponds to our identities. If our gatekeepers were all socialized to respond to the same kind of story, well, that won’t lead to breadth and variety in our genre. We need more gatekeepers from different backgrounds and with different tastes, and we also just need more: more magazines, more anthologies, more publishers. There’s room for all of us in this field; we simply need to make that room.

What’s next for you?

CHRISTINA SNG: I hope to finish my next poetry collection by the first half of the year which is ambitious because life gets pretty busy and I only have the night to work on my poetry. If I fall asleep, that time is gone so chocolate is my best friend. I also have a children’s chapbook to complete, a haiku book to finish editing, and a novel in three parts to begin. If only time turners exist…

STEPHANIE M. WYTOVICH: Right now, I’m finishing up an apocalyptic science fiction poetry collection titled, The Apocalyptic Mannequin, and it’s going on two years in the making right now, so it’s definitely my baby at the moment. I wanted to push myself to work on something new for my readers, and while there’s still a lot of my personal style in the book, the subject matter, approach, and themes are a tad different.

I’m also working to put out weird horror novelette this spring titled, The Dangers of Surviving a Slit Throat. This, too, is a bit different from me as it’s my first attempt at something bizzaro (ish), and it’s something that I’ve wanted to write ever since my aunt gifted me an antique radio. Matthew Revert did the cover art for it, too, so I’m beyond excited to put it in everyone’s hands soon!

S.P. MISKOWSKI: I’m writing a new novel, and I hope to have news about that in the coming year. Fingers crossed!

JULIA BENALLY: Writing is what’s next for me. “Pariahs” is out, and now I’m working on the second book, and trying to get a bunch of my other short stories published. Other than that, who knows what the future might bring.

SABA SYED RAZVI: I mentioned some of my ongoing projects earlier, so I think I’ll have psychopaths, robots and demonic faeries on the brain for a while. I’m working on some stories that have to do with magic/sorcery, necromancy, divination, genies, a series of poems about tarot cards, and a novel that isn’t itself horror but is all about people who love horror (and so it is maybe a sort of commentary on the social implications of how we transgress and transcend what we love when we love the shadows and the darkness). If all goes well for me, I hope that this will be a productive writing year, and that maybe during the next Women in Horror Month, I might be able to talk about some completed new projects! 🙂

SARAH READ: I’ll be doing lots to promote my new novel, of course, and I’ll be at StokerCon and WisCon this year. I’ve just sold my debut collection to Trepidatio, so I’ll be working on that as well! And I’ll be wrapping up edits on my second novel shortly and sending that off into the world. I’m currently writing my third novel. I’ve had a few short story invites for 2019, so hopefully those all come to fruition. Pantheon Magazine will be taking a short hiatus while our publisher finishes up a new degree (and while I do this three books in one year madness), so I’ll have a little more writing time this year! I plan to put it to good use. I’ll also be spending time in Denver, New Orleans, and Chicago, hawking books so I can buy more books.

EMILY B. CATANEO: I’m finishing up my second short story collection in the form of my MFA thesis; it’s called Vainglory and Other Stories, and it’s a mixture of realism, fantasy, and everything in between, but every story features a so-called “bad woman” (some of them misunderstood, some of them actually deeply flawed). I’m also working on a novel, as of yet untitled, about spooky happenings by the ocean. It promises to be very gothic.

And that’s our roundtable for this year! Tremendous thanks to these seven fabulous female authors! It was an absolute pleasure talking with each of them!

Happy reading, and happy Women in Horror Month!

So welcome back for the official kickoff of our Women in Horror Month Roundtable! I’ve already introduced my fabulous interviewees last week, so in the spirit of the season, let’s just charge forth, shall we?

First off, welcome to this year’s Women in Horror roundtable! Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your latest or forthcoming releases.

Stephanie M. Wytovich: Thank you so much for having me, Gwendolyn!

I’ve been working in the horror industry for a little over seven years now, and I write, teach, mentor, and tutor writing (fiction, poetry, and nonfiction) for a living. I’ve had five collections of poetry published through Raw Dog Screaming Press, one of which (Brothel) brought home the Bram Stoker Award in 2016. My graduate thesis, a religious horror/dark fantasy novel titled The Eighth was published in 2016 by Dark Regions Press, and it also helped earn me my MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University.

