In conversation with Alma Katsu

I first discovered Alma Katsu when I read the introduction to Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women (2020), edited by Lee Murray and Geneve Flynn. This ground-breaking collection of fourteen stories, explores the identity of Asian women from different perspectives. “Just as there is no one type of woman, there is no single, all-encompassing notion of Asia,” writes Alma Katsu in the introduction. “It is too multifaceted to be contained in one identity.” The same could be said of Katsu’s own literary feats. And, once I delved into her work, I discovered just how much I’d missed out on. Katsu’s debut novel, The Taker (2011), garnered praise from Booklist and The Washington Post, and it was listed as one of the ten best debut novels of the year by the American Library Association. Since then, Katsu has published eight novels and three novellas, and she shows no sign of stopping. 

 Alma Katsu uses her background in the intelligence field in such works as her current Lyndsey Duncan novels (Red Widow and Red London), but she is also known for her novels which view historical events through a speculative lens. Like many of the women I’ve been following, Katsu refuses to be bound to genre conventions. For instance, Katsu’s novel The Hunger (2018), a supernatural take on the fate of the Donner party, was labelled a historical thriller, yet it went on to win the Western Heritage Award. This novel was also embraced by the horror community, and it ended up garnering a nomination for the Bram Stoker Award®. Since then, Katsu has earned two more Stoker nominations for her novels, and she went on to win the Bram Stoker Award® for Superior Achievement in Long Fiction for The Wehrwolf, proving once again that she’s an author on the move. —Carina Bissett

About Alma Katsu

Alma Katsu’s books have been nominated and won multiple prestigious awards including the Stoker, Goodreads Reader’s Choice, International Thriller Writers, Locus Magazine, the Western Heritage Awards, Spain’s Celsius 232 festival, and appeared on numerous Best Books lists including NPR, the Observer, Barnes and Noble, Apple Books, Goodreads, and Amazon.

She has written two spy novels (RED WIDOW and RED LONDON), the logical marriage of her love of storytelling with her 30+ year career in intelligence.  She also writes novels that combine historical fiction with supernatural and horror elements. THE HUNGER (2018), a reimagining of the story of the Donner Party, was named one of NPR’s 100 favorite horror stories, was on numerous Best Books of the Year lists, and continues to be honored as a new classic in horror. Her first book, THE TAKER (2011), was named one of the top ten debut novels of 2011 by Booklist.

Alma Katsu has relocated from the Washington, DC area to the mountains of West Virginia, where she lives with her musician husband Bruce and their two dogs, Nick and Ash. You can find her online at https://almakatsubooks.com/. 

Interview with Alma Katsu

BISSETT: What changes have you seen in the representation of women in the horror genre? What are the challenges you’ve faced as a woman working in horror?

KATSU: I may be different from other horror writers in that I didn’t set out to write in this genre. My writing has always been dark and speculative, but I didn’t come up through the ranks by publishing short stories or cut my teeth at an independent press. As I’ve said many times, The Hunger wasn’t even considered by my publisher (Putnam) as horror. As the book was embraced by the horror community, I became known as a horror writer (for which I’m grateful, let me be clear).

My first three books, a trilogy, might be considered horror. The Taker (2011) and the other two books in the trilogy were written in the mold of early Anne Rice. This was when Twilight was the big thing in publishing and paranormal romance was the hot genre. (To be clear, the trilogy is not Twilight. It’s extremely dark.) Is paranormal romance horror? Then, the answer was either ‘no’ or it was considered some kind of despised bastard stepchild. I approached the horror community at that time and felt rebuffed. The conferences I attended were dominated by men and there were few women in attendance. I walked away, thinking I’d never be accepted.

So, have things changed? It seems that way to me. You don’t get as many men sneering that no woman could ever write a story that they’d find scary. There isn’t just one kind of horror.  It doesn’t have to be violent and gory. Horror is as much about empathy now as it is about jump scares and blood.

