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At the Heart of Horror: Valjeanne Jeffers, Remembered
Around this time last year, I was interviewing authors for the Horror Writers Association’s Black Heritage Month blog series when I received the heartrending news that Valjeanne was coming toward the end of her life. She let me know that she was very ill, and asked if I could interview her over the phone, rather than via email, because of her illness. I said yes, of course, and proceeded to type up her answers as she dictated them to me over the phone. Valjeanne told me at the time that she didn’t think she’d be around very much longer. I asked her if there was anything I could do, and she spoke in glowing terms of her longtime boyfriend Quenton Veal checking on her regularly.
Just six months later, she was gone, taking her remarkable light from the world and leaving so many of us grieving. Nonetheless, her legacy lives, not just in her body of work but in the way she impacted virtually everyone with whom she came into contact.
Valjeanne was an exceedingly kind and warmhearted woman, known to many of her friends and loved ones as Sister Moon, which was her email and social media tag. Thaddeus Howze spoke of this in his memorial piece honoring her, “A name to conjure by: Sister Moon, Valjeanne Jeffers,” which ran in the San Francisco BayView.
Like Thaddeus, I never had the honor nor pleasure of meeting Valjeanne in person, though we were on many of the same virtual convention panels (particularly during the extended stay-at-home period at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic), and we had also spoken over the phone several times.
Valjeanne was one of the writers I profiled on my original list of 60 Black Women in Horror, which I put together back in 2013. Although I didn’t know her at the time, I met her the following year and interviewed her for my blog.
The first time I spoke to her on the phone, I remember her patiently explaining how to pronounce her name, Valjeanne. She was named after Jean Valjean from the Victor Hugo novel “Les Miserables” and her name was pronounced the same way, the “Jeanne” is pronounced more like “Joan” than “Jean”—most accurately, like something halfway between “Joan” and “John”, just like Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek. Her mom was a huge fan of the play.
If you haven’t read any of her work, I encourage you to start here: Valjeanne’s stories have appeared in many anthologies – Steamfunk (2013); Griots: Sisters of the Spear (2013); Sycorax’s Daughters (2017); The City: A Cyberfunk Anthology (2015); Blacktastic: Blacktastic Con 2018 Anthology (2018); Dark Universe: The Bright Empire (2018); Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia Butler (2017); Blerdrotica I: Sweet, Sexy, and Special Dark (2020); Fitting In: Historical Accounts of Paranormal Subcultures (2016); and The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (2007), among others.
Valjeanne, in addition to being extremely talented and prolific, was the salt of the Earth. She was a warm, kind person who was extremely well-loved by everyone who knew her. I had the pleasure of sharing a number of tables of contents with her, including the anthologies Scierogenous II: An Anthology of Erotic Science Fiction and Fantasy (2018), Black Magic Women: Terrifying Tales by Scary Sisters (2018), Slay: Tales of the Vampire Noire (Mocha Memoirs Press (2020), Horror Addicts Guide to Life 2 (2022).
She had two series under her belt, The Immortal Series (2009, 2010, 2010, & 2021; about star-crossed shapeshifters), and Mona Livelong: Paranormal Detective (2014, 2016, & 2021). She also wrote The Switch: Clockwork (2013; a steamfunk crossover with the “Immortal Universe,”) Colony: The Ascension (2020; a space opera) and Southern Comfort (2016). She was a luminary in the steamfunk subgenre, as detailed in my San Francisco BayView remembrance of her, “The Queen of Steamfunk.”
You can find many writings by Valjeanne, along with interviews and podcasts of her, by searching her name on HorrorAddicts.net. Her short story “The Lost Ones” can be heard on the Nightlight Podcast.
I shared a table of contents with her for what is likely the last release of her new original work, Blerdrotica II: Couple’s Therapy, which was released in December 2022, half a year after she joined the ancestors. I still recall speaking on Facebook with Valjeanne, Quinton, and another friend James Goodridge about how excited we all were to have been accepted into it. The fact the anthology came out after her death has given me many moments to reflect anew on her loss.
In my heart, I keep forgetting that she isn’t going to be at the book release event or conventions, that I couldn’t ask her for an updated bio for Black Women in Horror Month, that despite the many online panels we were on together I would now never be meeting her in person. Valjeanne was one of those people who always showed up, who could be relied on, whose presence brightened the spaces in which she participated, and the presence of her absence still breaks my heart.
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Introducing the 2023 BWiH Magazine – Special Edition!
This is the ONLY place you can access the Premium FULL COLOR magazine for download or online viewing. Click the image to get your copy today!!!
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February is Black Women in Horror Month!
February is Black Women in Horror Month!
February may be the shortest month of the year, but the LOUDEST month when it comes to celebrations, recognitions and tributes. In 2013, February became the official Black Women in Horror Month, and each year we happily rev up at this time to celebrate the bold voices and lasting impact of black women in the horror industry.
This year, as we mark the 10th anniversary of the first Black Women in Horror list series, and 5 years after the last major update to the series, Kenya Moss-Dyme of Colors in Darkness, and Sumiko Saulson, who put together 100+ Black Women in Horror, are revitalizing the series with the launch of the BlackWomenInHorror.org website. We will start off by debuting a new series of interviews, but over time, we will honor not only trailblazers like Octavia Butler, Tananarive Due and L. A. Banks, we also recognize the women creating art and showing up every subgenre of the field. From books to film; from paranormal, sci-fi, dark romance to bad ass monsters, BWiHM will kickoff a celebration that’s far too big for one month – we’ll be following these creatives all year long!
We’ve only got 28 days so let’s make the most of it! Join us as we introduce you to the women who show up in every space of the horror universe – some you may know, but many who will become your newest darlings.
Is there a Black Woman in Horror that we should know about? Someone who was not on the original list and should be added as we improve and increase it? Old bios that should be updated? You can be a part of improving, updating, and increasing the list! Contact Sumiko Saulson at sumikoska@yahoo.com if you have any suggestions for writers who should be on the list, including yourself!
Watch this space for more information, news and links to BWiHM celebrations across all media.
Follow blackwomeninhorror.org to stay in the know.
Like and Share, and Tag us in your own posts about Black Women in Horror all throughout the month of February and use the #BWiHM and #BlackWomenInHorror hashtags!
