By Mo Moshaty

I AM HORROR is a growing archive of creators of color shaping the horror genre across the global diaspora. Each volume gathers voices working across film, literature, scholarship, criticism, and art; creators whose work draws from folklore, migration, memory, and lived experience. The goal is simple: build a record, so the people shaping horror today are easier to find tomorrow.

INTRODUCING VOLUME ONE: 10 COHORTS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT

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LOCATION: United States

I AM HORROR DECLARATION: I think horror allows us to stop pretending the world is a scary place and that living is a terrifyingly traumatic experience. We learn early on to pretend everything is fine, but we’re floating in space on a spinning rock. However, anxiety, depression, and all mental illnesses are stigmatized. Great horror picks up the silent conversations and taps into our fear of death, our religious trauma, the paranoia of our loved ones turning on us, etc. It asks us to unbury what we avoid and sit with it for a few safe moments. It asks us to unpack it and share that experience with others before we go back to ignoring the things that keep us at night. It’s like immersion therapy and comfort at the same time, which is why great horror also speaks to the times in which it was created.

AREAS OF FOCUS: Intersectional horror all day with a specific emphasis on Black feminist art.

SELECTED WORKS: Blerdy Massacre Podcast; Nightmare on Fierce Street Podcast;

COLLABORATION: OPEN TO (Depending on project) –

• film projects
• anthology writing
• podcast appearances
• documentaries
• consulting and sensitivity reading
• MC

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LOCATION: US

WEBSITE: https://www.gerrymaravilla.com/↗

I AM HORROR DECLARATION: As a Mexican-American child picked on for my bi-cultural upbringing, I developed a natural curiosity for darkness. Getting bullied made me wonder why someone would choose to be cruel, especially when it conflicted with what I was taught at home, in school, and at church. I wanted answers, but I wasn’t sure where to get them. Due to my working-class background, we never had much time or money to travel. My exploration of the darkness happened through screens. I escaped from bullies and my suburban Catholic upbringing through the horror genre, especially the classic Universal Monsters movies and the films of Guillermo Del Toro. I got lost in these whimsical worlds that embraced darkness, seeing myself in the characters. They weren’t just monsters, but creatures who yearned to be understood. These films crystallized one of my core missions in life: to understand others in the hopes that they would want to understand me. Horror films were a way to achieve this. Storytelling could unite us.

AREAS OF FOCUS: I specialize in grief-centered supernatural horror within Mexican and Mexican-American communities, often blending grounded realism with surreal or folkloric elements. My work frequently involves death rituals, liminal spaces between life and afterlife, and characters who form intimate relationships with supernatural entities and monsters as a way of coping with loss, loneliness, or cultural displacement.

SELECTED WORKS:

 Enséñame Cómo Morir (Show Me To Die)

In her darkest moment, a despairing Latina artist crosses paths with a mysterious immortal.

starring ALEX FELIX & JOEY MARIE URBINA
Written & Directed by GERARDO MARAVILLA • Produced by EVELYN ANGELICA MARTINEZ & ANN VALDES • Executive Producer SARAH FLOCKEN & ROBERT C. RODRIGUEZ • Dir. of Photography MARISCELA BEATRÍZ MÉNDEZ • Production Designer BRISA VILLARREAL • Editor AGUSTIN REXACH • Original Score SANSANTO • VFX Supervisors VICTOR VELASCO & GINARIS SARRA

The Halloween Club

Feature, Supernatural Horror Thriller 

After a horrific event leaves her an orphan, an avoidant Latina flees to college on the other side of the country, but a new group pushes her back home to confront those responsible for the pain she’s been running from.

Read Issue 1 of The Halloween Club comic. 

• Finalist – Emerging Screenwriters Genre Competition (Horror Top 10)
• Finalist – Script2Comic Contest
• Finalist – 13Horror.com Film & Screenplay Contest
• Finalist (Top 50) – ISA Fast Track Fellowship
• Semifinalist – ScreenCraft Horror Competition

COLLABORATION: (OPEN TO)

• film projects
• anthology writing
• podcast appearances

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LOCATION: Türkiye

WEBSITE: https://ankara.academia.edu/TueKutlu↗

I AM HORROR DECLARATION: Horror, for me, begins with my late grandfather. He was the one who told me stories, strange, unsettling, sometimes tender in their darkness. After I lost him, horror became more than imagination; it became a way of holding onto him, of continuing a conversation that death interrupted. My first engagement with horror was, in that sense, inseparable from grief. People have often told me that I don’t “look like a horror fan,” as if horror must announce itself through a certain aesthetic or attitude. In Türkiye, this extends into academia as well; there is still a quiet stigma around taking horror seriously as a field of study. But horror has always made me feel seen, not out of place. It offers a space where intensity, sensitivity, and curiosity about the darker aspects of existence are not only accepted but necessary. My imagination was first shaped by Turkish folklore: the jinn stories, haunted houses, and moral ambiguities that blur the line between the sacred and the profane. These narratives taught me that horror is not just fear, but a way of understanding the unseen structures around us. What draws me to horror and what continues to guide my work is its openness. Horror is political, expansive, and deeply personal. It allows me to explore grief, memory, and the body without simplification. It resists easy answers. Through horror, I found a way to make sense of loss and, perhaps, to remain in dialogue with it.

AREAS OF FOCUS: I specialise in grief in horror films. But also Turkish horror films and folklore, horror history, and gender in horror.

