The Muse & The Marketplace 2020

In the last decade or so, a new publishing category has arisen:  literary horror. It's been associated with some of the most exciting writers working at the darker end of the literary spectrum, a list that includes Nadia Bulkin, Brian Evenson, Hye-young Pyun, Jac Jemc, Victor LaValle, Samanta Schweblin, and Paul Tremblay.  

Through a consideration of selected passages from their work, we'll sketch the topography of this developing field. We'll examine narrative perspectives that are de-centered from the one traditionally associated with horror stories (i.e. white, male, and cis), and narrative approaches drawn from a variety of postmodern and experimental sources. From there, we'll use this map to point out possible routes interested writers might follow in their own fiction.