Sumiko Saulson: @sumikoska on FB, Twitter and Tik-Tok and @sumikosaulson on IG
Kenya Moss-Dyme: FB: @kenya.mossdyme, Tik-Tok & IG: @kenyamossdyme
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Congratulations to our Three BWiH Shirley Jackson Award Nominees!
Congratulations to Black Women in Horror Erin E. Adams, Paula Ashe and RJ Joseph for the Shirley Jackson Awards nominations!
Erin E. Adams was nominated in the novel category for Jackal. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, it has was also a finalist for the Edgar Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Lefty Award.
RJ Joseph and Paula Ashe were both nominated in the single-author collection category. R.J. Joseph’s debut collection Hell Hath No Sorrow Like A Woman Haunted, and Paula Ashe’s debut collection We Are Here To Hurt Eachother were both Bram Stoker Award finalists in the single-author collection category.
Sumiko Saulson was nominated for the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Elgin Award for The Rat King: A Book of Dark Poetry, and their poem “Surviving” was included in the Dwarf Stars anthology of poetry under consideration for the Dwarf Stars Award. The Rat King was also a Bram Stoker Awards Finalist.
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6 More Black Women in Horror!
Just when you thought the list was over, 6 more Black Women in Horror!
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.
While we were busy putting together the list of 150 – we came up with 6 more!
Ava (Avie) M. Fields
Ava (Avie) M. Fields is a horror advocate and poet based in Boston. Her work positions horror as immersion therapy, an untapped resource for coping and prioritizing underserved communities/voices. In February 2023, she was awarded the Mass Cultural Council award for The Horror Advocate, a hybrid advocacy and equity resource project that meets inequities at their root rather than their symptomatic effect. She works to reframe and re-purpose traumatic content by developing innovative community response models that illustrate the transformative impact of blending horror film, equity, and compassion. The goal is to transform antiquated social structures that feed harm and starve survival. She blends horror advocacy work with a passion for prison reform, restorative justice, harm reduction, and investigating wrongful convictions. Her only wish is that people experience as much catharsis engaging with her work as she does by creating it. Twitter: @ahorroradvocate Instagram: @alycevoorhees
Tira Adams
Writer, Actor, and YouTuber Tira Adams wrote Black Girls’ Hearts in a Poem (2011, Kani Publishing, Inc), an illustrated book of poetry along with Deanna Clark, and Shanta Duck Black. She was on Black Women Are Scary Podcast (Dusky Projects) She has created numerous video essays on black women in horror for her Mistress of the Imaginarium video blog on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/@mistressoftheimaginarium2698 She can be found on Instagram at @mistressoftheimaginarium and everyone else at https://lnk.bio/zojo/
Denise J Bryson
Author of the horror novels In The Footsteps Of A Killer (Artist Words Publishing), and A Thru Zach, Denise J Bryson started writing horror in 4th grade, with a short story “The Last Witch In Salem,” and is a member of Motown Writers & Michigan Literary Network and Horror Writers Association. oneblackrose.webstarts.com/
CA Wittman
CA Wittman writes horror, science-fiction, and psychological thrillers. Her books include The Other Nadia Bisset, The Incarnation of Lydia Bisset, May Eve, Good Neighbors, Sleep Martyrs, The Ugly Girls’ Club, The Girl in the Garde, Her Last Memory, Milk, and her young adult horror novel The Curse of Sara Douroux. She also wrote Synanon Kid, a memoir about her childhood experiences with a cult leader who manipulated interpersonal experiences. She credits these experiences with themes that play out in her fiction regarding outlier communities, dystopian worlds, dogmatic religion, corrupt leaders and corporations, secret pasts, displacement, and fear of new science and technology. www.cawittman.com
Rachelle Udell
Author of “Coiled at the Roots,” the short story prose narrative form preface to Vampire the Masquerade: Revelations of the Dark Mother by Phil Brucato, Rachelle Udell has written material for a number of horror, dark fantasy and fantasy table top role-playing games, including The Fallen Tower: Las Vegas (Mage the Ascension), The Orphan’s Survival Guide (Mage: the Ascension), Chicago by Night (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition), The Bitter Road (Mage: the Ascension), The Order of Reason (Mage: the Sorcerers Crusade), and The Mage Cookbook (a book of recipes related to Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)
Octavia Grant
Octavia Grant is from Jacksonville, Florida. She discovered her love of creative writing and storytelling in 2002, at the age of sixteen. In December 2016, Octavia was signed to True Glory Publications. However, because she did not enjoy being “boxed in” or given storylines to write about, she made the choice to leave the company and became an Independent Author in November 2018. As an Independent Author, she has penned over 30 novels, been interviewed by Narrator iiKane, interviewed by Book Reviewer Tamara Walker of Tam Telling Tales, been Featured Author Of The Month for Eye CU Reading and Chatting Book Club and featured in WYB Lifestyle magazine. Octavia loves reader interaction and encourages her readers to follow her on social media: FB: Octavia Taneka Grant IG: Otaneka TikTok: Otaneka
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160 Black Women in Horror
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 for a new book, 150 Black Women in Horror. These were compiled in February and March of 2023. We came up with 6 new names at the end of the month. Find all of the names listed alphabetically on the indexes below.
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160 Black Women in Horror Part 15 (Tomlison – Zoboi)
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 fifteenth 10 of them.
Ebele Mogo
Ebele Mogo is the author of Courage and Clarity and president of Engage Africa Foundation. She regularly blogs at Street-Side Convos and has been published in the Kalahari Review, The Human Touch: A Journal of Poetry Prose, and the Visual Arts by the University of Colorado Center for BioEthics and Humanities, Poetry Potion, Pennwood Review, and Sentinel Nigeria. She writes short horror stories, including “Omaliyi” (selection, Imagine 2200, Fix’s climate fiction contest) which can be heard the Black Women Are Scary Podcast (Dusky Projects), “Mother Sacrifice” which appeared in the Monyori Literary Journal.
Nadine Tomlinson
Nadine Tomlinson is an emerging Jamaican writer of Afro-Caribbean speculative fiction and poetry. Her short stories and poems have been featured on/published in Black Women Are Scary, Earth in Color, Lightspeed Magazine, Grist, and other places. She is keen on writing fiction and creative non-fiction pieces with themes that center and explore matrilineal relationships, Black women’s knowledge practices, African-based folklore and folk traditions in Jamaican culture, and how these intertwine with humanity’s symbiotic and spiritual connection to Nature. Her short story “The Metamorphosis of Marie Martin” appeared on the Black Women are Scary Podcast. It appeared in Orion Magazine, and won the 2022’s Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors climate-fiction contest from Fix, Grist’s solutions lab.
