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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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150 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. -
150 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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150 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 -
150 Black Women in Horror Part 8 (Koboah – Loesener)
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 eighth 10 of them.
A.D. Koboah
British novelist A.D. Kobah is of Ghanaian descent. She is the author of The Darkling Trilogy, whose protagonist Luna was a slave in Mississippi in the early 1800s when she attracted the attention of an evil bloodsucking entity. She also wrote Peace, about a heroin addict struggling with self-destructive urges and demons from the past. www.adkoboah.com
Nicole Givens Kurtz
Dark science-fiction often dances along the fine line between pure sci-fi and true horror. Stories like The Soul Cages, the first book in The Minister Knights of Souls Series featuring a black protagonist, Sarah, uses the sci-fi context to address the political issue of slavery. Sarah is reincarnated into Valek’s soul cages, where she can’t experience human senses or love, and desires to return to human flesh. The post-apocalyptic dystopic world of The Cybil Lewis Series is not horror but is definitely in the dark speculative fiction wheelhouse. nicolegivenskurtz.com
Alexandra Lane
Alexandra Lane is the author of A Vision of Angels: The Battle Begins, and Donum: The Battle Has Already Begun, two novels in the religious supernatural horror genre dealing with fallen angels and the apocalypse. The first story takes place in historical Maryland during the slavery era, and it’s central protagonist, Minty, is a slave. The second takes place in modern times. alexandralane.tateauthor.com
Michelle Renee LaneMichelle Renee Lane holds an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University and recently joined the faculty of the Speculative Fiction Academy. She writes dark speculative fiction about identity politics and women of color battling their inner demons while fighting/falling in love with monsters. Her work includes elements of fantasy, horror, romance, and erotica. Her short fiction appears in several anthologies and has been featured on The Wicked Library podcast. Her Bram Stoker Award nominated debut novel, Invisible Chains, is available from Haverhill House Publishing. Her nonfiction can be found at Medium, Speculative Chic, and in Writers Workshop of Horror 2. Follow Michelle’s blog, Girl Meets Monster, at michellerlane.com.
Briana LawrenceBriana Lawrence is the author of the paranormal murder mystery Treat Me Kindly, on Damnation Books, about shape shifting creature who can turn deadly if their human companions do not treat them kindly. With Jessica Walsh, she co-wrote Seeking the Storyteller, about monster hunters who encounter a supernatural creature capable of re-writing history. brichibi.wix.com/whisperedwords
Kai Leakes
St. Louis native and vampire lover, author Kai Leakes began her obsession with all things fantasy, romance, and the dark as a teen. Kai is the creator of the popular dark fantasy/horror series Sin Eaters: Devotion Books & Sin Eater Chronicles novellas. She has short stories in several Afrocentric speculative fiction anthologies: “Taste the Taint: A Cursed Story” in Sycorax’s Daughters; “Sisters” in Black Magic Women; “Free Your Mind” in The City: A Cyberfunk Anthology; and “Traveler’s Song, a Pulse Prelude” in Rococoa. She co-wrote A Christmas Kind of Love with Nikki Michelle kwhp5f.wix.com/kai-leakes
Natasha Morningstarr
Natasha MorningStarr is a member of the Horror Writers Association. Natasha’s stories have been featured in two anthologies, Wasatch Witches: A Collection of Utah Horror and Out of Darkness by WolfSinger Publications 2023. In 2021, Natasha started a series of Twisted Tales on her website, seasonal short horror stories released during the spooky season (October – December). As of 2023, she is working with her husband on their first horror novel together. When not writing, Natasha enjoys sipping glasses of white wine and rituals with her husband during the new moon. With an understanding of the supernatural world and a knack for weaving dark tales that unsettle readers she is part of an extensive network of family members known as Wanderers who are able to speak to the dead. Find her on Twitter: @MorningstarrLit Instagram @morningstarrlit and read the Twisted Tales Series at www.natashawrites.info/twisted-tales