My latest book, Sheet Music to My Acoustic Nightmare came out in 2017 and it’s a collection of poetry that is more or less a confessional dirge filled with ghosts, heartache, and naturally, a little (just kidding—a LOT) of blood.

Christina Sng: Hi Gwendolyn! Thank you for inviting me to this year’s Women in Horror roundtable. I’ve been writing horror for as long as I can remember and began submitting work in 2000. My first sale was to Dreams and Nightmares. I took a decade off writing to raise my kids (not much of a multitasker I am) and returned with my first full-length dark poetry book A Collection of Nightmares and a science fiction chapbook Astropoetry in 2017. This year, I’m back to putting poems into collections and hoping they find a home.

S.P. Miskowski: I’m a fiction writer with a lifelong respect for horror. My childhood reading was eclectic, anything from Vladimir Nabokov to Ira Levin.

Generally speaking, my work is about the nightmares just below the surface of everyday life. Many of my main characters are women, often doing and saying things women are not supposed to—in other words, being human. I think equality means being respected, and perceived as human and therefore fallible. My obsessions are existential: What does it mean to be human in a universe entirely indifferent to humanity?

My latest book is a short novel, The Worst Is Yet to Come (published by JournalStone/Trepidatio). It’s a stand-alone horror story about two very different teenage girls and how they alter one another’s lives, but it overlaps with and is related to four previous books comprising the Skillute Cycle (published by Omnium Gatherum), set in a fictional town in Washington State.

Julia Benally: Hi, Gwen! Thanks for having me here. This is so much fun. So, a little about me. I’m an American Indian who used to have a fish. I love to cross-stitch, I enjoy singing, dancing in my room where nobody can see me, and I love driving through the mountains and listening to beautiful music, because it stirs my muse. So it drives me insane when someone gives me a ride and turns their music off so they can do small talk with me. As of now, I’m getting my second reprint for 2019. It’s called “Kittylyn,” and it will be featured in Another Realm Magazine. This little story kept getting rejected by editors left and right, and now suddenly it’s in demand. It’s almost like a Cinderella story, but I didn’t mean for it to be. Therefore, saying I had put my own twist on Cinderella wouldn’t be right. Also, my book Pariahs is out, and I am so excited, and thrilled, and I touch it and look at it every day, still not exactly sure if it’s a hallucination. This one’s about a twelve year old boy being terrorized by a fallen demon-killer who’s claimed him as his son. This world, and this story, is full of monsters and soulless creatures. I’ve seen it classed online as not only folk horror, but also adventure and thriller.

Sarah Read: Hi, I’m Sarah Read. I write horror and dark fantasy fiction. I have a few dozen short stories scattered about (soon to be unscattered into a collection from Trepidatio Publishing), and my first novel, The Bone Weaver’s Orchard, was just released. I’m also the editor for Pantheon Magazine. Our latest anthology, Gorgon: Stories of Emergence, has just come out and is not to be missed!

Saba Syed Razvi: Thank you so much for Inviting me to participate in this Roundtable. I think Women in Horror Month is such an important endeavor, and I’m honored to be here — and to hear about the experiences and thoughts of the other panelists!

I’m a writer who feels an interest in the intersecting spaces among and between genres, ideas, and experiences, so I find that my own work overlaps many spaces, but tends to find itself most usually settled in darkness and in shadow. Not that I’m into being morbid for its own sake, necessarily, but I find a certain beauty in the grotesque, and in the ways in which we approach the macabre and the morbid, the ephemeral and the phantasmagoric, the occult and the elusive. I tend to trace these threads in my work, no matter the genre, whether I am working on academic scholarship, short fiction, essays, or poetry. I like the weird and the strange, the way it nudges us out of the ordinary into something more real. It is my hope that my feelings of fascination come across in the work I write, too. I feel that language is in many ways itself haunted, that it haunts me, too…and I think that comes through in my work. My most recent collection of poetry is “heliophobia”, and I’ve been really enjoying the chance to give readings from it. I’m recording some of the poems for those who may want to hear them, and posting them on SoundCloud at times; that’s been an interesting project because I don’t have any experience with recording, but I have a great enthusiasm for giving readings!

