In conversation with Cynthia Pelayo
As a fan of fairy tales, I first discovered the work of Cynthia Pelayo through her book Children of Chicago (2012), a modern spin on the Pied Piper fairy tale. This novel won the International Latino Book Award for Best Mystery and was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award® for Superior Achievement in a Novel. The second book in the Chicago Series, The Shoemaker’s Magician (2023) came out last year, and then Pelayo followed that performance up with the publication of The Forgotten Sisters (2024), which was just released this month. Pelayo has a background in journalism and psychology, and she utilizes this knowledge in her work with forensic precision. Her stories and novels are often set in her hometown of Chicago, and her Latina heritage offers a cultural component that gives her stories a unique and compelling sense of the world that writes in. This is even more evident in her stunning collection of stories in Lotería, which was rereleased in 2023 with Agora Books. Based on the Mexican board game of the same name, each story in this collection is based on one of the game’s 54 cards, a clever and compelling constraint that explores Pelayo’s craft in short fiction.
Even though her novels and short fiction have carved her name into the bedrock of women’s horror, it’s her poetry that truly sings for me. In an almost magical feat, she can take something with the size and scope that could be explored in a novel-length work and distill it down to a few lines in a single poem. It’s truly chilling and incredible in every way. So, it’s not a surprise that of the five Bram Stoker Awards® nominations Pelayo accumulated over the course of just three years, two of them were for her poetry: Into the Forest and All the Way Through (2020) received a nomination for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection and Crime Scene (2022) won the category, garnering Pelayo’s first Bram Stoker Awards® win. I have a feeling there will be more to follow, as Pelayo shows no signs of stopping. And that’s a wonderous thing to behold. –Carina Bissett
About Cynthia Pelayo
Cynthia Pelayo is a Bram Stoker Award winning and International Latino Book Award winning author and poet. Pelayo writes fairy tales that blend genre and explore concepts of grief, mourning, and cycles of violence. She is the author of Loteria, Santa Muerte, The Missing, Poems of My Night, Into the Forest and All the Way Through, Children of Chicago, Crime Scene, The Shoemaker’s Magician, as well as dozens of standalone short stories and poems.
Loteria, which was her MFA in Writing thesis at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, was re-released to praise with Esquire calling it one of the ‘Best Horror Books of 2023.’ Santa Muerte and The Missing, her young adult horror novels were each nominated for International Latino Book Awards. Poems of My Night was nominated for an Elgin Award. Into the Forest and All the Way Through was nominated for an Elgin Award and was also nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection. Children of Chicago was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award in Superior Achievement in a Novel and won an International Latino Book Award for Best Mystery. Crime Scene won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection. The Shoemaker’s Magician has been released to praise with Library Journal awarding it a starred review.
Cynthia Pelayo’s forthcoming novel, The Forgotten Sisters (Thomas and Mercer, 2024) and is an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.” You can find her online at https://cinapelayo.com/.
Interview with Cynthia Pelayo
BISSETT: What was your first experience with horror?
PELAYO: It was when my oldest brother Robert was babysitting me. This was right after A Nightmare on Elm Street went to video and he rented it. I walked into the living room at that scene where Freddy Krueger has his arms extended across the alley. I was terrified and mesmerized all the same. I’ve been fascinated with horror since.
BISSETT: What attracts you to horror as a genre?
PELAYO: I enjoy how it’s an exploration of our own fears, our own questions about life and death. I feel like horror is the genre that allows us to ask really big questions, and sometimes scary and uncomfortable questions that aren’t really able to be explored in other genres.
BISSETT: Who or what terrifies you?
PELAYO: Easy! Spiders, heights, and…humans.
BISSETT: What changes have you seen in the representation of women in the horror genre?
PELAYO: There are so many wonderful women in horror! Women writing across all subgenres within horror, women supporting other women in horror. It’s absolutely beautiful growth of representation we’ve seen. I hope to see more.
BISSETT: What do you think the future holds for women working in horror right now?
PELAYO: I think more. More women. More women from various backgrounds. More stories. More books. More horror. I’m excited for our future.
BISSETT: You balance numerous roles in your life as an author, a poet, an editor, and a publisher. You are also a mother and a wife. How do you do it all?
PELAYO: I wish I had an easy answer! I think I learned accept and embrace the chaos. I also accept help when it’s offered now, from my mom or my husband. They both help out with things at home so I can write. But overall, yes, it s a lot. It’s a constant balance. I think it’s safe to say I don’t really have “free” time. I am always working, writing, reading, spending time with family, or things like self care, walking, meditating, journaling.
BISSETT: What advice do you have to women working in the field?
PELAYO: Don’t stop. Keep going. Write the weird and beautiful thing. We need your stories.
BISSETT: Do you feel there are any additional challenges you face as a woman of color writing in horror?
PELAYO: I think it’s been a struggle to get noticed. It was hard to get here, because I think people just didn’t know or understand what it was I wanted to do, what I wanted to say. So, I just kept at it, kept writing, kept learning and kept growing. I didn’t stop, which is key. One just has to keep going, throughout it all.
BISSETT: Do you feel there are unique challenges faced by women in horror?
PELAYO: Of course, I think in terms of representation, across all areas in horror writing and publisher, we still have ways to go, with the advances, and the book deals, and more.
BISSETT: What authors or works would you recommend to readers?
PELAYO: I absolutely love: Tananarive Due, Gwendolyn Kiste, Christa Carmen, Hailey Piper, Linda Addison, Rena Mason, Lee Murray, Stephanie Wytovich, Jessica McHugh, L. Marie Wood, R.J. Joseph, Laurel Hightower, Sara Tantlinger, Mary SanGiovanni, Sadie Hartmann, Mariana Enriquez, and more.
BISSETT: What are you currently working on?
PELAYO: I am working on my next novel, which is a Sleeping Beauty Adapatation.
About Forgotten Sisters by Cynthia Pelayo (Thomas & Mercer, March 2024)
A city’s haunted history and fairy-tale horrors converge for two women in an addictive novel of psychological suspense by a multiple Bram Stoker Award–nominated author.
Sisters Anna and Jennie live in a historic bungalow on the Chicago River. They’re tethered to a disquieting past, and with nowhere else to go, nothing can part them from their family home. Not the maddening creaks and disembodied voices that rattle the old walls. Not the inexplicable drownings in the area, or the increasing number of bodies that float by Anna’s window.
To stave off loneliness, Anna has a podcast, spinning ghostly tales of Chicago’s tragic history. But when Anna captures the attention of an ardent male listener, she awakens to the possibilities of a world outside.
As their relationship grows, so do Jennie’s fears. More and more people are going missing in the river. And then two detectives come calling.
They’re looking for a link between the mysteries of the river and what’s housed on the bank. Even Anna and Jennie don’t understand how dreadful it is―and still can be―when the truth about their unsettled lives begins to surface.
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
“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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