In conversation with Angela Slatter

Angela Slatter Women Horror Month

In conversation with Angela Slatter

My introduction to Angela Slatter was with her first U.S. collection, A Feast of Sorrows (2006), which won the Aurealis Award for Best Collection. As a rabid fan of fairy tales, I was immediately hooked. I quickly acquired Sourdough and Other Stories (2012), the first collection based in a world of Slatter’s design. I followed this up with The Bitterwood Bible (2014), which won the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection. I also tracked down the collection The Girl with No Hands and Other Tales (2010), which won the Aurealis Award for Best Collection and Of Sorrow and Such (2015), which won Ditmar Award for Best Novella. Over the years, Slatter has continued to add stories and novels set in this fabulous universe. And it keeps expanding. Slatter’s third mosaic collection, The Tallow-Wife and Other Tales (2022), winds in and out of the other stories found in the Sourdough world. (Seeking out the Easter eggs is part of the fun.) When reading Slatter’s stories, memories of other characters, other events, and other places permeate the experience. It’s a masterful feat, and there’s not much I’d rather do than sink into this magical domain where fox brides steal men and memories, the rusalki sing along the riverbank near Bellsholm, and ghostly wolfhounds guard the Cathedral in Lodellan.

In 2021, Angela Slatter (writing as A. G. Slatter) released All the Murmuring Bones, the first full-length novel set in her extraordinary Sourdough universe. Christopher Golden called this book, “Harrowing and beautiful, this is the grim, fairy-tale gothic you’ve been waiting for.” And it truly is. She followed this up with The Path of Thorns (2022), which won the Australian Shadows Award for Best Novel as well as the Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel. She also released The Bone Lantern (2022), which revisits Selke, one of my favorite characters, who can be found in “A Porcelain Soul” (Sourdough and Other Stories) and Of Sorrow and Such. It was such a treat to have the opportunity to read them all together, I ended up revisiting all three of the mosaic collections (Sourdough, Bitterwood Bible, and The Tallow-Wife). Perhaps it’s no surprise that The Bone Lantern garnered critical and popular acclaim, and for this gorgeous execution, Slatter took home a Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novella. 

When I was researching my article “Word Wielded by Women” (Apex Magazine, May 2023), I was thrilled when I had the opportunity to speak with Angela in a personal interview on Zoom. We discussed the path she’s taken on her writer’s journey and her fascination with fairy tales. “I grew up with the original proper Grimm fairy tales. The more I read these fairy tales with a critical eye, I realized these tales are horror,” says Angela Slatter. Perhaps this is one of the reasons she moves so effortlessly between genres in everything from dark fairy tales to supernatural crime. In fact, Slatter reads as widely as she writes, which leads to the intriguing hybridization that so often occurs in her own work. “Women form the biggest reading audience; we read everything. Writers are real magpies. We’re in a constant state of borrowing and experimenting.”

Since her first fiction publications in 2016, Angela Slatter has published more than 90 stories in some of the best magazines and anthologies around. Her work is frequently showcased in the annual anthologies dedicated to the best fiction of each year, and she has so many nominations and awards, it’s hard to count them all. In February this year, Slatter returned once again to her Sourdough universe with The Briar Book of the Dead (2024). When it finally showed up on my doorstep, I stopped everything I was doing and devoured it in a single sitting. She’s currently working on her next novel, The Crimson Road, with several other projects on the way. As far as I’m concerned, Angela Slater can’t write fast enough to feed my Sourdough habit. Luckily, her impressive canon of short fiction and novels means I can return to the magic of her world whenever I’m craving another bite.  –Carina Bissett

About Angela Slatter

About Angela Slatter
Angela Slatter Women Horror Month

Angela Slatter is the author of six novels, including All the Murmuring BonesThe Path of Thorns and The Briar Book of the Dead, as well as twelve short story collections, including The Bitterwood Bible and The Tallow-Wife and Other Tales. She’s won a World Fantasy Award, a British Fantasy Award, a Shirley Jackson, a Ditmar, three Australian Shadows Awards, and eight Aurealis Awards; her work has been translated into multiple languages. She has an MA and a PhD in creative writing, occasionally teaches creative writing. She’s collaborated with Mike Mignola on a new series from Dark Horse Comics, Castle Full of Blackbirds,set in the Hellboy Universe. Online at angelaslatter.com.