Deborah Elizabeth Whaley
She is the author of Women: Alpha Kappa Alpha, Black Counterpublics, and the Cultural Politics of Black Sororities about the cultural practices, cultural work, and politics of the oldest historically Black sorority, and Black Women in Sequence: Reinking Comics, Graphic Novels, and Anime, which explores the portrayal of women of African heritage comics and the films and television shows based on them. She wrote the horror poems “Red Scorpion” and “Whispers & Lies” for Sycorax’s Daughters, and is working on a compilation of creative essays, images, and poetry tentatively titled Bodyflow, and a monograp: Feeling Her Fragmented Mind: Women, Race, and Dissociative Identities in Popular Culture.
www.deborahelizabethwhaley.com
Kenesha Williams
She wrote “Sweet Justice” for Black Magic Women. Kenesha Williams is an independent author, speaker, and Founder/Editor-in-Chief of Black Girl Magic Lit Mag. Her books include Love, Lust, and Letters; Nadine & Agwe: A Passion Denied; Do For Love. She has short stories in the anthologies Something Wicked This Way Comes: Paranormal Boxed Set; and The Scribes of Nyota: Our Voices, Our Imagination, A Compendium, as well as in issues 1, 2, 3, and 5 of Black Girl Magic Lit Mag.
L. Marie Wood
L. Marie Wood is a two-time Bram Stoker Award® and Rhysling nominated author, screenwriter, essayist, and poet. She writes high-concept fiction that includes elements of psychological horror, mystery, dark fantasy, and romance. She won the Golden Stake Award for her novel The Promise Keeper. She is a recipient of the MICO Award and has won Best Horror, Best Short Screenplay, and Best Action, Best Afrofuturism/Horror/Sci-Fi awards in both national and international film festivals. Wood, a Brand New Weird nominated author, has penned short fiction that has been published in groundbreaking works, including the anthologies like Sycorax’s Daughters and Slay: Stories of the Vampire Noire. She is also part of the 2022 Bookfest Book Award winning poetry anthology, Under Her Skin. Her academic writing has been published by Nightmare Magazine and in the cross-curricular text, Conjuring Worlds: An Afrofuturist Textbook. She is the founder of the Speculative Fiction Academy, an English and Creative Writing professor, a horror scholar with a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and an MFA in Speculative Fiction, and a frequent contributor to the conversation around the evolution of genre fiction. Learn more about L. Marie Wood at www.lmariewood.com.Nikki Woolfolk
Proud Blerd, Nikki Woolfolk sculpts decadent desserts and fantastical fiction with equal skill and flair. When they’re not playing a never-ending game of “what if” in a writing space that’s part DieselPunk, part Willy Wonka, they are drawing on their former STEM career and collection of quirky experiences to work up new recipes in the kitchen (tasting encouraged), designing a Goth-inspired garden (tasting decidedly DISCOURAGED), and mashing up real and fictional worlds on social media (virtual kitchen table is always open). Join their cogged-and-geared world at NikkiWoolfolk.comK. Ceres Wright
K. Ceres Wright is a speculative fiction author and poet who writes sci-fi, dystopian fiction, horror, weird, and dark fiction. She wrote the short horror story “Of Sound Mind and Body” for Sycorax’s Daughters. She wrote the sci-fi novel Cog, about a futuristic world where personalities can be downloaded at will. “Doomed” was a nominee for the Rhysling Award, the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s highest honor. Her work has appeared in Hazard Yet Forward; Genesis: An Anthology of Black Science Fiction; Many Genres, One Craft; Far Worlds; Diner Stories; The Dark God’s Gift; FictionVale’s Pick Your Punk (February 2015), and The 2008 Rhysling Anthology. K. Ceres Wright graduated from Seton Hill University’s Writing Popular Fiction program in 2007. www.kcereswright.com
Zane
New York Times and Essence bestselling author Zane achieved what many independent publishing writers only dream of: she self-published The Sex Chronicles before landing a deal with Simon & Schuster. Primarily a writer of erotica, she contributed “Resident Evil,” a tale of vampirism, to the anthology Dark Dreams : A Collection of Horror and Suspense by Black Writers. www.eroticanoir.com
Deana Zhollis
Deana Zhollis is a science-fiction, dark fantasy, paranormal romance, and horror writer. She wrote the horror short “Perfect Connection” for Sycorax’s Daughters, however her primary genre is sci-fi romance. Her novels include the dark sci-fi romance The Made, which won 1st place in 2001 at the Houston Writers Convention. It became the first in The Calling series, which also includes Jetta and Creations. Her other titles include Irid; Ruby, Flesh, & Heart,; The 9th Symbol; and Tirna Magique. She won 3rd Place and published in PARSEC/Confluence 2002 Contest and Honorable Mention 5th Place in SFWoE (Science Fiction Writers of Earth) Short Story Contest 2002. dreamnotion.zhollis.com
Ibi Zoboi
Haitian-American Speculative Fiction writer Ibi Zoboi was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and her short stories have been anthologized in Dark Matter: Reading the Bones; Haiti Noir; and The Caribbean Writer among others. “The Fire in Your Sky” is a delightful example of the writer’s skill at mixing realism with mythological dark fantasy. She considers her writing to be magical realism. ibizoboi.blogspot.com
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160 Black Women in Horror Part 14 (Spivey – Tyler)
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 fourteenth 10 of them.
C.C. Spivey
C.C. Spivey is the author of the vampire novel Reborn. It is about an African vampire, Tytarion, who rescues Mayan, an African American runaway slave of mixed heritage, from the evil plantation master who is her father. He turns Mayan into a vampire and nurses her back to health in hopes that she will become strong enough physically to carry his immortal heir.
www.facebook.com/CCSpiveys-Vampire-Novel-Reborn-481936338579875/Cherrae Stuart
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers. Member: HWA, SAG. Cherrae L. Stuart has worked for over a decade in broadcast television and as an independent filmmaker in Los Angeles. She lends her voice to many up and coming horror authors as a regular narrator for the Nightlight Horror Podcast, Pseudopod and Cast of Wonders, and the new hit, Horror audio-drama Afflicted. Cherrae has BAs from UNC-Chapel Hill in Dramatic Arts and Film/Television. She has several horror stories that have been produced for The Reading Horror Podcast and is the creator and head writer for the Dystopian Scifi Comedy Series Good Morning Antioch a pitch-black comedy space opera following a derelict mining ship as they navigate working for the MostEvil™ company in the Galaxy. You can listen to her latest horror short story 3115 Wicker Street on the NightLight Horror Podcast. She is currently shopping her first novel. www.CherraeLStuart.comTawanna Sullivan
Tawanna Sullivan is one of the founders of Kuma2.net, a website that encouraged black lesbians to write erotica. She was raised in Baltimore with a solid foundation in the Baptist church and 80s horror movies. Her short stories have been featured in various anthologies, including Forever Vacancy, Iridescence: Sensuous Shades of Lesbian Erotica, Swing! Adventures in Swinging by Today’s Top Erotica Writers, and Life, Love & Lust. Currently living in New Jersey, Tawanna is working on her first novel and finding new ways to make her wife laugh.