Horror is also one genre where a good number of men seem to read women authors. I know I have a lot of male readers. Maybe that’s because horror has more male readers than other genres? I don’t know; I only know that the spy genre is dominated by men as both writers and readers, and it’s extremely hard to get men to read a book written by a woman with a female main character. (More on that, below.)

BISSETT: Do you feel there are unique challenges faced by women in horror?

KATSU: Horror, particularly in film and TV, has long been associated with sex. I grew up in the era of Hammer films, with helpless women in low-cut dresses, always threatened by an air of sexual menace. Today, women are free to flex their sexuality, and that’s great, particularly if that’s who you truly are. But that sort of thing can come back to hurt you down the road—I’d like to think that sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore, but I’m not sure humanity is that enlightened yet.  

BISSETT: What do you think the future holds for women working in horror right now? What advice do you have to women working in the field?

KATSU: It is so wonderful to have so many women writing horror. And their writing is authentically themselves with their own unique voices, not just imitations of others. I truly feel we’re in a golden age right now with lots of interest in horror, and the genre is growing and expanding—fertile ground for the creation of great new works. I guess my advice would be to keep pushing yourself to discover what it is you truly want to say and not to be afraid to go there. 

BISSETT: The Red Widow series is based on contemporary women working in the intelligence field. What is the most surprising thing you’ve learned?

KATSU: Readers who only know me by The Hunger or The Fervor might be surprised to learn that I also write spy novels and stories. That’s because I was an intelligence professional for over 30 years. Before I wrote Red Widow, the first novel, I didn’t think I’d have trouble being accepted. Not only had I had a long career, it had been very successful, too. I’d risen high in my skill field and ended up as a fairly senior manager. As a writer, I’d already been nominated for awards and gotten good reviews: I wasn’t a hack, in other words.

And yet it has been incredibly hard to break out in the spy genre. Not only are the majority of readers male, but all the gatekeepers are men, too (and generally older men). I’ve had my books castigated for having too much “romance” though I can say, unequivocally, that there is no more romance in them than in novels written by male authors—look at Red Sparrow, for pete’s sake. It’s also a genre, like horror, where a good many women say they don’t read the genre so it’s hard to convince them to give it a try.

The most maddening part is that Hollywood likes my perspective on the spy genre. Everything I’ve written in the genre—both novels and Black Vault, an Amazon Original Story—have been optioned for TV. Producers tell me over and over that I’ve got a fresh take on the spy story, one that’s grounded and authentic. What this says to me is that it’s the gatekeepers of spy literature keeping things the same. They like reading the same old story with the same protagonist, only altered slightly so they can feel like they’re reading something new. By contrast, the horror world feels very different. It’s not perfect, but you don’t have hoary old men deciding what is allowable and what’s not. 

About Red London by Alma Katsu (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, March 2023)

One of CrimeReads’ Best Espionage Fiction
One of CrimeReads’ Most Anticipated Crime Fiction of 2023
One of BookPage’s Most Anticipated Mystery/Suspense of 2023

“ Alma Katsupaints a vivid picture of modern London at the intersection of a vast, dangerous game being waged between Russia, its monied exiles, the British upper classes, and American intelligence.” —CrimeReads

CIA agent Lyndsey Duncan’s newest asset might just be her long-needed confidante…or her greatest betrayal.

After her role in taking down a well-placed mole inside the CIA, Agent Lyndsey Duncan arrives in London fully focused on her newest Russian asset, deadly war criminal Dmitri Tarasenko. That is until her MI6 counterpart, Davis Ranford, personally calls for her help.

Following a suspicious attack on Russian oligarch Mikhail Rotenberg’s property in a tony part of London, Davis needs Lyndsey to cozy up to the billionaire’s aristocratic British wife, Emily Rotenberg. Fortunately for Lyndsey, there’s little to dissuade Emily from taking in a much-needed confidante. Even being one of the richest women in the world is no guarantee of happiness. But before Lyndsey can cover much ground with her newfound friend, the CIA unveils a perturbing connection between Mikhail and Russia’s geoplitical past, one that could upend the world order and jeopardize Lyndsey’s longtime allegiance to the Agency.