Tonya Liburd
Internationally recognized as an emerging SFFH writer, Tonya Liburd writes primarily in the speculative genre, as well as literary fiction, and poetry (speculative & literary). She is the editor at The Expanse Magazine, a Codexian, and a member of the Horror Writers’ Association, the Science Fiction Poetry Association, SFWA, HWA, CSFFA. She has received both a 2020 Ontario Arts Council Writers Grant, and a 2021 Horror Writers’ Association Diversity Grant. You can find her on Twitter as @somesillywowzer, Instagram as @TonyaLiburd, Pinterest as @TheSpiderlilly, and streaming games on Twitch at TheSpiderlilly thespiderlilly.wordpress.com/
A.J. Locke
A.J. Locke is an author and poet from Trinidad and Tobago. Her poems “The Lonely, Salty Sea,” and “A Real Friend Will Let You Break” appeared in the horror anthology Sycorax’s Daughters. She writes urban fantasy and paranormal fiction. Her books include Affairs of the Dead (The Reanimation Files #1); Requiem for the Living (The Reanimation Files #2); The Ravaging In Between (The Reanimation Files #3); A Torment of Savages (The Reanimation Files #4); Black Widow Witch; and Elemental Inferno. iqurae.blogspot.com
KC Loesener
KC Loesener is the author of The Eve of Darkness and several horror short stories. Proud introvert, bird lover, and a huge horror fan, KC is a horror content creator and writing coach, teaching new writers to focus and write their manuscripts in four months. Besides writing horror, KC loves a good ghost story. The paranormal, vampires, and werewolves exhilarate KC, who loves punk and grunge and desperately misses the 90s. Superhero movies and comics are a necessity. KC enjoys creating complex characters that rise to discover themselves. Youtube and Instagram: @kcfinalgirl kcloesener.com
100+ Black Women in Horror, 150 Black Women in Horror, A.D. Koboah, A.J. Locke, Alexandra Lane, Black Horror Writers, Black Women in Horror, black writers, Briana Lawrence, BWiHM, horror, Kai Leakes, KC Loesener, literature, Michelle Renee Lane, Natasha MorningStarr, Nicole Givens Kurtz, Tonya Liburd, WiHM, Women in Horror -
150 Black Women in Horror Part 7 (Jackson – Knight)
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 seventh 10 of them.
Tish Jackson
Tish Jackson wrote “The Love of a Zombie Is Everlasting” for the horror anthology Whispers in the Night (A Dark Dreams Anthology #3), and the short story “Cheaters” for the horror anthology Sycorax’s Daughters. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and graduated from an HBCU in New Orleans. She is working on a short story collection about tales of love gone awry.www.goodreads.com/author/show/4072410.Tish_Jackson
Tiara JanteTiara Janté is a Locus Award-winning and Hugo-nominated author, journalist, and national bestselling ghostwriter. She specializes in writing Black centered, character-driven stories that weave the fantasticism of speculative fiction with the realities of the past, present, and future. Her characters are created to reflect the authentic and multilayered dimensions of Black people, their traditions, and their experiences in America. A staunch advocate for amplifying Black voices through media, Tiara frequently collaborates with other Black creatives to help bring their stories to life. Her work spans the gamut of sci-fi, horror, and fantasy. Tiara has a BA in English & Literature from Muhlenberg College and she defends for a MA in Professional and Digital Media Writing from East Stroudsburg University in 2023. Presently, Tiara resides in the metro Atlanta area with her children. Connect with her on FB, IG, & TikTok: @iamtiarajante or at tiarajante.net.
Valjeanne Jeffers
Author of the Immortal erotic horror series, which includes Immortal, Immortal 2: The Time of Legend, Immortal 3: Stealer of Souls, and Immortal IV: Collision of Worlds. She is also the author of The Story of Eve (nonfiction); The Switch II: Clockwork; Grandmere’s Secret and Colony. She is a member of the Carolina African American Writer’s Collective.
