Sarah Read – Women in Horror Month

In conversation with Sarah Read

Since Sarah Read published her first story in 2014, she has gone on to publish more than fifty short stories, two collections, and one novel. Her debut novel, The Bone Weaver’s Orchard (2019) won the Bram Stoker Award® for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. Her debut collection Out of Water (2019) was also a finalist that same year for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection. Read knocked it out of the park again this year, with another Bram Stoker Award® nomination for her section collection, Root Rot & Other Grim Tales (2023). Although I’m now well acquainted with Read’s fiction, my first introduction to her was as an editor with Pantheon Magazine. In 2018, she acquired “Burning Bright” for the gorgeous collection of short stories in the anthology Gorgon: Stories of Emergence (2019). This was my second professional sale and one of my favorite stories, so that connection has always carried great significance for me. Since then, I’ve sought out Read’s stories in magazines such as Gamut, Lamplight, and Black Static, as well as her work in anthologies. So, it isn’t a surprise that Read was one of the first authors I reached out to when I had the opportunity to acquire stories for Shadow Atlas: Dark Landscapes of the Americas (2021). And, as predicted, Read delivered a story that was both tragic and terrifying. As glorious as her short stories are, her novel-length work offers even more room for Read to weave her skills, so it is especially exciting to know she has a new novel coming to shelves soon. –Carina Bissett

About Sarah Read 

Sarah Read is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Bone Weaver’s Orchard, Out of Water, Root Rot and Other Grim Tales, and the forthcoming The Atropine Tree. You can find her online at authorsarahread.com.

Interview with Sarah Read

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

READ: I recently had my ten-year anniversary of my first published piece, though of course I was writing and trying and learning for a full ten years before that. So, I’ve been around a decent while, certainly long enough to have ridden the wave of contemporary women in horror. I have seen a wonderful bloom of women horror authors. We’re all over the place. I think the bulk of contemporary horror is being written by women, and I think that’s fantastic. 

What I don’t see is enough appreciation for their work, especially from men in the genre whose voices still carry so much weight even when their shoulders don’t… It’s prolific, but underrated. Whenever someone posts a “name your favorite authors” post online, the answers are dominated by male writers, often the same 20 names over and over and overandoverandover. Someone will inevitably say “Shirley Jackson” to balance the list. I watched that happen literally today. Today I also saw another anthology announcement with only about 15% women authors. With so many to choose from these days, that’s just ridiculously lazy on the publisher’s behalf. I watch my straight, white, male author friends relentlessly promote and support each other, refer each other, compound their collective privileges. 

So, what changes have I seen? I see a tidal wave of women voices, and it’s still not enough to crack through that glass ceiling. So, we need to keep finding more voices, keep lifting each other up, and keep getting louder.

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

READ: I think we’ll continue to make progress, though I think our progress will continue to be an uphill battle. I don’t see this getting easier, but I do see more of us to share the work.

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

READ: I’ve gotten BINGO in this game many times over. From getting hit on by creepy editors to being told my works is “not what we’re looking for” only to see the all-male book announced, to being the only woman in a magazine issue and having male reviewers say they skipped my piece, to being patted on the head both literally and metaphorically, to being invisible in a room of male colleagues, to people assuming I’m the spouse of a writer at a convention rather than an attendee, to people telling me I should quit and write romance. I could go on. But the women reading this already know the rest of the list, and the men reading this are just wondering if they’ve ever participated in any of this, and yes. Yes, you have.

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

READ: These questions are so hard because I could do this all day. Heck, I’m a Readers’’ Advisory Librarian—I DO do this all day. So, I will limit myself to my number one choice. Tananarive Due—I think The Good House might be the most perfect female-gaze horror novel we have for our generation. It is flawless. All her work is amazing, but if you want women in horror, that book is the codex, with the intersection of the experience of Black women specifically. 

BISSETT: What are you currently working on? 

READ: Too much. I took a few years off writing to focus on grad school, and it’s been a frenzy ever since I graduated in May. I’m finalizing the manuscript for my new novel The Atropine Tree, which comes out in July. I’m working on a novella to add to another collection that should be out later this year. I’m working on a novella for a different place. I’m working on a ghostwriting trilogy. I’m working on a short story for an anthology. And I’m working on a massive novel that will be the prequel to my novel The Bone Weaver’s Orchard. It might end up being too big for one book. But I’m loving working on it. And I’m hoping it will be the book that finally gets me an agent, because I could really use some help managing all these projects!

BISSETT: In addition to being an author and a librarian, you are also a mother. Do you have any advice for other women trying to juggle their career along with the demands of family?

READ: Not twenty minutes before I sat down to answer these questions, I was bursting into tears as my partner suggested I take my day off this week to go somewhere and write. Even though there are a million other things that need to get done. So, I guess my advice is to cry about it? It’s extremely hard. Acknowledge that it’s almost impossible. Sometimes it is impossible. I guess my advice is to learn how to fail gracefully, kind of like learning how to fall safely. Those million things are not going to get done this week, because I’m going to go write instead. The million things will still be there after I write “the end.” 

About Root Rot and Other Grim Tales by Sarah Read (Bad Hand Books, 2023) 

Walk into the woods. Dive into the water. Make a wish. Meet your fate.

Within Root Rot and Other Grim Tales, Bram Stoker Award-winning author Sarah Read delivers cautions and disturbances across 18 grim tales.

Prepare to inherit stories of fossil-haunted houses, of doorways to the afterlife. In the woods, learn of vengeful wolves and women. In the water, discover shipwrecks stuck in time, Devonian monsters, and islands where your father loved to fish—and where your future hangs in balance.

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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