Denise Tapscott
Denise N. Tapscott left her heart in San Francisco, but somehow managed to leave her soul in New Orleans. She enjoys dining on spicy tuna rolls, sharing a bottle of red wine with friends, and watching the latest monster flick, and from time to time this radiant left-handed pirate will even challenge others to a fencing match. She recently joined the podcast Beef, Wine and Shenanigans with Steven Van Patten, Marc Abbott and Kirk A Johnson and can be seen as “Tasha” on the YouTube web series The Vamps Next Door. She published her first novel Gypsy Kisses and Voodoo Wishes as well as the short story The Price of Salvation. She’s currently working on a collection of short stories called The Friends and Foes of Zenobia and a sequel novel, Enlightening of the Damned. Find her on Twitter: @DeniseNTapscott, Instagram:@piratesunny, Facebook: @TheDeniseNTapscott. www.denisetapscott.com
Sheree Renee Thomas
Ledig House/LEF Foundation award winning author Sheree R. Thomas is the reason many of the women on this list are here: her innovative and game-changing and multiple award winning Dark Matter series is one of the most influential anthologies of African American speculative fiction to date. Her work, “Black River Ritual” received Honorable Mention in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror: Sixteenth Annual Collection (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2003). www.shereereneethomas.com/
Tabitha Thompson
Tabitha Thompson is an African American horror writer from Florida. Her first short story “Heading West” was picked up by Sirens Call Publications in 2013 for their online magazine Issue #12: Dead And Dying. “West Nile” was released in 2014 also with Sirens Call Publications for their Issue #16: Apocalyptic Fiction. She has released several horror short stories and flash fiction. Her latest release, “Decency Defiled,” a workplace based horror short story, was released through J Ellington Ashton Press as part of the anthology titled Rejected For Content 6: Workplace Relations. tabithathompson391.wordpress.com
Tamika Thompson
Tamika is a writer, producer, and journalist. She is author of speculative fiction collection, Unshod, Cackling, and Naked (Unnerving Books), which Publishers Weekly calls “powerful,” “unsettling,” and “terrifying,” as well as author of horror novella Salamander Justice (Madness Heart Press). Her work has appeared in several speculative fiction anthologies as well as in Interzone, Prairie Schooner, The New York Times, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Columbia University and a Master of Arts in Journalism from the University of Southern California. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Find her on Twitter and Slasher @tamikathompson and at tamikathompson.com.
Lori Titus
Lori Titus is the author of Lazarus, Hunting in Closed Spaces, Blood Relations, The Bell House, and several other novels and novellas in the dark speculative fiction realm. Her Afrocentric paranormal Marradith Ryder series is about Sojourner: a slayer or hunter tasked with seeking out and addressing supernatural threats like shape-shifters, demons, and warlocks. loribeth215.wordpress.com
Tlotlo Tsamaase
Bessie Head Literary Award and Black Crake Books Award winning author Tlotlo Tsamaase from Goborone, Botswana writes sci-fi and horror short stories and poetry rife with sub-textual messages regarding black woman’s struggle. Her works include the Rhysling Award nominated “I Will Be Your Grave;” “Sebeteledi Holds the Dead (from the anthology An Alphabet of Embers); “The Palapye White Birch;” and “Virtual Snapshots.”
Tanesha Nicole Tyler
Spoken word poet Tanesha Nicole Tyler wrote the horror poem “Polydactyly” for Sycorax’s Daughters. Her talk “My Art is Active: Exploring Social Activism through the Spoken Word” uses spoken word and is available through Westminster College SLC on Youtube. Two of her poems were published in Ink&Nebula Poetry Magazine. Her poems include “This Body” and “Afterparty.” Tanesha Nicole attended competitions at both the regional and national level including Utah Arts Festival, CUPSI, IWPS and the Women of the World Poetry Slam where she placed 9th out of 96 poets.
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160 Black Women in Horror Part 13 (Salaam – Son)
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 thirteenth 10 of them.
Kiini Ibura Salaam
Her dark fantasy and horror short stories appeared in the anthologies Dark Matter and Mojo: Conjure Stories. Her anthology “Ancient, Ancient” includes otherworldly stories rooted in science-fiction, dark fantasy, magic and horror like “Wings, Nectar, & Ancestors” and was named one of the Best Fantasy and Science Fiction Books of 2012 by Jeff VanderMeer. www.kiiniibura.com
Andrea Vocab Sanderson
Andrea Vocab Sanderson is a singer, songwriter, spoken word poet, host, emcee, hip hop artist, and community activist. She contributed the short horror story “Thirsty for Love” to Sycorax’s Daughters. She has recorded several albums of spoken word and hip-hop poetry, including Wind Song Poem; Sessions in Fligh; Speak of Woes; Her Hercules; Cradle of Silence; Son of David; Thoughts of Pain; Grind ‘Til I Bubble; Truest Reflection; and Spit Fire. www.rawartists.org/andreavocabsanderson
Cinsearae Santiago
Cinsearae Santiago writes under Cinsearae S. She is a dark paranormal romance and horror writer, the creator of the dark paranormal romance/horror series, Abraxas and Boleyn, Tudor Vampire. She is the Editor/Publisher of the award-winning magazine, Dark Gothic Resurrected. She received the Author’s Site of Excellence Award in December 2007 from Preditors and Editors, the Golden Horror Award from Horrorfind.com, and is a Cover Artist for Damnation Books. bloodtouch.webs.com
Carolyn Saulson
(February 24, 1948 – January 14, 2019) The author of Living A Lie: Tales of Intrigue, Homelessness and Telepathic Power; the comic book Living A Lie; and the plays “The Strange Case of Dr. Henriette Jekyll” and “Song of Solomon: A Love Story”. Her works have appeared in Writer’s Muse Magazine and Tale of an Iconoclast: The Carolyn Saulson Story. Co-Author of Profiles in Black published by the Congress of Racial Equality in 1978, one of the first Black Who’s Who guides in America. She was the lead singer of the Afrocentric gothic band Stagefright, and co-founder of the media arts non-profit Iconoclast Productions, the San Francisco Black Independent Film Festival and the African American Multimedia Conference.
