February is African American History Month here in the United States. In 2013, when this series began, it was also Women in Horror Month (WiHM) which is now celebrated by many in March during Women’s History Month. In 2013, as an Ambassador for Women in Horror Month, Sumiko Saulson put together the original book 60 Black Women in Horror at the the intersection of the two. Over the next five years, the world of women writing horror from the African Diaspora nearly doubled. and 100+ Black Women in Horror, a 2018 update, containing 109 biographies, was born. Now, in 2023, five years after 100+ Black Women in Horror, with the assistance of Kenya Moss-Dyme the list is once again being updated, to include over 40 new names compiled in a new book, 150 Black Women in Horror.
Here is the combined list of 150, listed alphabetically, in batches of 10. Here are the sixth 10 of them.
Allison Hobbs
Best known for her works of erotic fiction, Allison Hobbs has written two adult horror novels, “The Sorceress” and “The Enchantress.” Under the pen name Joelle Sterling she wrote Midnight Cravings, The Dark Hunger, and Forbidden Feast, which follow the story of a teen who emigrates from Haiti to the United States, where he finds love, romance, and wars between vampires, witches, and zombies.
Chanel Harry
Chanel Harry is a horror novelist who combines psychological horror with paranormal terrors in her novel, The Other Child, about a child psychologist who has to separate a vengeful spirit from the traumatized children it inhabits at Black Hallow School for Blind and Disabled Girls. Other horror titles include Heebie Jeebies: Tales of Terror, a macabre and terrifying ten-story collection; Skin Witch: Tales of Soucouyants; and The Restless: Evil Has Come Home. She hails from the Bronx, New York. Her mother is from Trinidad and Tobago, which she visits annually. She is immersed in her mother’s culture, and her book Skin Witch is about the Soucouyant vampire folklore from Trinidad.
www.facebook.com/FireLadyTalesOfTheSoucouyants
Akua Lezli Hope
Poet, writer, and hand papermaker Akua Lezli Hope is a founding member of the Black Writers Union and the New Renaissance Writers Guild. She is one of the writers in the short story anthology Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora. Her surrealistic near-future tale “The Becoming” got Honorable Mention for The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror Award.
Pauline E. Hopkins
One of the lesser-known figures of the Harlem Renaissance, she was a prominent African American novelist best known for her Afrocentric historical romances. Her short story “Talma Gordon,” published in 1900 in The Colored American Magazine, is considered by many the first African-American mystery story. Her fourth novel, Of One Blood mixed dark fantasy with realism, setting the stage for the magical realism that would become a mainstay of modern African-American literary fiction. It mixes gothic horror and fantasy to tell the story of one educated black man’s journey to racial self-discovery.
Nalo Hopkinson
Jamaican sci-fi and fantasy writer Nalo Hopkinson received the 1999 Locus Award for Best First Novel for Brown Girl in the Ring, a tale set against a post-apocalyptic backdrop involving a seer named Ti-Jeanne whose psychic visions only include the deaths of others. Her short story anthology Skin Folk tells tales of skin-shedding shape shifters.
Zora Neale Hurston
Best known for her critically acclaimed Their Eyes Were Watching God, her collection of African American folklore Every Tongue Got To Confess includes stories about witches and ghosts (or “haunts”). With a 1937 Guggenheim Fellowship, she conducted studies in Jamaica and Haiti and wrote the non-fiction work “Tell My Horse,“ which includes voodoo and zombies.
Alledria Hurt
Alledria Hurt is horror, fantasy and science fiction writer. She contributed the horror short story “The Prizewinner” to the horror anthology Black Magic Women. Her books include Chains of Fate, October Sky, Dark King Rising, Objects: Stories of Things, Hush, Ruins of Fate, Blades of Fate, Wearing His Ring, and Harmony: A Killer Mystery. Born in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, Alledria Hurt has traveled Europe and the United States. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature and her Master of Arts in Liberal and Professional Studies degree from Armstrong Atlantic State University.
Beatrice Iker
Beatrice Winifred Iker is an author and poet whose work can/will be found in FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, Anathema Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, the Death in the Mouth horror anthology, and others. Iker is a Voodoonauts Fellowship alum, co-host on the Afronauts Podcast, and a member of the Horror Writers Association (HWA). Originally from East Tennessee, Iker lives in New England with a wonderful husband, many cats, and a robust tarot deck collection. You can find Iker on Twitter (@BeatriceIker), Instagram (@beatricewinifrediker), or through the website beatriceiker.com
Monica Jackson
Her entry into the Dark Thirst collection was “The Ultimate Diet,” the story of a chubby computer programmer who is longing to be thin when a strange blood-sucking woman moves in across the street. It parodies the American obsession with getting thin by any means necessary. She also wrote the paranormal romance titles A Magical Moment and Heart’s Desire, featuring a protagonist with psychic gifts.
Monica Jackson’s catalogue of work at Goodreads
Tiffany D. Jackson
Tiffany D. Jackson is the NYT Bestselling, award-winning author of YA novels Monday’s Not Coming, Allegedly, Let Me Hear A Rhyme, Grown, White Smoke, Santa in The City, The Weight of Blood, and co-author of Blackout. A Coretta Scott King — John Steptoe New Talent Award-winner and the NAACP Image Award-nominee, she received her Bachelor of Arts in film from Howard University and has over a decade in TV/Film experience. The Brooklyn native is currently splitting her time between the borough she loves and the south, most likely multitasking.
Black Women in Horror 
Leave a Reply