Jemiah JeffersonThe hero of nerdy black women everywhere, Jemiah Jefferson is like a superhero: comic book editor by day, author by night. She works at the editorial department of Dark Horse Comics. Her Gothic Horror series The Vampire Quartet begins in San Francisco with the adventures of Daniel Blum and then follows his extended vampire family across the ocean and back in time. It has been published in multiple languages.
N.K. JemisinScience-Fiction & Fantasy author N.K. Jemisin won the Locus Award and has twice been short-listed for the Hugo and Nebula Awards for her dark fantasy The Killing Moon: death, dark magic, and a peaceful religious society with a creepy “angel of death” style mercy-killing squad with a dream blood addiction all add up to the kind of disturbing thought provocation associated with top-notch horror.
Delizhia D. Jenkins
Horror, paranormal, urban fantasy and paranormal romance author Delizhia Jenkins wrote the urban horror story Dark Moon’s Curse for Black Magic Women. She writes paranormal and paranormal romance titles under the name Delizhia D. Jenkins. Her titles include The Dark Royals Series, which includes Blind Salvation; The Vampire Hunter’s Academy Series, which includes The Darkness and The Reckoning; In the Light of Darkness, Viper: The Vampire Assassin, Into The Shadows, Sin: Daughter of the Grim Reaper, Nubia Rising: The Awakening, and Love At Last.
m.facebook.com/MissJenkinsAuthor
Alaya Dawn Johnson
Speculative fiction writer Alaya Dawn Johnson’s work of paranormal science-fantasy Moonshine gives us an alternate 1920′s New York that is crawling with blood-drug addicted vampire mobsters. Social activism isn’t enough to keep her protagonist Zephyr Hollis off the radar of a darkly seductive blood sucker named Amir. Its sequel is Wicked City. Zephyr works on outlawing the blood-drug Faust.
Tenea Johnson
Dark futures dominate the landscape of Tenea D. Johnson’s speculative fiction. “The Taken” was her contribution to Dark Dreams III. Publisher’s Weekly dubbed the short story a “provocative meditation on revenge.” R/evolution, her science fiction dystopian novel, takes place in a future USA marred by stark class divisions, economic and racial divide and limited access to advanced new biogenics.
R. J. Joseph
Rhonda Jackson Garcia, AKA RJ Joseph, is an award-winning, Stoker Award™ nominated, Texas-based academic and creative writer/professor whose writing focuses on the intersections of gender and race in horror, romance, and popular culture. She has had works published in two fiction anthologies of Black, female horror writers, Sycorax’s Daughters, and Black Magic Women, as well as the 2020 Halloween issue of Southwest Review and The Streaming of Hill House: Essays on the Haunting Netflix Series. Her recent horror collection, Hell Hath No Sorrow like a Woman Haunted, was released by The Seventh Terrace in August 2022. Rhonda is an instructor at The Speculative Fiction academy and co-host of the Genre Blackademia podcast. When she isn’t writing, reading, or teaching, she can usually be found wrangling her huge blended family of one husband, five adult sprouts, six teenaged sproutlings, four grandboo seedlings, and one furry hellbeast who sometimes pretends to be a dog.
Social media: @rjacksonjoseph or www.rhondajacksonjoseph.com
Kish Knight
Kish Knight is a New Adult and Young Adult urban fantasy, paranormal romance and teen thriller author. Her forever goal is to create fun, escapist novels with characters of color or otherwise. She is the author of the following projects: the Dark-Inferno urban fantasy novels, the Returned urban fantasy series, the Immortal Blood young adult urban fantasy series, and the Senior Year young adult contemporary series. She has also the author of a middle grade novel, Our Crew PLUS boys! (under the pen name Cher Cabal). Her current round of busywork involves developing a plethora of design documents for her latest e-book series.