As far as new material goes… I have a few things in the works, at the moment, but they are in process, which is an exciting phase to be in. I’m finishing up work on a long collection, a cycle of poems that center around a man who has murdered his wife and is sculpting a replacement of her…sort of erasing her consciousness rather than uploading or preserving it; the work focuses on the notion of artificial intelligence, and how our own biases inform the way we can know things, the way we define them or delineate between them, the way we attempt to negotiate our fears through our relationship to them, and it pays a lot of attention to the idea of dissection, taxonomies, destruction, and disempowerment, of a fear and terror born of powerlessness. It focuses on a darkness that is somewhere between the exhilaration of experiment and the clandestine cover-up of a crime, building its fragmentary narrative through currents of violence and violent impulse, as investigated through the materiality of the language and the flat plane of the page. I’m also working on completing a long poem about a predatory game hunter and a ghostly faerie woman that he has captured; it takes place in a castle in Ireland, along the Blackwater (a river) and tackles ideas about freedom and domestic imprisonment, the monstrosity of obligatory motherhood as a stifling condition, and the desperation in magic borne of captivity. Lately, I’m interested in this space between magic and making, and my short fiction is wading its way through representations of madness and the occult. I’m really drawn to the paranormal in my short fiction, so I hope to share a bit of that in the forthcoming year, too.

So, I think I have a lot of things sort of…. in the works, but they may be a little while in the works before I can say they are forthcoming.

Emily B. Cataneo: Thank you so much for putting this together, Gwendolyn! I’m a writer and journalist originally from New England and currently based in Raleigh, North Carolina. My stories fall into several different literary categories—fantasy, realism, magical realism, etc.—but almost all of them are tinged with some kind of creepy, gothic, or horror element. If you’d like to check out some of my recent work, you can read a piece of mine in Nightmare called “Seven Steps to Beauty for a Girl Named Avarice,” which is about murderous witches, or a reprint that just came out in Lightspeed, called “The Emerald Coat and Other Wishes,” which is about a coat that transports its wearers to a realm from which they can never return.

How did you first learn about Women in Horror Month, and what are your thoughts on it? Do you think over its decade of existence that it’s helped to raise visibility for female horror creators?

Stephanie M. Wytovich: I got on the WiHM train back in 2014 after I graduated with my MFA, and I thought that it was such a fantastic concept to highlight women and their work in the horror industry. Mind you, I think every month should be WiHM, i.e. we shouldn’t stop celebrating women’s voices when February is over and long gone, but I do like the concentrated support it gives everyone.

And sure, it’s frustrating that we still need something like this, but for better or worse, I think anything that showcases new/seasoned voices and allows women to be seen and heard is a good thing.

Christina Sng: I first learned about Women in Horror Month on Facebook. I think it is awesome and there’s a sense of sisterhood around it, which I love. It has definitely raised visibility for female horror creators and it’s wonderful to see.

S.P. Miskowski: Like most people, I heard about WiHM via social media. I tend not to think of myself while writing. By that I mean I don’t think of myself as a person who fits a category. So a reminder that, in fact, my writing may be identified (by the world) by my gender—this is always startling, at first. Then I remember, “Oh right, I have this layer of identity, like a bulky suitcase, to carry around with me. People who see me will reduce me to this one thing and make assumptions about my gender, my age, my life, my beliefs.” It’s a pain in the ass.

Of course we all deal with this, all people have to deal with some degree of objectification. People of color face many more assumptions about who and what they are. The world is a place where you’re constantly told who you’re supposed to be, and anything you do to upset the status quo counts against you. The smaller the community in which you reside, the more that community tries to keep you in one category because it makes life simpler.

I don’t know how much WiHM has helped. Has it made women horror writers more visible? Maybe. Does it let people off the hook, so they only have to think about women in the genre once a year? Probably. Is it an annual reminder that a shocking number of people can still only name two or three women—all dead—who wrote horror? Definitely.