Sumiko Saulson
Sumiko Saulson is the author of three horror-genre novels, including the science-fiction/horror novel Solitude, the young adult dark fantasy/horror novel The Moon Cried Blood, and the dark humor tinged ghoul-and-zombie gorefest Warmth. She has released a short story anthology: Things That Go Bump in My Head. Her short stories have appeared in a variety of periodical publications. sumikosaulson.com
Nicole D. SconiersNicole D. Sconiers is a Los Angeles author and screenwriter. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in The Absent Willow Review; Clutch; Inglewoodlandia and other publications, and she penned several exclusives for Dr. Phil. She contributed the short horror story “Kim to Sycorax’s Daughters. She is the author of the short story collection Escape from Beckyville Tales of Race, Hair and Rage. nicolesconiers.com
Nisi Shawl
James Tiptree, Jr. Award winner and World Fantasy award nominee Nisi Shawl writes science-fiction, horror, and dark fantasy. Her short story Deep End is a terrifying vision of dystopic future colonialism. Her collection Filter House contains horror stories, including “Wallamelon”, and the 2005 Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror award-winner “Cruel Sista.” “Maggies” was her contribution to Dark Matter. www.nisishawl.com
Cherene Sherrard-JohnsonShe contributed “The Quality of Sand” to the horror anthology Dark Matter: Reading the Bones. Her other writings include “Mistress, Reclining” (Winner of the New Woman’s Voices Award Finishing Line Press, 2010); Portraits of the New Negro Woman: Visual and Literary Culture in the Harlem Renaissance (Rutgers UP, 2007); and Dorothy West’ s Paradise: A Biography of Class and Color (Rutgers UP 2012). cherenesherrardjohnson.wordpress.com
RaShell R. Smith-Spears
Author and poet RaShell R. Smith-Spears wrote “Born Again” for Sycorax’s Daughters and “Losing Her Religion” for the anthology Mississippi Noir. She has written the academic papers “Even Our Women are Warriors: The Black Woman as Warrior in LA Banks’ Vampire Huntress Legend Series;” “Everybody’s Mama Now: Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day as Discourse on the Black Mother’s Identity;” “Bondage: Slavery, Marriage, and Freedom in Nineteenth Century America: A Review;” “What Looks Like New: Cleage’s Narrative Call for Social Change;” “Pearl Cleage and Free Womanhood: Essays on her Prose Work;” and “Locating the Self: The Role of Place in Walker’s Jubilee and Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind.”
www.facebook.com/RaShell-Smith-Spears-Writer-1390560764495274/
LC Son
Known for her Amazon Best Selling Short Story, With Hearts Like Fire and the epic series starter, Beautiful Nightmare, L.C. Son is the happy wife of more than twenty years to her high school sweetheart and the loving mom of three. LC believes life finds the most interesting ways to throw dark fantasy into her real life. As a current Lupus warrior, she likes to joke about the irony of living with an illness that is both rooted in the word wolf while also limiting her time in the sun. Finding such duality in her own life allows LC to pull from a deep place of creativity to affectionately write about the monsters who live in her head. Presently, she’s working on the next installment in the Beautiful Nightmare series where you’ll find an abundance of vampires, wolves, and all manner of things that go bump in the night. Find her online at Instagram: author_l.c.son, Facebook LCSonBooks, and at her website: www.lcsonbooks.com
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160 Black Women in Horror Part 12 (Ransom – Royce)
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 twelfth 10 of them.
Tonia Ransom
Tonia Ransom is the creator and executive producer of NIGHTLIGHT, an award-winning horror podcast featuring creepy tales written by Black writers, and Afflicted, a horror thriller best described as Lovecraft Country meets True Blood. Tonia has been scaring people since the second grade, when she wrote her first story based on Michael Myers. She’s a World Fantasy Award Winner, and This is Horror Award runner-up. She lives in Austin, Texas. You can follow Tonia @missdefying on all the socials. Risen is her debut book.
P.M Raymond
P.M. Raymond hails from New Orleans but currently lives on the East Coast with 27 cookbooks and an imaginary dog named Walter. You can find her enjoying a café au lait and indulging in the storytelling mastery of Shirley Jackson, M.R. James, Joe Hill, Tananarive Due, and manga maestro, Junji Ito. Her work has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Kings River Life Magazine, Dark Fire Fiction, Pyre Magazine, The Furious Gazelle, Dark Yonder, and Rock, Roll, and Ruin anthology from Down & Out Books. Follow her on Twitter or find her at www.pmraymond.com.
Dia Reeves
Dia Reeves is a young adult horror and paranormal writer. Her novels Bleeding Violet and Slice of Cherry both are of dark fantasy/horror. They are marketed as Young Adult, but contain enough blood, sex and angst to make them inappropriate for younger teens. She has written short stories for the anthologies Defy the Dark and Corsets & Clockwork: 13 Steampunk Romances. She wrote Rhymes With Vampire, a pairing of two short stories in the same universe as Bleeding Violet and Slice of Cherry.
www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Dia-Reeves/61532623
Evie Rhodes
Award-winning gospel singer Evie Rhodes is the author of several books in the urban fiction genre about the battle between Good and Evil. Her 2006 novel Criss-Cross is a psychological horror novel that pits Detective Micah Jordan-Wells against a dangerous serial killer who marks the bodies of the young women he murders with
an “X”.Jewell Parker Rhodes
Her debut novel Voodoo Dreams, and her Marie Laveau Trilogy, Season, Moon, and Hurricane, which are based on the legend of famous New Orleans voodoo priestess Marie Laveau, tell terrifying tales of ritualized magic being used to enslave black women and create zombie-like Sleeping Beauties for a horrifying modern revival of the fetishizing quadroon balls. She has received the Coretta Scott King Honor Award for Ninth Ward, and the American Book Award for Douglass’ Women. jewellparkerrhodes.com
Jill Robinson
She contributed the story “BLACKout” to Dark Matter: Reading the Bones. It is about reparations becoming a reality and the issues that might arise if it should. She has also contributed short fiction to Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art, and ANANSI: Fiction of the African Diaspora.
