Rose Fox -- February 9th, 2011
Publishers Weekly
Last year, Hannah Neurotica declared February to be Women in Horror Recognition Month. She writes, “It is a month to celebrate all the women in the horror industry. Not just actresses but fx artists, writers, directors, female fans, etc.” Maura McHugh has been blogging about it from the writing and editing side; here’s her list of all the women who won Black Quill Awards and were shortlisted for Stokers this year. Women are doing tremendous work in this end of the field and I’m glad to see them getting some recognition.
February is also Black History Month in the U.S., so I’d like to give a special shout-out to black women who write and edit horror. There aren’t many! Off the top of my head, the only ones I know of are Linda D. Addison (the first African-American to win a Stoker Award), Tananarive Due (two-time Stoker nominee), Nalo Hopkinson (whose excellent anthology Mojo: Conjure Stories is often overlooked), and the late Octavia Butler. Nnedi Okorafor writes some fairly grim fantasy but I’m not sure whether she’d call it horror; likewise N.K. Jemisin. L.A. Banks’s urban fantasy might occasionally cross the line into horror, depending on how you define the two. I certainly wouldn’t hesitate to recommend any of these authors to the discriminating horror fan.
Who’s missing from that list? I’m sure I’ve left out some short story writers, since I don’t read much short fiction these days (to my sorrow). Please share your recommendations in the comments.
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