100+ Black Women in Horror, 150 Black Women, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Black Horror Writers, Black Women in Horror, black writers, BWiHM, Delizhia D. Jenkins, horror, Jemiah Jefferson, Kish Knight, literature, N.K. Jemisin, R. J. Joseph, Tenea Johnson, Tiara Jante, Tish Jackson, valjeanne jeffers, WiHM, Women in Horror -
150 Black Women in Horror Part 6 (Hobbs – Jackson)
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. HopkinsOne 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 HopkinsonJamaican 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 HurstonBest 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 HurtAlledria 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.100+ Black Women in Horror, Akua Lezli Hope, Alledria Hurt, Allison Hobbs, Beatrice Iker, Black Horror Writers, Black Women in Horror, black writers, BWiHM, horror, L.H. Moore, literature, Monica Jackson, Nalo Hopkinson, Pauline E Hopkins, Tiffany D Jackson, WiHM, Women in Horror, Zora Neale Hurston -
The Official Black Women in Horror Merch Shop!
Now you can shop the official merch shop for BWiH tees, hoodies and caps! All proceeds go directly to support BWiH projects.
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150 Black Women in Horror Part 5 (G – Hill)
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 fifth 10 of them.
Dormaine G
She is the author of several horror, paranormal fantasy and paranormal mystery, and young adult titles. She was a 2015 Kindle Book Awards finalist for The Time of Sanura, the third book in her Madame Lilly horror series about a vengeance-driven Creole voodoo priestess born in the 1800s who uses dark magic to become immortal. Other titles include the paranormal murder mystery Anguta’s Reign, and the paranormal fantasy Blood Thirst; An Eternal Romance.
Robin GreenThe author of the psychological horror series Terror Text, two novellas about a serial killer who uses cellphone text messages to harass his teenage victims before forcing them to watch one another’s suffering, and The Day after Yesterday, a sci-fi thriller about three boys who find marbles that grant them visions and may have greater powers still.
Tyhitia GreenTyhitia Green writes horror, fantasy, and science fiction. She sometimes dabbles in other genres as well. She began writing poetry as a child and ventured into fiction years later. Her horror flash story, Margie, appeared in the July 2009 issue of Necrotic Tissue magazine, and her non-fiction has appeared in Lightspeeid magazine and on Black Girl Nerds.com.
Dicey Grenor
Dicey Grenor is the author of the Narcoleptic Vampire Series novellas, which contain darkly twisted, sexy stories of vampires, werewolves, and supernatural fetish clubs. Don’t let the erotic content fool you: Dicey isn’t hold backing when it comes to the gore, violence, and disturbing content horror fans tend to expect, and love stories may be present but aren’t the core of her stories.
Jewelle GomezActivist Jewelle Gomez won the Lambda Award for her stories about a black lesbian vampire named Gilda, The Gilda Stories. Gilda makes a reappearance in the traditional and fantasy short story collection Don’t Explain. Well known as a writer of lesbian erotica and poetry, she contributed the story “Chicago 1927″ to the anthology of African Diaspora speculative fiction Dark Matter.
Jessica GuessJessica Guess is a writer and English teacher who hails from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She earned her Creative Writing MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato in 2018 and is the founder of the website Black Girl’s Guide to Horror where she examines horror movies in terms of quality and intersectionality. Her creative work has been featured in Luna Station Quarterly and Mused BellaOnline Literary Review. She loves anything horror but especially slashers and werewolves with maybe a bit of romance thrown in. Jessica will read or watch nearly anything with a black female protagonist. Her horror novella Cirque Berserk is available now.
Virginia Hamilton
She received the Edgar Alan Poe Award for The House of Dies Drear, a ghost story that took place in a house that was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Her paranormal romance Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush about a fourteen year old girl who embarks on a journey of self-discovery after meeting a handsome ghost won the Coretta Scott King Award. She won every major award in children’s literature.
