I’ll be off to FantasyCon tomorrow, where I hope to catch up with a number of friends. One of those friends is Maura McHugh, who has been taking a look at the pre-convention publicity:
I immediately noticed the cover of a new book the BFS is launching at the convention: a collection of interviews with writers (the first in a trilogy) in which they discuss their genre. It’s called In Conversation: A Writer’s Perspective. Volume One: Horror. It’s edited by James Cooper, and is composed of 16 interviews with horror authors Ramsey Campbell, Tom Piccirilli, Greg F. Gifune, Conrad Williams, Joe R. Lansdale, Gary McMahon, Brian Keene, Stephen Gallagher, Jeffrey Thomas, Peter Crowther, Tim Lebbon, Ray Garton, Mark Morris, Gary Fry, Graham Joyce and Norman Partridge.
Not a single woman is interviewed.
Well, of course, women don’t write horror do they? Maura’s post has a good list of likely candidates, to which I would immediately add CaitlÃn R. Kiernan, Elizabeth Hand and Kaaron Warren. Of course the BFS might argue that they were looking for British writers (though by no means all of the people that they interviewed are British), but in that case I think the British horror novel that has received most critical acclaim this year is White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi.
It will give us something to talk about in the bar.
Don’t let them get away with it – you and Maura should be able to make them think twice and not have a next time
The mighty Sarah Pinborough will be at Fantasycon too. I suspect she may have a few choice things to say about this one.
I shall be there too!! Only on the saturday though.
Argh! I’m afraid I won’t be there. It’s not on the budget for this year, alas. I expect you will be a fine champion on the matter!
I saw that post, too. I had the same response as Maura when I read the list. This is really not what we hope for.
See you in the bar!
Oh, for pity’s sake! In a year when Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger is on the Booker short list? Are they completely divorced from reality?
I read both White is for Witching whom I enjoyed greatly and reviewed and Little Stranger which was a page turner but I thought with some notable flaws so I enjoyed less than Fingersmith and did only a capsule review for it so I agree that it is getting tiresome to see editors not paying attention to the whole field but only to their comfort subset.
As an aside for people enjoying either WifW or Little Stranger, Audrey Niffenegger (of Time Travelers Wife fame) upcoming Her Fearful Symmetry has some similarity in themes and is a superb London ghost, cemetery and love story…
The follow-up, btw, is apparently called:
MAN MAN MAN WHITE MAN MAN SPAM MAN WHITE MAN: Explorations of Status Quo From a Writer’s Perspective