Zin E. Rocklyn
Of Trinidadian descent, Zin E. Rocklyn (she/they) is a horror and dark fantasy author hailing from Jersey City NJ. A contributor to several anthologies, including a non-fiction essay in the Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine’s Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction, the Joseph Pulver Award-winning writer is a graduate of 2017 VONA and 2018 Viable Paradise workshops. Their Nebula and IGNYTE-nominated, and Shirley Jackson award-winning debut novella Flowers for the Sea was published by tor.com in October 2021. You can follow them on Twitter at intelligentwat.
K T Rose
K.T. Rose is a horror, thriller, and dark fiction writer from Detroit, Michigan. She posts suspense and horror flash fiction on her blog at kyrobooks.com and is the author of a suspenseful short story series titled Trinity of Horror, an erotic thriller novel titled When We Swing, and A Dark Web Horror series. She also writes supernatural and paranormal horror novels and short stories.
Leone Ross
Leone Ross was born in the UK and grew up in Jamaica. She is a three-time novelist, short story writer, editor and educator. The Guardian has praised her ‘searing empathy’ and the Times Literary Supplement called her ‘a pointilliste, a master of detail…’ Ross has taught creative writing for 20 years, up to PhD level. Her 2017 short story collection, Come Let Us Sing Anyway [Peepal Tree Press]includes erotica, body horror, Afrofuturism and fantasy elements. Her third novel, the magic realist This One Sky Day aka Popisho was published in 2021 [Faber & Faber/FSG] named a New York Times Editor’s Choice and nominated for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Goldsmiths Award and the Royal Society for Literature’s Ondjaate Award, among others. In 2022, she won the UK Manchester Prize for Fiction for a single short story, ‘When We Went Gallivanting’, the story of a high rise ‘ghetto’ building that dances across England. Ross is the editor of Glimpse: A Black British Anthology of Speculative Fiction, the first of its kind, published in 2022 [Peepal Tree Press].
You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Eden Royce
Dark fantasy and paranormal fiction author Eden Royce has contributed short stories to over a dozen horror publications, and is the author of two novellas. Containment, her dark fantasy novella, is the compelling story of a power plant run by a quarter-demon named Feast that operates on energy supplied by the spirits of the dead. Her horror haiku “Devil’s Playground” is on the Strange Tales of Horror audio collection.
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160 Black Women in Horror Part 11 (Onoh – Prioleau)
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 eleventh 10 of them.
Nuzo Onoh
British-Nigerian horror writer Nuzo Onoh is the author of The Reluctant Dead, Unhallowed Graves, and The Sleepless. A pioneer in the African horror genre, she mixes traditional beliefs with unnerving supernatural terror. The daughter of Dr. C.C.Onoh, chief and governor of the Old Anambra State, she was subjected to a terrifying exorcism attempt as a child. This impacted her worldview and as a result she is an advocate fighting against the ritual abuse of children in Africa. twitter.com/NuzoOnoh
Helen Oyeyemi
British author Helen Oyeyemi won the 2010 Somerset Maugham Award and was nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award in 2009 for her work of dark fantasy and gothic horror, White is for Witching. It wasn’t the first foray into horror for this young author. Her 2006 book The Icarus Girl mixes Nigerian myths with elements of the ghost story tradition and psychological horror. helenoyeyemi.com
Suzan Palumbo
Suzan Palumbo is a Nebula finalist, active member of the HWA, Co Administrator of the Ignyte Awards and a member of the Hugo nominated FIYAHCON team. She is also a former Associate Editor of Shimmer magazine. Her debut dark fantasy/horror short story collection Skin Thief: Stories will be published by Neon Hemlock in Fall 2023. Her novella “Countess” will be published by ECW Press in spring 2024. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in Lightspeed Magazine, Fantasy, The Deadlands, The Dark Magazine, PseudoPod, Fireside Fiction Quarterly, PodCastle, Anathema: Spec Fic from the Margins and other venues. She is officially represented by Michael Curry of the Donald Maass Literary Agency and tweets at @sillysyntax. When she isn’t writing, she can be found sketching, listening to new wave or wandering her local misty forests. suzanpalumbo.wordpress.com/
Ama Patterson
She contributed “Hussy Strutt” to the Dark Matter collection. Her short fiction is included in 80 Memories and Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin. She is the author of Zen and the Art of Haiku: Journal and three other how-to and inspirational books, The Lost Art of I Ching; The Essential Guide to Astrology; and Finding Your Inner Goddess: A Journal of Self-Empowerment. www.clarionwest.org/node/1341/view
A.L. PeckPsychological horror novelist A.L. Peck is not just the first black woman I interviewed on this blog – she’s the first author I interviewed of any kind. Her well-researched debut novel Abstract Murder puts the reader inside the minds of the criminals and detectives alike as we follow the terrifying lives of the monsters next door – serial killers – and the officers who track them down and capture them. www.facebook.com/groups/268295249931688
L. Penelope
African American fantasy, paranormal romance and horror author L. Penelope’s debut work was the 2015 novel Song of Blood & Stone, the first of the Earthsinger Chronicles. Since then she’s written Whispers of Shadow & Flame (Earthsinger Chronicles #2), Cry of Metal & Bone (Earthsinger Chronicles #3); Angelborn (Angelborn Cycle #1);and Angelfall (Angelborn Cycle #2). Her short story “AngelBorn” was included in the anthology Sycorax’s Daughters, and she was in the Anthology Touch the Dark. www.lpenelope.com
Annie J. Penn
Afro-Australian author Phyllis Khan wrote the horror fantasy Voodoo Knights under the pen name Annie J. Penn. The story deals with black magic, monsters and aliens and features characters such as Moh Moh Oh, a manwhoring alien hybrid who is the father of all monsters, and Miss Conceptiona, a shape-shifting transgender swamp monster. She also writes short stories. She wrote a short story for the first eBook edition of 60 Black Women in Horror. She was born in Africa and raised in Australia.
www.goodreads.com/author/show/6605026.Annie_Penn
Ann Lane Petry
The African American novelist Ann Petry was the first black woman to become a bestselling author, selling over a million copies of her 1946 novel The Street. Although her mainstream novels are urban and historical fiction surrounding issues faced by black women during and after slavery, she wrote short stories in the horror genre, including the ghost story “The Bones of Louella Brown” from the collection Miss Muriel and Other Stories. Her novels include magical realism, gothic imagery, and a Western fear of hoodoo consistent with the American horror genre. Other novels include the critically-acclaimed The Narrows and the Y.A. novel Tituba of Salem Village.
harvardmagazine.com/2014/01/ann-petry
Mina Polina
She wrote the short story “Appreciation” for the horror anthology Black Magic Women. Mina Polina has written short stories since high school, and is a newly published author. Her preferred genres are horror and fantasy with a mixture of realism. When not writing, Mina Polina also spends her time working on her various Graphic Design projects. She currently resides in Los Angeles, California.