Veronica G. Henry
Veronica G. Henry is the author of Bacchanal, The Quarter Storm, The Foreign Exchange (Feb 2023) in the Mambo Reina series. Her work has debuted at #1 on multiple Amazon bestseller charts, was chosen as an editors’ pick for Best African American Fantasy, and shortlisted for the Manly Wade Wellman Award. She is a Viable Paradise alum and a member of SFWA and MWA. Her stories have appeared, or are forthcoming, in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and FIYAH Literary Magazine.https://www.veronicahenry.net/
Donna Hill
Donna Hill is a pioneer of the African American romance genre, with more than fifty tiles to her name over the past thirty years – now, just let that sink in for a minute. At a rate of a novel and a half per year, she writes books faster than some of us can read them. Three of her books were made into movies. On top of that she’s found the time to write short stories for the horror anthologies Dark Thirst and Creepin. donnahill.coKim. M. Munsamy
Kim. M. Munsamy is a horror and science fiction short story author. She completed her Masters in Counseling Psychology at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa. Her work has appeared in The Misbehaving Dead Anthology, The First Line Literary Journal, the F is for Fear Anthology, Mystery Tribune, Ripples in Space, and the Last Girls Club.
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150 Black Women in Horror Part 4 (Davis – Freeman)
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 fourth 10 of them.
Lexi Davis
Paranormal romance novelist Lexi Davis’ cautionary tale “Are You My Daddy?” graced the pages of Dark Dreams III. Her debut novel, Pretty Evil, about three guys on the wrong side of a female demon, was nominated ”Best First Novel” African American, Romantic Times Book Club Reviewer’s Choice Awards. Her second novel, The After Wife is about Nia Youngblood the daughter of a witch who promised her hand in marriage to a demon named Rephaim. Unfortunately she’d have to die to marry him, in the afterlife. www.lexidavis.com
Dahlia DeWinters
Self-described “Writer of romance, speculative fiction and horror, sometimes all three” Dahlia DeWinters has horror shorts in the notable black horror anthologies Black Girl Magic: Horror Edition and CID’s Forever Vacancy. Her novels include the southern gothic horror novel Tea and Tomahawks, the zombie-themed paranormal romance Loving Among the Dead, and the paranormal romance Reluctant Magic. She also writes horror reviews for her blog, The Sultry Scribe. bohowriterchick.com
Amber DoeAmber Doe is an artist, poet and author. She wrote The Last of the Red Hot Lovers, a short horror story in Sycorax’s Daughters. She has been published in the Finnish art journal Hesa Inprint three times; By Sixteen for their Phobia issue and Moon in Cancer and This will hurt for their Harvest Issue. Both pieces are related to the longer piece The Last of the Red Hot Lovers published in Sycorax. She was born in Washington DC, raised in Philadelphia PA and an Indian reservation outside of Charlotte, NC. Amber earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College. amberdoe.co
Tananarive Due
Stoker Award nominee Tananarive Due is an NAACP Image Award and an American Book Award winner. The New York Times called her novel My Soul to Keep “Riveting, and masterfully researched.” A highly prolific writer, her impressive body of work includes over a dozen titles, written alone or in collaboration with her husband, Steven Barnes. Taking on everything from supernatural viruses to zombies to vampires, she is a trailblazer in that she is one of the first African American purely genre horror writers.
www.tananarivedue.com
WC Dunlap
WC Dunlap draws her inspiration from the complexities of a Black Baptist, middle class upbringing by southern parents, and all that entails for a brown skin girl growing up in America. Equally enthralled by the divine and the demonic with a professional background in data & tech, she seeks to bend genres with a unique lens on fantasy, fear, and the future. Her writing career spans film, journalism and cultural critique, previously under the byline Wendi Dunlap. You can find her writing in FIYAH, Lightspeed, Podcastle, and Nightmare. Carnivàle is her first long-form fiction which will be published by Broken Eye Books. Her short story “March Magic,” appearing in the award-winning anthology Africa Risen, is on the 2022 Locus Recommended Reading List. WC Dunlap holds a BA in Film and Africana Studies from Cornell University. She is the proud mother of a young adult son and two British Shorthair familiars. wcdunlap.com
Janiera Eldridge
Eldridge writes horror, thriller, dark paranormal, and mystery novels and released her first novel, Soul Sisters in 2012. Since then, she has written Dark Expectations, and Good Ghost Gone Bad, making Soul Sisters a vampire fiction trilogy. She reviews books and interviews authors for her horror blog. Find her online at her website at www.janieraeldridge.blogspot.com or on Twitter @lazenbeauty
Chikodili Emelumadu
Chikodili Emelumadu was born in Worksop, Nottinghamshire and raised in Nigeria. Her work has previously been shortlisted for the Shirley Jackson Awards (2015), the Caine Prize for African Literature (2017) and a Nommo award (2020). In 2019, she won the inaugural Curtis Brown First Novel prize for her novel Dazzling.