Interview with Angela Slatter

BISSETT: What was your first experience with horror?

SLATTER: I’d say it was probably fairy tales read to me as a child. “The Little Match Girl”, “The Red Shoes”, “Hansel and Gretel” all have enormous horror elements in them – and that’s only naming three stories. Most fairy or folktales have an element of horror in them from when they were warning tales, and that hasn’t entirely been wiped out by Disneyfication.  

BISSETT: What attracts you to horror as a genre?

SLATTER: I think I’m very much interested in survival – what we can and do get through, and the scars that bad experiences leave behind. I also come from a police family and am a bit reader of crime, and I think there is a very distinct link between crime and horror writing. Horror is often the next step on from the crime. Probably the first crime-horror connection I made was watching (far too young) an old movie about Jack the Ripper, then reading the true crime accounts of it, then following up with the various horror fiction versions of it like Robert Bloch’s “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” and Kim Newman’s “Red Reign”.

BISSETT: Who or what terrifies you?

SLATTER: People who think they’re better than others because they don’t put value on the lives of anyone not like them. People are the worst monsters.

BISSETT: What changes have you seen in the representation of women in the horror genre?

SLATTER: Maybe that we don’t have to adopt male pseudonyms to get published? But we still have to listen to the bullshit excuses given by some editors: “But women don’t write horror!” “But I don’t know any women who write horror!” “Women don’t submit to horror anthologies!” “Women aren’t scary!” And so we end up with tables of contents that can best be described as “A lot of spare dick.”

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

SLATTER: Hopefully more of us getting published. Hopefully less of us being described as “female horror writers” and just as “amazing horror writers”. That would be nice.

 BISSETT: What are the challenges you’ve faced as a woman working in horror?

SLATTER: I’ve been fortunate to have work appearing in high-profile horror markets and anthologies. I’ve also very aware that not all women working in the area have had this privilege. Some days trying to get a book blurb from the boys club is exhausting and you’re told “You don’t really write horror.” The men who’ve asked for and received help in their career, then conveniently forget that you helped them, never acknowledging it or trying to pay it forward or back. And then there are the men who don’t think they’re in a boys club because it never occurs to them to look around and notice the lack of women in their treehouse. Such a mystery.

BISSETT: What advice do you have to women working in the field?

SLATTER: Keep writing. Don’t self-reject from horror markets. Keep submitting – keep making a noise. Seek out anthologies led by female or female-identifying editors. Help other women up as you go along – don’t pull the ladder up behind you. Maintain your rage.

 BISSETT: What authors or works would you recommend to readers?

SLATTER: Cynthia Pelayo, Kaaron Warren, J.S. Breukelaar, Carina Bissett, Kelsea Yu, Mercedes Murdock Yardley, Tananarive Due, Shirley Jackson, Daphne Du Maurier, Flannery O’Connor, Barbara Baynton, Marghanita Laski, Margo Lanagan, Mariana Enriquez, Cassandra Khaw, Gemma Files, Linda Addison, Rivers Solomon, Gwendolyn Kiste, Karen Runge, Helen Oyeyemi, Alix Harrow, Angela Carter, Cat Ward, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Hailey Piper, Sarah Lanagan, Carmen Maria Machado, Olivia Stephens… NOT an exhaustive list!

BISSETT: What are you currently working on?

SLATTER: Currently I’m working on finishing a gothic fantasy/horror novel The Crimson Road and then I’ll be working on a contemporary folk horror novella called The Cold House.

