FIRST CHAPTER PLUS COLUMNIST
Women in Horror Month May Be Gone But Women Authors are Still Writing
BY DAWN COLCLASURE
85 Elana Gomel is another woman horror author who has works published in both anthologies and magazines. Her book, City of Blood and Bone (PsychoToxin Press, 2023), is a combination of science fiction and horror. She has written other horror books such as Girl of Light (Vraeyda Literary, 2022) and Nightwood: All Fairy Tales were History Once (Crystal Lake Publishing, 2023). Amy Grech has had numerous works of speculative fiction published in various magazines, as well as anthologies, such as Even in the Grave (Neoparadoxa, 2022) and Hush, Don't Wake the Monster, a Women in Horror Anthology (Twisted Wing Productions, 2023). Her most recent book, A Shadow of Your Former Self (Alien Buddha Press, 2023), contains poetry as well as horror stories. With the creation of Women in Horror Month in 2010, women authors who wrote horror cheered. In a genre long dominated by male authors, the time had come for women horror authors to be recognized. Sadly, due to backlash, the organization behind Women in Horror Month ended the annual celebration in March 2021, but women horror authors have pressed on. These writers continue to write horror stories entertaining readers worldwide. This list of women horror authors must include the woman who started it all: Mary Shelley. While eighteen years old and still Mary Wollstonecraft, she cried “Challenge accepted!” and, on a bet, wrote the scariest story she could imagine, which we all came to know and love as Frankenstein. Her boyfriend, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who later became her husband, loved the story so much that he encouraged her to turn it into a novel. Hers was the first to stand out as a horror novel written by a woman.
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