Ann FieldsHer most recent novel is a welcome addition to the horror genre. Fuller’s Curse is about an African American family with a terrible legacy; the mysterious legend of BlackHeart, and a curse that is causing members of this family to die horrible deaths, one by one. She is also the author of several romance titles on Arabesque under the pen name Anna Larence and has been writing since 1996. http://annfields.com/
Penelope Flynn
Penelope Flynn creates mixed genre adult-targeted speculative fiction and illustrations featuring elements of dark fiction, horror, suspense, science fiction, fantasy, and erotica and erotic romance. Her works are included in the Dark Universe anthologies, Steamfunk, Scierogenous II, and SLAY: Stories of the Vampire Noire. She authors the Sci-Fi/Horror/Erotica mash-up series, the Chronicles of Renfields, and co-edits and contributes to the Blerdrotica Black erotica anthology series. She is a member of the Horror Writer’s Association and has joined the faculty of the Speculative Fiction Academy. She has appeared on panels for World Fantasy Con, WorldCon, MultiverseCon, Blacktasticon and the FAMU Literary Forum. Penelope Flynn moderates and co-hosts the weekly podcast, Discussions From the OTHERhood and heads Prolific Hybrid Multimedia.
Stephanie Freeman
Four-time #1 Bestselling Hybrid Author, Stephanie M. Freeman began her writing career when Simon and Schuster published her first novel, Necessary Evil. Stephanie is a member of the Cavalcade of Authors and Naleighna Kai’s Tribe Called Success, a collective of New York Times, USA Today and Essence Magazine National and International Best-Selling Authors. Her Diamonds, Blood and Shadows series and books 10 Days of Pleasure and Queen of Shadow Bay are fan favorites. She co-wrote Knight of Bronzeville with National and International Bestselling Author Naleighna Kai and 40 Days of Pleasure with Bestselling Author Martha Kennerson. Stephanie is featured in the Powerhouse Voices of Clubhouse and both The Write Stuff and The Marketing Stuff and hosts the popular Club House Event called Murder, Mayhem and Mysteries (and the people who love them), and Books and Beyond, a podcasting platform where readers meet some of today’s National and International Bestselling Authors. https://stephaniemfreemanauthor.com/
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150 Black Women in Horror Part 3 (Canterbury – Davis)
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 third 10 of them.
