In conversation with Eden Royce
In February, the jurors for the 2023 Shirley Jackson Awards were announced, and I was thrilled to see Eden Royce on the list. Not only is Royce an avid reader, but she was also Shirley Jackson Award nominee herself in 2021 for her short story “Room and Board Included, Demonology Extra.” Best of all, this fabulous piece of fiction has been recently re-released in her folk horror collection Who Lost, I Found (2023). Royce excels in penning horror for adults, representing Black Southern speculative fiction in a variety of subgenres including Southern Gothic, weird fiction, dark fantasy, and folk horror. However, she just as easily balances the needs of younger audiences with her children’s novels. Case in point is her ground-breaking debut Root Magic, which won an Ignyte Award as well as a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for outstanding children’s literature. I especially love that Royce offers young readers insight into her cultural heritage as a member of the Gullah-Geechee nation. She continues this exploration with her second children’s novel, The Creepening of Dogwood House, scheduled for release this summer—a welcome addition to the representation of horror for younger audiences. —Carina Bissett
About Eden Royce
Eden Royce is a Shirley Jackson Award finalist and her short stories have appeared in a variety of print and online publications. She has also written articles for Writer’s Digest, The Horn Book Magazine, Western Colorado University, and We Need Diverse Books. Her debut novel, Root Magic, is a Walter Dean Myers Award Honoree, an Andre Norton Nebula Award Finalist, an Ignyte Award winner, and a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award winner for outstanding children’s literature. Find her online at edenroyce.com.
Interview with Eden Royce
BISSETT: What was your first experience with horror?
ROYCE: Listening to family members tell stories. From a published fiction aspect, probably reading Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies when I was extremely young. Even then, I was fascinated by its dark humor. My mom and I were at the library when I brought that book to her. She smiled when she flipped through it and let me check it out. I’m lucky that my family has always supported my love of horror.
BISSETT: What attracts you to horror as a genre?
ROYCE: There’s a word I use when referring to good horror: beguiling. I love horror because it has a way of luring you in, even when you’re slightly bracing yourself for what’s to come. It’s also a genre that can help you realize your inner strength and that you can endure and survive, even the most traumatic of situations.
BISSETT: What changes have you seen in the representation of women in the horror genre?
ROYCE: The works we write are being correctly classified a horror more often. There used to be a lot of questioning women’s writing as to whether or not it was really “horror,” and I don’t see that as often now. Our work is recommended more, it makes more “must read” and “highly anticipated” lists, and it brings more non-horror readers to the genre. Also, I don’t see “women can’t write horror” any longer, which is a wonderful relief.
BISSETT: What do you think the future holds for women working in horror right now?
ROYCE: Horror is undergoing a resurgence at the moment, but there are those of us who embrace it all the time. The future is outstretched before us, and readers are being drawn to the female gaze in horror. We not only have women authors, but women screenwriters, directors, and producers, and showrunners. Even more people who want to invest in our visons. We need to get our projects completed, get them out in the world, because the future of horror for women creators is incredibly positive.
BISSETT: What advice do you have to women working in the field?
ROYCE: Find someone you trust to talk about industry matters and beta read your work. (Doesn’t have to be the same person.) It helps to vent your frustrations in a safe space and get perspective on the fluctuating nature of publishing. As for the beta reader, it helps to have someone who knows and understands your work over multiple readings to give you constructive criticism, and sincere appreciation for what you do well.
On that note, when asking for critique, always ask the person to comment on what you’ve done successfully in addition to what needs improvement. If you don’t ask, many people tend to focus only on what they think needs work, and that can make the editing process even harder to bear.
Also, if someone in publishing rejects your work, but asks you to submit something else later, do it. They mean it.
BISSETT: What authors or works would you recommend to readers?
