Melanie R. Anderson and Lisa Kroger interview about Horror and Speculative Fiction – “Monster She Wrote” (Quirk Books, 2019)
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Melanie R. Anderson and Lisa Kroger discuss Horror and Speculative Fiction
Interview Summary
Check the book out here https://amzn.to/31nsZDK
Melanie R. Anderson and Lisa Kroger have both extensively studied speculative and horror fiction. They’ve written a few books together on the subject and they recently won the 2020 Locus Award for non-fiction for Monster She Wrote which explores female authors of horror and speculative fiction. They also won a Bram Stoker award for the book. We spoke about the subject and the book writing process.
0:41 – Lisa talks about how she and Melanie wrote a book on female horror writers.
2:02 – Melanie talks about previous projects they did together on ghosts and spectrality.
3:48 – Melanie talks about they structured the book.
6:36 – Lisa talks about their struggle to cover a broad scope of literary history.
8:48 – Melanie talks about female use of pseudonyms in horror fiction.
11:48 – Lisa talks about women not having to hide their identities.
14:51 – Lisa and Melanie talk about the nationalities of the women they included in the book.
16: 45 – Lisa talks about 19th century female horror literature.
19:11 – Melanie talks about 19th century ghost stories and why so many female writers wrote horror.
24:00 – Lisa talks about female writers mixing violence, gore, and sex
27:45 – Melanie talks about gore in horror.
32:47 – Lisa talks about a scandalous Margaret Cavendish story she really likes.
35:30 – Melanie talks about author Dion Fortune.
37:28 – Melanie talks about how religion affected the writing these women did. Lisa talks more about Manfrone.
41:39 – Melanie talks about she did the research for the work.
44:55 – Lisa talks about how she added to her horror reading list and how some writers seem to have disappeared completely.
48:28 – Lisa talks about horror comic books.
49:47 – Melanie talks about the joy these authors took in their work.
53:36 – Lisa talks about the writers who she felt touched by.
56:26 – Melanie talks about Gertrude Barrows Bennett and Jewelle Gomez.
58:59 – Lisa talks about the Gilda stories.
1:01:20 – Lisa and Melanie talk about writing the book and getting it published.
1:07:48 – Lisa is at lisakroger.com and on twitter @lbkroger and on instagram @lisa_kroger. Their podcast is knowfearcast and monster she wrote podcast and @monsterwrote on social media.
1:09:25 – Melnaie is at melanieranderson.com and on instagram @melanieranderson7.
Links of interest
https://www.quirkbooks.com/book/monster-she-wrote
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-monster-she-wrote-podcast/id1498646080
Contact Information
For more “Full Contact Nerd” please follow me at crisalvarez.com, on Facebook at CrisAlvarezFCN, on youtube at Cris Alvarez on twitter @CrisAlvarezFCN, on Instagram @crisalvarezscifi, and on Apple Podcasts / Google Podcasts / Stitcher / Spotify for the podcast
Guests: Melanie R. Anderson and Lisa Kroger
Host: Cris Alvarez
Check the book out here https://amzn.to/31nsZDK
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