Julia Benally: So the first time I ever heard of Women in Horror was from you, Gwen. I was totally confused about it, but now I think it’s really fun. I like having a month dedicated to women horror writers. I’m pretty sure it has raised visibility, because now lots of people know about it, and it’s their chance to find new authors to read, and for authors to find new readers. That’s the most important to us authors than anything else.

Sarah Read: I don’t remember exactly how I learned about WiHM. Twitter, probably? I do think it has increased visibility, yes. Women in Horror Month lists and features were the first places my name ever appeared as a horror author, and it’s where I’ve discovered other names that have since become some of my favorite authors. From an editor’s perspective, I know those lists are a great place to look when I’m reaching out to writers for new work.

Saba Syed Razvi: I first learned about Women in Horror Month through the Horror Writers Association! I hadn’t known anyone else who was involved in it or who worked with it, but a stray mention on the website caught my attention.

Right away, I loved the idea of celebrating women in horror, especially because, so often, women are victimized by horrific and violent acts or creatures in horror stories and film. Because I am interested in how gender is represented in literature and pop culture, and also how it plays a part in the ways in which we interpret it, I found myself immediately fascinated. A simple search on YouTube brought up so many videos that I really enjoyed watching and listening to — and brought my attention to so many writers whose works I had not yet read. I was pretty excited about that. Because my emphasis has traditionally been on the mainstream or experimental “literary” approach, and often moored in academic presses, I hadn’t encountered many of the names or books mentioned. Women in Horror Month also opened up my awareness of indie publishing in a big way, too. And, I imagine that when people stumble across the idea, they suddenly have at their fingertips a lot more resources than they knew about before.

I definitely think it has brought more visibility to the female creators of horror — but I also think it has built a sort of community, an awareness that women’s voices do matter in this space, the validation of the idea that horror can be much more than simple male aggression, that Medea is just as scary as Freddy Krueger and therefore just as meaningful however disparate they seem, and a sense of dynamism that invites more participation. For me, knowing that a designated month existed in which we could honor women in the field reminded me of all the nuances of it, the many ways in which horror could be enlivened, shared, and appreciated. I can say that my searches online since that first discovery have introduced me to the work of many writers whose material I would not have encountered otherwise, many frameworks for exploring and discussing them that I did not have before. As a movement, it has brought not only awareness and visibility for women writers and creators of horror, but also a reminder that these voices are not anomalous interlopers, but artists who should be celebrated. I love the positivity of the movement!

Emily B. Cataneo: I think Women in Horror Month is something that shouldn’t have to exist; in a perfect world, we wouldn’t need it. However, we don’t live in a perfect world, and I do think that Women in Horror Month has helped raise visibility for female horror creators over the past decade. I also think that the publishing industry as a whole, although it has a very long way to go, has slowly started to awaken to its representation problems. It could be that Women in Horror Month is part of a larger shift in the industry. Is this a lasting change? I certainly hope so.

So that’s part one of our interview series! Head on back here next week for even more Women in Horror Month celebration!

Happy reading!

Welcome to February, and more importantly, welcome to Women in Horror Month! I am super thrilled that I’m once again doing a roundtable interview series to celebrate the month!

So before I start unveiling the Q&A next week, allow me to introduce our incredible authors who are part of this year’s interview series!

Julia Benally began on a dark and stormy night on the Fort Apache Reservation. She loves to run around in the mountains, snow is her element, and wonders at strange people who love the desert. In 2009, she graduated from Brigham Young University in Utah and began her long painful climb up the writing mountain. Her book Pariahs came out almost without her knowing because she wasn’t sure how to work the publishing button, and went through a slight panic attack. She’s been published in several magazines over the years, including The Horror Zine, Hellbound-books’ anthology Graveyard Girls, Liquid Imagination and Enthralled Magazine.

Emily B. Cataneo is a writer and journalist. Her work has appeared in magazines such as Nightmare, Lightspeed, The Dark, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and her debut short fiction collection, Speaking to Skull Kings and Other Stories, was released from Journalstone in 2017. She calls New England home, and is currently based in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she’s completing her MFA at North Carolina State University. She’s a 2013 Odyssey Writing Workshop and a 2016 Clarion Writers Workshop graduate. She likes hats, crafts, and dogs.