ROYCE: I’d recommend checking out debut authors, because it can be so hard to get published, especially as a woman writing horror. My suggestions: Del Sandeen’s This Cursed House (forthcoming) and Nevin Holness’s The King of Dead Things (forthcoming) and Haunting Bombay by Shilpa Agarwal.
Don’t forget about older works that have distinct horror elements published before genre categories really came into use for the work of women and Black writers, such as Pauline Hopkins’s Of One Blood, Ann Petry’s The Street, and Gloria Naylor’s Linden Hills.
Also, check out the work of contemporary authors like Catherine Yu, Erin Brown, Tracy Fahey, Priya Sharma, Tlotlo Tsamaase, Suzan Palumbo, Tonia Ransom, Eliza Broadbent, and Rebecca Roanhorse.
BISSETT: What are you currently working on?
ROYCE: I’m currently working on a Southern Gothic YA novel set in an alt-Charleston, South Carolina’s debutante society, in which a teen’s search for her presumed dead father while a haint spirit battles for possession of her sister’s body.
BISSETT: Your debut children’s novel Root Magic (2021) earned numerous accolades including a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award and an Ignyte Award for outstanding children’s literature. You also write adult fiction. Do you find it difficult to balance careers in both categories, or has it provided a natural extension for the stories you enjoy telling?
ROYCE: Both. It’s difficult in that there are only so many hours in a day and only so much energy I have in general. My ideas and aspirations far outweigh my available time.
I began writing for adults, then added children’s fiction later. One of my favorite authors, Jewell Parker Rhodes, has done this successfully, although in the reverse order: she began with adult work and moved to children’s fiction. For me, it’s a natural extension to write for various age groups. I love storytelling and I can approach a subject from various angles when writing for different ages. I think: How would the response to a situation be different when the character is eleven years old, versus seventeen, versus thirty?
This year, I have two books coming out: a middle-grade horror novel The Creepening of Dogwood House (July) and an adult horror novella, Hollow Tongue (June). Balancing the marketing of both projects so close together is challenging, but it can also be fun, especially the interviews. I’d love to do more podcasts, as well!
BISSETT: Your stories often center on folklore and magic. What are your thoughts on the exploration of culture and heritage in fiction?
ROYCE: I enjoy it! Exploring culture and heritage is something I do both consciously and sub-consciously. I often write about my people, and our language, traditions, and ways of living naturally work their way in. Other times, I purposefully concentrate on a little-known aspect of history to bring to the fore. So often, especially in horror fiction, Black people have been shown as expendable characters not having depth, complexity, backstories, or impact. African traditional religions have also been vilified in horror fiction – Vodoun, hoodoo, Lucumi – and I wany to portray these with more authenticity and understanding.
About The Creepening of Dogwood House by Eden Royce (Walden Pond Press, July 2024)
The Walter Award Honor–winning author of Root Magic returns with a terrifying story in the Southern Gothic tradition, inspired by the hoodoo practice of hair burning.
At night, Roddie still dreams of sitting at his mother’s feet while she braids his Afro down. But that’s a memory from before. Before his mom died in a tragic accident. Before he was taken in by an aunt he barely knows. Before his aunt brought him to Dogwood House, the creepiest place Roddie has ever seen. It was his family’s home for over a hundred years. Now the house—abandoned and rotting, draped in Spanish moss that reminds him too much of hair—is his home too.
Aunt Angie has returned to South Carolina to take care of Roddie and reconnect with their family’s hoodoo roots. Roddie, however, can’t help but feel lost. His mom had never told him anything about hoodoo, Dogwood House, or their family. And as they set about fixing the house up, Roddie discovers that there is even more his mother never said. Like why she left home when she was seventeen, never to return. Or why she insisted Aunt Angie always wear her hair in locs. Or what she knew of the strange secrets hidden deep within Dogwood House—secrets that have awoken again, and are reaching out to Roddie…
Pre-order links: https://www.amazon.com/Creepening-Dogwood-House-Eden-Royce-ebook/dp/B0CMPBX168
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