BISSETT: Your short story collections (Sourdough, Bitterwood, and Tallow-Wife) created a world that you’ve continued to explore in your novellas (Of Sorrow and Such and The Bone Lantern) as well as your novels (All The Murmuring Bones, The Path of Thorns, and The Briar Book of the Dead). What are the challenges of writing in a world of your own making? What are the rewards?

SLATTER: Challenges: remembering what lore you set in place years ago! Trying not to contradict yourself or, if you do, then being able to come up with a compelling explanation.

Rewards: those golden moments when you’re writing something new and a little flag goes up in the brain that says “You could extend that idea you floated in such-and-such a short story a few years ago!” and finding that it actually fits perfectly because Past-You was obvious planning ahead. And also having readers find all the little easter eggs that have their roots in the short stories or novellas that I’ve planted in the novels. I love that some people are reading so close and remembering so well! It feels like the stories are beloved, then.

About The Briar Book of the Dead by Angela Slatter (Titan Books, 2024) 

About The Briar Book of the Dead by Angela Slatter  (Titan Books, 2024) 
Angela Slatter Women Horror Month

Set in the same universe as the acclaimed All the Murmuring Bones and The Path of Thorns (one of Oprah Daily’s Top 25 Fantasy Novels of 2022), this beautifully told Gothic fairy tale of ghosts, witches, deadly secrets and past sins, will be perfect for fans of Hannah Whitten and Ava Reid.

Ellie Briar is the first non-witch to be born into her family for generations. The Briar family of witches run the town of Silverton, caring for its inhabitants with their skills and magic. In the usual scheme of things, they would be burnt for their sorcery, but the church has given them dispensation in return for their protection of the borders of the Darklands, where the much-feared Leech Lords hold sway.

Ellie is being trained as a steward, administering for the town, and warding off the insistent interest of the church. When her grandmother dies suddenly, Ellie’s cousin Audra rises to the position of Briar Witch, propelling Ellie into her new role. As she navigates fresh challenges, an unexpected new ability to see and speak to the dead leads her to uncover sinister family secrets, stories of burnings, lost grimoires and evil spells. Reeling from one revelation to the next, she seeks answers from the long dead and is forced to decide who to trust, as a devastating plot threatens to destroy everything the Briar witches have sacrificed so much to build.

Told in the award-winning author’s trademark gorgeous, addictive prose, this is an intricately woven tale of a family of witches struggling against the bonds of past sins and persecution.

Purchase link:

About The Wrong Girl & Other Warnings by (Brain Jar Press, 2023) 

the wrong girl by Angela
Angela Slatter Women Horror Month

From the award-winning Angela Slatter, author of The Bitterwood Bible and Other RecountingsAll The Murmuring Bones, and The Path of Thorns, comes a collection of twelve short stories showcasing the scope of her extraordinary talent.

In The Wrong Girl and Other Warnings, Slatter shows us that ‘innocent’ should never be mistaken for ‘safe’, while spinning tales of witches, Victorian-era detectives, bad parents, unrepentant killers, and ancient wisdom.

In A Matter Of Light, detective Kit Casswell is called upon to lend her experience with the supernatural to a very unwilling consulting detective. In Widows’ Walk, a quartet of witches band together in a single house, secretly working to protect young women. In the titular tale, The Wrong Girl, a frustrated artist turns the romance of her fickle friend and tiresome sister into a deadly masterpiece.

Wry, fearless, and written with the precision of a writer at the top of her game, The Wrong Girl and Other Warnings is a gift to those who already love Slatter’s fiction and those discovering her exquisite stories for the first time.

Purchase a copy direct from Brain Jar Press here

Carina Bissett

Women in Horror Month By Carina Bissett
Angela Slatter Women Horror Month

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

 Dead Girl, Driving and Other DevastationsWomen in Horror Month
Angela Slatter Women Horror Month

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

“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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  • 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.

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