I bite off a lot this week, in a five-way conversation with editors and contributors to the ever-so-of-the-moment anthology The Black Girl Survives in This One. That’s a promise right there on the title page, but as you will find out, survival is not always the same thing as living happily ever after.

Saraciea J. Fennell, Desiree S. Evans, Monica Brashears & Eden Royce talk to me about the vision (and necessity) of the project and where their stories came from? We discuss the role of urban and family legend, authentic dialogue, writing for younger readers and how horror’s treatment of Black writers and characters has changed.

Enjoy!

The Black Girl Survives in This One was published on April 2nd by Flatiron Books

Other books mentioned:

• Beloved (1987), by Toni Morrison
• 60 Black Women in Horror Fiction (2014), by Sumiko Saulson
• Of One Blood (1903), by Pauline Hopkins
• Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror (2023), ed, by Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams
• The Vampire Huntress Legends Series (2003-2009), by L.A. Banks

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I’m in literary hero territory again … at least this time it’s sunny!

My guest is Scarlett Thomas, the groundbreaking writer of PopCo, Oligarchy, The Seed Collectors and the (post)modern speculative classic, The End of Mr Y. She’s one of my favourite writers, who has never seen five or six separate genres she can’t mash together.

This time around we are talking “Hot Gothic” in The Sleepwalkers, a darkly playful tale of a vacation–and a marriage–gone horribly wrong.

We cover accidentally arriving at a structure, the many ways to build characters from scratch, the dark consequences of sex and desire taken too far – and we agree on how hotels are just inherently creepy.

Great book. Great guest.

Enjoy!

The Sleepwalkers was published on April 9th by Simon and Schuster

Other books mentioned:

• The End of Mr Y (2006), by Scarlett Thomas
• The Seed Collectors (2015), by Scarlett Thomas
• Oligarchy (2019), by Scarlett Thomas
• Open: An Autobiography (2009), by Andre Agassi
• The Woman in White (1860), by Wilkie Collins
• The Moonstone (1868), by Wilkie Collins
• Gone Girl (2012), by Gillian Flynn
• The Talented Mr Ripley (1955), by Patricia Highsmith
• Hangsaman (1951), by Shirley Jackson

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Carrie White turns 50 years old today!

April 5th, 1974 – the day King’s debut came out, and the world of horror we know live in changed forever.

To celebrate such an auspicious anniversary, there are only two people I could invite to this party. Step up Nat Cassidy and Ally Malinenko – writers who understand King and that bitter, brutal world between childhood and adulthood.

We talk about empathy and monsters, about the horror of high school, the abject and the menstruation taboo and about how we are all living in Margaret White’s America now…

Raise a glass to the prom queen of horror. She can light her own candles.

Enjoy!

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