Rasheedah Prioleau
The prolific Rasheedah Prioleau writes in several dark speculative fiction genres, including horror, supernatural thriller, dystopian space opera, and paranormal romance. The Princess X Series is a space opera about the blind orphan Amullette Rose who leaves her space colony to go into hiding because she has a dark secret. American Specter: The Seven Sisters is a supernatural thriller featuring FBI Agent Audra Wheeler. Everlasting: Da Eb’Bulastin is the first book in the Sa’Fyre Island Book Series, about Aiyana Gamelle, a woman of Gullah and Native American ancestry who learns that her transformation into the Queen of Sa’Fyre Island involves a family curse and unwanted possession. -
160 Black Women in Horror Part 10 (Moore – Okorafor)
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 tenth 10 of them.
Tonya R. Moore
Speculative fiction writer Tonya R. Moore writes science-fiction, paranormal fantasy and horror. Her out-of-print short story collection On the Brink contained tales about ghosts, mermaids, vampires, urban monsters, androids and witches. Her horror novelette Sea Witch Song is about a grieving lover who plays a song that entices sea monsters up from the deep. She has contributed stories to eFiction Magazine, Black Girl Lit Magic, and Writers on the Wrong Side of the Road.
Isaiyan Morrison
Isaiyan Morrison was born and raised in Minneapolis, but her heart is in the impressive magical worlds she dreams up. She hopes to share her love for world-building with her readers and help guide them through the extraordinary settings she creates. Her other passions include reading, and researching historical events. She also enjoys gardening, gaming, spending quality time with her three cherished cats and beloved pitbull, and practicing her Christian faith.
Toni MorrisonA preeminent voice in African American literary fiction, her Pulitzer Prize winning 1987 Civil War era drama Beloved is a classic ghost story. It tells of a presence at 124 Bluestone Road, thought of as malevolent by some. The magical realism of Song of Solomon and the dark psychological spaces in Jazz, Love, and The Bluest Eye also have certain aspects in common with psychological horror.
Mo Moshaty
Mo Moshaty is an Afro-Latina screenwriter, author and producer. Co-founder of the Nyx Horror Collective, she’s partnered with Stowe Story Labs to provide a fellowship for women genre writers over 40 and with horror streaming giant, Shudder Channel, to co-produce the 13 Minutes of Horror Film Festival 2021 and 2022. Still engaging with her first love, short horror literature, her work can be found in A Quaint and Curious Volume of Gothic Tales, by Brigid’s Gate Press and 206 Word Stories by Bag O’ Bones Press. In 2023, Love the Sinner with be published with Brigid’s Gate Press and in 2024, Clairviolence will be published with Spooky House Press. Mo has lectured on Trauma in Cinema with Prairie View A&M Film & TV Program, Horror Studies BAFSS, and The University of Sheffield in the United KingdomKenya Moss-Dyme
A founding member of Colors in Darkness (CID), a group for diverse horror writers, dark speculative fiction author Kenya Moss-Dyme won scholastic awards for writing horror short stories in her teens. She is the author of Daymares, a seven story horror collection, and Devil Inside, a psychological horror story about a cancer survivor who is tortured and mutated under the care of an evil, twisted, unethical nurse who experiments on her. She’s written several gritty thrillers dealing with real life horrors including the Prey for Me series, which takes on child molestation within the church, and the A Good Wife series which tackles domestic violence.
Cerece Rennie Murphy
Cerece Rennie Murphy writes sci-fi/fantasy that sometimes takes a stroll on the darker side with demons, and murderous fairies, with a bit of gory killing on the side. In 2011, Cerece experienced her own supernatural event – a vision of her first science fiction story. Shortly after, she began developing and writing what would become the bestselling Order of the Seers trilogy. Order of the Seers was selected as one of The Best Kindle Books of 2014 by Digital Book Today. To date, Cerece has published ten speculative fiction novels, short stories, and children’s books. In addition to working on the 3rd book in the award-winning Ellis and The Magic Mirror children’s book series with her son and releasing her first short story collection, Cerece launched Virtuous Con, an online sci-fi convention in February 2021. Her current writing projects include a new steampunk fantasy series. Cerece lives and writes in her hometown of Washington, DC. Find her on her website at https://www.cerecerenniemurphy.com/
Candace Nola
Candace Nola is an award-winning author, editor, publisher, and reviewer. Her books include Breach, Beyond the Breach, Hank Flynn, Bishop and Earth vs The Lava Spiders. She has short stories in The Baker’s Dozen, Secondhand Creeps, American Cannibal, and Exactly the Wrong Things. Beyond the Breach won the Novel of the Year award for 2021 from the Horror Authors Guild and her debut novel, Breach, placed 2nd for Debut Novel of the Year for the same awards that year. She is the publisher and editor of the 2022 Splatterpunk Award-winning anthology Uncomfortably Dark Presents: The Baker’s Dozen. She is the creator of UncomfortablyDark.com, promoting other indie authors in the industry with weekly book reviews, interviews, and special features. You can find her on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook and her website,. https://www.uncomfortablydark.com/
Pam NolesShe contributed “Whipping Boy” to the collection Dark Matter: Reading the Bones. She is a professional journalist living in Los Angeles these days, and writes a lot of non-fiction. Her blog And We Shall March On… (Black, Geek, and Fine with That) discusses horror, popular culture, politics, and community. Her fiction has appeared in anthologies from Warner Books; Dark Horse Comics; Terra Major; and Pulphouse.
