Eric J. Guignard has gone from a short story writer to an acclaimed and award-nominated novelist (for his first novel, 2019’s Doorways to the Deadeye) to an editor and small press publisher (Dark Moon Books). Eric oversees two book lines that offer insight into horror’s history: Exploring Dark Short Fiction, which provides primers to various writers; and the Horror Writers Association’s Haunted Library of Horror Classics (co-edited with Leslie S. Klinger).

Don’t miss this conversation between the team of editors and writers behind three amazing linked projects exploring the representation of women of Asian heritage in horror writing and their shared Asian heritage. The books discussed include: Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women, an anthology of Southeast Asian horror short fiction; Tortured Willows: Bent. Bowed. Unbroken, an anthology of Asian horror poetry; and Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror, a collection of personal essays forthcoming Feb. 2023.

Cynthia “Cina” Pelayo is an International Latino Book Award winning and three-time Bram Stoker Award-nominated poet and author. She is the author of Loteria, Santa Muerte, The Missing, and Poems of My Night, all of which have been nominated for International Latino Book Awards. Poems of My Night was also nominated for an Elgin Award. Her recent collection of poetry, Into the Forest and All the Way Through explores true crime, that of the epidemic of missing and murdered women in the United States, and was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award and Elgin Award.

Taylor Grant has developed and written children’s series, including the animated Beetlejuice; he worked alongside the legendary Stan Lee at Stan Lee Media; he’s written short films (The Vanished and Sticks and Stones) that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival; and his work as a writer of short horror fiction has garnered him two Bram Stoker Award nominations.

Up and coming author Eric LaRocca (he/they) is the author of the runaway hit novella Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and The Strange Thing We Become and Other Dark Tales.

In the fall of 2019, a remarkable book called Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction was published by Quirk Books. What was so remarkable about it? It was the first overview of the importance of women to the horror genre that was not aimed at academics . . . despite the fact that the book’s authors, Lisa Kröger (Ph.D. in Gothic Literature) and Melanie R. Anderson (assistant professor of English at Delta State University), were both largely academic writers.

Outgoing Nightmare editor John Joseph Adams and incoming editor Wendy N. Wagner talk zombies, tropes, and the future of horror in this conversation. Don’t miss it!