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Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Women in Horror Roundtable Discussion [Featuring Me]

This post originally appeared on the horror blog for February's celebration of women in horror month, but I was just re-reading what we had to say and I think it is also important to post here on the general blog.

This piece is not just about horror, it is about women as characters [both protagonists and as victims], it is about women as writers of popular fiction, and it is about helping readers discover titles [because they included me in the conversation]. It is about EDI issues from all angles of the book world and it is written by smart women who navigate these questions and concerns on a daily basis.

Please take a moment to read it. Details and link below.

Also, shout out to my friend and colleague Lila Denning, who is the colleague I mention in the piece when I refer to a conversation we had about how troubling it is that many of the plots in crime and horror are predicated on violence against women, and, equally as troubling, how people don't want to really talk about the problems with that.

Here is the original post with introductions on the roundtable participants and all the links.

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Lisa Morton, horror author and editor extraordinaire asked me to be a part of her Women in Horror Roundtable Interview for Nightmare Magazine's February Issue. The web version went live yesterday. Side note, for those of you who don't know Nightmare Magazine, I have talked about it before, but quickly, it is run by John Joseph Adams, speculative fiction editor superstar.

I want to thank Lisa for including the library perspective in this article. She has a great mix of awesome people here, and I am very proud of the product we have created together.

From the intro:
To celebrate Women in Horror Month 2019, I asked four excellent female writers and horror experts to join me for a roundtable discussion. Given how the genre seems to be expanding rapidly to include more women at all levels of experience and publishing, I tried to gather a group of women with a range of talents and experience. 
Linda Addison is an accomplished short story writer and editor, but she is probably known primarily as a poet. She is a recipient of the Horror Writers Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and is the only author with fiction in three landmark anthologies that celebrate African-American speculative writers: the award-winning anthology Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction, Dark Dreams I and II, and Dark Thirst. 
Joanna Parypinski made her first professional sale in 2011, and her short fiction has since appeared in the magazines NightmareBlack Static, and Vastarien, and anthologies including Haunted NightsThe Beauty of Death 2: Death by Water, and The War on Christmas. Forthcoming in 2019 is her novel Dark Carnival, and a middle grade tale in New Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. She also teaches English at Glendale Community College. 
Becky Spratford is the public library world’s most visible horror expert. She is the author of the American Library Association’s Reader’s Advisory Guide to Horror (published in a second edition in 2012), and maintains the acclaimed blog RA for All: Horror at raforallhorror.blogspot.com, as well as the original RA for All blog at raforall.blogspot.com. She was a Guest of Honor at StokerCon 2017, and she travels throughout the year talking to librarians about broadening their horror collections. 
Kaaron Warren is an Australian author whose work extends through four novels (Slights, Walking the Tree, Mistification, and The Grief Hole) and six short story collections, including the multi-award winning Through Splintered Walls. Her novella “Sky” from that collection won the Shirley Jackson Award and was shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award. It went on to win all three of the Australian genre awards, while The Grief Hole did the same thing in 2017. She has also taught writing workshops and mentored newer writers.

Click here to read the entire piece. We do not pull any punches here.

It makes for an excellent ending to a wonderful month.

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