S.P. Miskowski is a recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. Her stories have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies including Haunted Nights, The Madness of Dr. Caligari, Darker Companions: Celebrating 50 Years of Ramsey Campbell, and The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Ten. Her second novel, I Wish I Was Like You, was named This Is Horror 2017 Novel of the Year, received a Charles Dexter Award from Strange Aeons, and was a finalist for a Bram Stoker Award. Her books have received three Shirley Jackson Award nominations. Her latest novel, The Worst Is Yet to Come, is available from JournalStone/Trepidatio.

Saba Syed Razvi is the author of the Elgin Award nominated collection In the Crocodile Gardens (Agape Editions) and the new collection heliophobia (Finishing Line Press), which appeared on the preliminary ballot for the Stoker Award, as well as the chapbooks Limerence & Lux (Chax Press), Of the Divining and the Dead (Finishing Line Press), and Beside the Muezzin’s Call & Beyond the Harem’s Veil (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have appeared in several literary journals, as well as in anthologies such as Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of Peace, Voices of Resistance: Muslim Women on War Faith and Sexuality, The Loudest Voice Anthology, The Liddell Book of Poetry, Political Punch: Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Identity, The Rhysling Anthology, Dreamspinning, & The Horror Writers Poetry Showcase Volume V. Her poems have been nominated for the Elgin Award, the Bettering American Poetry Awards, The Best of the Net Award, the Rhysling Award, and have received a 2015 Independent Best American Poetry Award. She is currently an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Houston in Victoria, TX, where in addition to working on scholarly research on interfaces between contemporary poetry and science, on mysticism in speculative and horror literature, she is writing new poems and fiction.

Sarah Read is a dark fiction writer in the frozen north of Wisconsin. Her short stories can be found in Gamut, Black Static, and other places, and in various anthologies including Exigencies, Suspended in Dusk, BEHOLD! Oddities Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders, and The Best Horror of the Year vol 10. Her novel The Bone Weaver’s Orchard is now out from Trepidatio Publishing, and her debut collection will follow in late 2019. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Pantheon Magazine and of their associated anthologies, including Gorgon: Stories of Emergence. She is an active member of the Horror Writers Association. When she’s not staring into the abyss, she knits. Keep up with her at www.inkwellmonster.wordpress.com.

Christina Sng is an award-winning poet, writer, and artist. Her work has appeared in numerous venues worldwide, including Apex Magazine, Dreams and Nightmares, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, New Myths, and Polu Texni. She is the author of the Bram Stoker Award winning A COLLECTION OF NIGHTMARES (Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2017) and Elgin Award winner ASTROPOETRY (Alban Lake Publishing, 2017). Her poems received nominations in the Rhysling Awards, the Dwarf Stars, as well as honorable mentions in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and the Best Horror of the Year. Christina is also an avid gardener and an accomplished musician, and can be found most days in a dark corner deadheading her flowers while humming Vivaldi to the swaying branches. Visit her at http://www.christinasng.com and connect on social media @christinasng.

Stephanie M. Wytovich is an American poet, novelist, and essayist. Her work has been showcased in numerous anthologies such as Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories, Fantastic Tales of Terror, Year’s Best Hardcore Horror: Volume 2, The Best Horror of the Year: Volume 8, as well as many others.

Wytovich is the Poetry Editor for Raw Dog Screaming Press, an adjunct at Western Connecticut State University, Southern New Hampshire University, and Point Park University, and a mentor with Crystal Lake Publishing. She is a member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, an active member of the Horror Writers Association, and a graduate of Seton Hill University’s MFA program for Writing Popular Fiction. Her Bram Stoker Award-winning poetry collection, Brothel, earned a home with Raw Dog Screaming Press alongside Hysteria: A Collection of Madness, Mourning Jewelry, An Exorcism of Angels, and Sheet Music to My Acoustic Nightmare. Her debut novel, The Eighth, is published with Dark Regions Press.

Follow Wytovich at https://www.stephaniemwytovich.com/ and on twitter @SWytovich.

So those are the seven fabulous women that I’ll be featuring in the coming weeks! As always, be sure to head on back here throughout February for all the interview goodness!

Happy reading, and happy Women in Horror Month