Wi-Moto Nyoka
Wi-Moto Nyoka is a horror and sci-fi writer. She is the founder of Dusky Projects, creating and producing horror & sci-fi projects for young adult and adult audiences. Awards and honors include: Stowe Story Labs selected project, Puffin Foundation grant recipient, Awesome Foundation grant recipient, Velocity Fund grant recipient, Scribe Video Finishing Grant recipient, Nightmares Film Festival Best Short Screenplay Award Winner, 13 Horror Screenplay Award Winner, Oregon Short Film Festival Best Horror Teleplay Award Winner and more. Published works can be found in Midnight & Indigo’s Speculative Fiction collection, Terror Unleashed: Volume 2, The Seelie Crow and The Last Girls Club. IG: @duskyprojects, wi-motonyoka.com
Nnedi Okorafor
She won the Locus Award and was nominated for the Nebula award for her critically-acclaimed dystopian fantasy Who Fears Death? the post-apocalyptic tale of Onyesonwu, the last surviving member of a tribe decimated by genocide, who discovers she possesses great magic and a mysterious shamanistic destiny. She counts among her influences Octavia Butler and Stephen King.
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160 Black Women in Horror Part 9 (M – Moore)
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 ninth 10 of them.
Kyoko M
Author of the Amazon Bestselling supernatural thriller The Black Parade, about an alcoholic waitress who becomes a seer tasked with helping one hundred earthbound spirits to cross over into the afterlife. It is the first in a three book series along with She Who Fights Monsters and The Holy Dark. Of Cinder and Bone combines sci-fi, fantasy and horror when scientists learn to clone once-extinct dragons. The embryos are stolen by Yakuza, who mutate them, turning them into bloodthirsty, gruesome, malformed beasts. shewhowritesmonsters.com/
D.K. MasonThe author of Belly of the Mountain, and Back in the Belly of the Mountain, horror stories surrounding the havoc wreaked by the restless spirit of a slave haunting the East Kentucky mountains. She also wrote a short story for the Winter’s Chill horror anthology. www.facebook.com/AuthorDKMason
Ellen McBarnette
Born in Brooklyn, raised in Queens, second generation Caribbean, she has traveled widely in the US. In her long career in public policy in Washington, DC, in which she wrote policy statements, speeches, public correspondence and opinion pieces. Ellen is a life-long storyteller whose earliest tales were transcribed by her mother on scrap paper. Ellen’s career has taken her from the halls of the US Congress to boozey poetry slams. She has performed nonfiction memoir storytelling on the DC stage, occasionally making enough for cab fare home! Yes, she has performed at The Moth. Today, she is active in the San Francisco literary community. Founder of the Beta Readers and Writers Group, organizer of the Afrosurreal Writers Workshop and board member of the Women’s National Book Association-San Francisco Chapter Her short story Negrita is available now in the Midnight and Indigo 2 annual speculative fiction anthology. Twitter
Faye McCray
McCray is author of Dani’s Belts, short horror collection on Kindle about a college student surviving the zombie apocalypse, and Boyfriend, a novel. Dani’s Belts is released in a series of installments such as “White Belt” and “Yellow Belt.” She has contributed to Madame Noire, Black Girl Nerds, Black and Married with Kids, and Rachel in the OC. www.fayemccray.com
Carole McDonnellCarole McDonnell is a horror, paranormal, sci-fi and inspirational writer. She is Jamaican but grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Her books include Turn Back, O Time: and Other Tales of the Faes of Malku; The Charcoal Bride; The Daughters of Men; Wind Follower; My Life as an Onion; A Fool’s Journey through Proverbs; Scapegoats and Sacred Cows of Bible Study; The King’s Journal of Lost and Secret Thing; NO! Not the Deli!; Great Sufferers of the Bible; and Blogging the Psalms. She contributed short stories to the anthologies So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy; While the Morning Stars Sing: An Anthology of Spiritually Infused Speculative Fiction; Diversity Is Coming, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination:and Rococoa. She contributed “How to Speak to the Bogeyman” and “Terror and the Dark” to Sycorax’s Daughters. carolemcdonnell.blogspot.com/2
Dana T. McKnight
Dana T. Mcknight is a black, queer American speculative fiction and multimedia artist. Her disciplines include illustration, literature, sculpture, experimental sound, performance art, poetry and painting. She is the founder of Dreamland Art Gallery, an alternative art and performance space in Buffalo, NY and a Co-Creator for RIQSE (Radical Inclusive Queer Sex Education). She contributed the short story “Taking the Good” to Sycorax’s Daughters.
Violette L. Meier
Violette L. Meier is an Atlanta-based speculative fiction writer, poet, folk artist and published author of eight books. Tales of a Numinous Nature is a spine tingling collection of her short horror stories. She writes horror-tinged paranormal tales like Ruah the Immortal; The First Chronicle of Zayashariya: Out of Night; Angel Crush; and Son of the Rock. Her other titles include: Violette Ardor: A Volume of Poetry; This Sickness We Call Love: Poems of Love, Lust, & Lamentation; and Loving and Living Life. www.VioletteMeier.com
Melinda Michelle
A writer of religiously inspired supernatural fiction, she is the author of a series of novels called Chronicles of Warfare, depicting the age old battle between good and evil, and individuals who fight to survive against demonic influences with the help of angels. She also wrote the short horror story “You Can Never Leave,” available electronically on Amazon. www.melindamichelle21.com/
Donna Monday
The author of the adult vampire romance series Best Black Vampire Story, consisting of two books, The Best Black Vampire Story You’ve Ever Read; and Best Black Vampire Story – Bloodlust, Dangerous Secrets and Fatal Attraction. The first title is also available as an audio book. She has also written several non-fiction titles.
L.H. Moore
American short story writer L.H. Moore contributed stories to all three of the Dark Dreams paranormal horror and suspense anthologies. Her contributions included “Empty Vessel” (Dark Dreams), “Breath of Life” (Dark Dreams II), and “Flight” (Dark Dreams III). Her Dark Dreams II entry, ”Breath of Life” was mentioned on Beyond Victoriana (A Multicultural Perspective on Steampunk).
100+ Black Women in Horror, 150 Black Women in Horror, Black Horror Writers, Black Women in Horror, black writers, BWiHM, Carole McDonnell, D.K. Mason, Dana T. McKnight, Donna Monday, Ellen McBarnette, Faye McCray, horror, Kyoko M, L.H. Moore, literature, Melinda Michelle, Violette L. Meier, WiHM, Women in Horror
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