Patricia E. Canterbury
Award-winning poet, short story writer, novelist, philanthropist and political scientist Patricia E. Canterbury contributed the story “Wild Chocolate” to the Dark Dreams anthologies of paranormal horror and suspense. It is the story of a visit to a remote village in the Brazilian jungle and what happens to a married couple, and of the power of pure love. Her primary genre is mystery. +
Pearl Cleage
Known for her civil rights orientation and her feminist views with regards to what black women experience, Pearl Cleage has achieved critical acclaim and commercial success for her non-fiction titles and her genre-hopping fiction. Her supernaturally themed 2011 Just Wanna Testify is about a couple of black fashion models in Atlanta who happen to be vampires, although they have a whole lot in common with succubi. www.pearlcleage.net
Donyae Coles
Donyae Coles is an artist and a writer whose work is speculative in nature. Her writing is lyrical and haunting and focuses on blending real life anxieties and issues with genre elements found in science fiction, fantasy, and horror. She is represented by Lane Heymont of Tobias Literary for written works. She works in traditional media, mainly watercolor, acrylic, and ink. Her artworks convey a narrative all of their own. donyaecoles.com
Crystal ConnorSci-Fi and horror writer Crystal Connor began writing tales of the things that strike fear in the hearts of men during her time serving overseas in the US Navy. Travel to Africa, Asia and the Middle East while in the service helped her to learn of creatures in many national legends that sparked her imagination, leading to the creation of her first novel, The Darkness. www.wordsmithcrystalconnor.blogspot.com
Melody CooperMelody is a Sundance Episodic Lab Fellow and winner of an Adobe Women at Sundance fellowship for her sci fi horror script “Those Who Kill.” Upcoming: the feature adaptation of African fantasy novel Beasts Of Prey. She’s also developing a horror TV series with Sterling K. Brown and Academy Award-winner Tarell McCraney. Melody started out as staff writer on CW’s Two Sentence Horror Stories while still in the 2019 HBO Access Writing Program. One of her two episodes, “Ibeji” was directed by Bola Ogun and won a Silver Telly. Other credits: Law & Order: SVU, co-producer on Power Book IV: Force, Shudder Labs. Melody also writes comic books, including OMNI, Noir is the New Black (“Igbo Landing”) and DC’s Milestones of History. She’s co-founder of Nyx Horror Collective and co-producer of the Nyx short film program “13 Minutes of Horror” on Shudder (2021 and 2022). Nyx offers horror fellowships in partnership with Stowe Story Labs to woman-identifying writers. socials: @melodycooper@mastodon.world Instagram: @melodycooperflims
www.melodyMcooper.com www.nyxhorror.com
Joy M. Copeland
Short horror fiction author Joy M. Copeland has been included in the horror anthologies Dark Dreams. Sycorax’s Daughters and To Hell in a Fast Car. She also wrote a series of books on histories of select members of the Teamsters Union.www.goodreads.com/author/show/4072428.Joy_M_Copeland
Arielle CrowellArielle Crowell is the author of Deadly Magnolia, the story of Nicodemus LaCroix a serial killer who may have met his match. After his wife’s sudden death, he finds out the hard way that her family has deep ties to the Haitian voodoo community. She also wrote Monster, which is about more human horrors, and Mr. Undesirable, about three bad boys on a road to redemption.
Tracy CrossTracy Cross’s work has been featured in several podcasts and mass-market anthologies. Tracy Cross’s work has been featured in several podcasts, including ‘Nighty Night with Rabia Chaudry (advocate and author of the New York Times bestselling book “Adnan’s Story”). Her work can be found in several anthologies, including Don’t Break the Oath, Pandemics Unleashed and 99 Tiny Terrors. Her first book, Rootwork, a folk horror homage to her late grandmother. Her first book, Rootwork, was published by Dark Hart Publishing in 2022. She lives in Washington, DC, and is an active member of the HWA. She is on instagram as tracycrosswrites and twitter as tracycwrites. She loves disco and shares her latest exploits and information on her blog: tracycwritesonline.com.
Vicy CrossShe writes dystopian fiction, gothic horror, historical fantasies and other speculative fiction. Her debut novel on Storm Moon Press, Tuesday Apocalypse takes place in the 1940s in a post-apocalyptic London where tentacle monsters draw a nun and a young girl into increasingly treacherous worlds of erotic temptation and madness. She has written dark poetry and short stories in Infernal Ink Magazine and Poems from the Darkside.
www.facebook.com/AuthorVicyCross
L.M. DavisAn author of young adult paranormal fiction, science fiction and dark fantasy, Ms. Davis successfully applies a horror overlay to her young adult science-fiction series Skinless, where a teenage alien finds her mother abducted by intergalactic bogeymen. Shifters is another paranormal young adult fiction series featuring a cast of multicultural shape-shifters. It includes the titles Interlopers and Posers.
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Black Women in Horror 