Carina Bissett

Carina Bissett is a writer and poet working primarily in the fields of dark fiction and fabulism. She is the author of numerous shorts stories, which are featured in her debut collection Dead Girl, Driving and Other Devastations (Trepidatio Publishing, 2024), and she is the co-editor of the award-winning anthology Shadow Atlas: Dark Landscapes of the Americas. She is currently a Bram Stoker finalist for her essay “Words Wielded by Women” (Apex Magazine, 2023), a comprehensive retrospective of women in horror. Links to her work can be found at http://carinabissett.com.

Dead Girl, Driving and Other Devastations

In this powerful debut, Carina Bissett explores the liminal spaces between the magical and the mundane, horror and humor, fairy tales and fabulism. A young woman discovers apotheosis at the intersection of her cross-cultural heritage. A simulacrum rebels against her coding to create a new universe of her own making. A poison assassin tears the world apart in the relentless pursuit of her true love—the one person alive who can destroy her. Dead Girl, Driving and Other Devastations erases expectations, forging new trails on the map of contemporary fiction. Includes an introduction by Julie C. Day, author of Uncommon Miracles and The Rampant. 

Praise for Dead Girl, Driving and Other Devastations

Check out Steve Stred’s Review of Dead Girl Driving here

“Carina Bissett is one of my favorite speculative authors writing today—magic and myth, horror and revenge, wonder and hope. Her stories are original, lyrical, and haunting—Shirley Jackson mixed with Ursula LeGuin and a dash of Neil Gaiman. An amazing collection of stories.

—Richard Thomas, author of Spontaneous Human Combustion, a Bram Stoker Award finalist

“Carina Bissett’s collection is a thing of wonder and beauty. It is a true representation of Carina herself: whimsical, visceral, lovely, and fierce. You can hear women’s voices screaming while roses fall from their lips. Dead Girl, Driving and Other Devastations is a triumph.”—Mercedes M. Yardley, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Little Dead Red

“From fairy tale revisions to fresh takes on monstrous transitions and the absolute horrors of being female, no one knows how to write a story like Carina Bissett. Fierce yet fragile.”—Lindy Ryan, author of Bless Your Heart

“In a debut collection weaving folklore and fairy tale and told in magical, lyrical, irresistible prose, Carina Bissett inveigles readers with the breadth of her skill. A feat of woven wonder, with spells sketched in the air and strands stretched taut, Dead Girl Driving and Other Devastations is an enchanting tapestry of silken stories, the collection establishing Bissett as a world-class author of fabulism, fantasy, and horror. A must-read for lovers of Neil Gaiman, Angela Slatter, and Carmen Maria Machado.” —Lee Murray, five-time Bram Stoker Awards-winning author of Grotesque: Monster Stories

“Ravishing flights of fantasy.”—Priya Sharma, Shirley Jackson award-winning author of All the Fabulous Beasts and Ormeshadow

“Dark, often violent, Dead Girl, Driving & Other Devastations doesn’t lie to you about the nature of its stories. Between the title page and the Afterword lies a harrowing alliance of nightmare and fairytale. The pages are full of strange birds, resurrections, second chances, monstrous women, enchantments, and inventions. These stories explore a dark and permissive imagination, unafraid to disturb the monster at the back of the cave. It is a collection for the brave and forlorn, for those seeking escape, vengeance, transformation, or grace. There is wonder here, and freedom from shackles—for those fierce enough to wrench loose of them.”—C. S. E. Cooney, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Saint Death’s Daughter

“Carina’s short stories are absolutely luminous and deeply unsettling. Savour this collection like a fine blood-red wine. It’s absolute perfection and will linger long after the pages are closed.”—KT Wagner

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