SELECTED WORKS:

BOOK CHAPTERS – Mourning in Horror: Grief in Twenty-First-Century Horror Films,  Audiovisual Healing and Reparation: Recuperative Affect of Mediation (pp. 154–171). Routledge.

PUBLISHED ARTICLES – The Feminine State of Ethnicity: Changing Ethnic Representations in Doctor Who. Universal Journal of Literature and Linguistics; Medya Estetiğinde Anahtar Sözcükler (Review of the Keywords in Subversive Film/Media Aesthetics); “Can You See Us?”: From ACT UP to Kaos GL Video Activism in Queer Movement; Global Commodity, Global Meme Culture, Global Mélange and “Baby Yoda”. International Journal of Economy, Energy and Environment; The Rule of the Weird: Power Relations in the Films of Yorgos Lanthimos. Studies in European Cinema; Ben Carrie Değilim: Yeni Dönem Korku Sinemasının Asi Kızları (I Am Not Carrie: Rebellious Girls of Horror Cinema’s New Era)

CONFERENCES – Grotesque Metamorphosis: Body Horror, Gender, and the Monstrous Feminine in The Ugly Stepsister, Meeting of the Morbid Minds: The Horror of Becoming (NightTide Magazine Virtual Symposium, October 4); Unresolved Mysteries: Reappraising the Gothic and Colonial Undertones of Picnic at Hanging Rock, SCRIF Picnic @50 Symposium; The Cult, The Bad and The Ugly: Gore, Transgression, and Spectacle in Damien Leone’s Terrifier Franchise, Terrifier Conference. University of Warwick; Türk Korku Sinemasında Aile: Mahremiyetin Çöküşü ve İçselleştirilmiş Korkular, Türkiye Film Araştırmalarında Yeni Yönelimler Konferansı. Kadir Has University; An Analysis of the Film The Watchers (2024) in the Context of Surveillance and Privacy, BAFTSS; Horror Always Remembers: The Taking of Deborah Logan and Relic (2020), Cine-Excess, October 22; Kült, Kötü ve Çirkin: All Hallows’ Eve, Terrifier ve Terrifier 2, Beykoz University Borderless, May 21; The End Is Near (A Computer): Apocalypse Via The Internet And Technology In Dabbe And Dabbe 2, Cine-Excess, October; Cracked Walls: Social Trauma in the Films of Ceylan Özgün Özçelik. Fear 2000: Horror Uncaged, Sheffield Hallam University, July 21; Global Commodity, Global Meme Culture, Global Melange, and Baby Yoda. Üsküdar University, 18 May; Kral Midas’ın Dokunuşu: 90’lar Türkçe Pop ve Nostalji. Beykoz University, May 5; Paranormal Mourning: Grief in the Conjuring universe. Sinefilozofi. Turkey, December 9; Here-and-now in horror: Happy Death Day and Happy Death Day 2U. Cine Excess. United Kingdom, October 19;  The Feminine State of Ethnicity: Changing Ethnic Representation in Doctor Who. Communities and Communication 2022 Diverse Voices – Interdisciplinary International Conference and Festival, May 19; Mourning in Horror: Grief in the 21st-Century Horror Films. Stoker Con, Ann Radcliffe Conference, Denver, USA, May 14; War and Visual Culture: “Quo Vadis, Aida?” (2020) and Srebrenica Massacre On The White Screen. JAM Conference, University of Reading. May 4;  Power relations in post-2000 Turkish cinema. National Film Studies Symposium, Alanya HEP University. April 8; The Road to Self-Recognition_ Interview with Horror Researcher Tugce Kutlu – Midnight Mass Part 1. Alice in Gothic Land, February 3-March 2; The Feminine State of Ethnicity: Changing Ethnic Representation in Doctor Who. Brief Encounters BAFTSS, February 1; Feminine Power: Nobody’s Home (Köksüz) and Clair Obscur (Tereddüt). Global Women’s Film Heritage Symposium, January 12; I Am Not Carrie: Representations Of Monstrous Female Bodies In The 2010s, Cine-Excess, October 22;  Mourning in Horror: Grief in the 21st-Century Horror Films. İletişim ve Ötesi, Ankara University. October 13; Mourning in Horror: Grief in the 21st-Century Horror Films. Fear 2000: Horror Unbound, September; Interview with Horror Researcher Tugce Kutlu. Alice in Gothic Land, September 3; Mourning in Horror: Grief in the 21st-Century Horror Films. Rural Gothic: Harvest, August 28; Here-and-Now in Horror: Happy Death Day (2017) and Happy Death Day 2U (2019). The Slasher Studies Summer Camp August 15; Mourning in Horror: Grief in the 21st-Century Horror Films. Sunday Talks, Romancing the Gothic July 11; Mourning in Horror: Grief in the 21st-Century Horror Films. Inquiring healing across screen cultures: Recuperating narratives, mediums, and creativities, 1-2 June, Germany; Mourning in Horror: Grief in the 21st-Century Horror Films. Horror, Cult, Exploitation Media IV, 13 May, United Kingdom;  I am not Carrie: Rebellious female bodies of horror cinema’s new era. BAFTSS 2021, 7-9 April, United Kingdom.

COLLABORATION: (OPEN TO)

• film projects
• anthology writing
• podcast appearances
• academic collaboration
• documentaries
• consulting and sensitivity reading
• visual art/illustration
• Master of Ceremonies or panel host

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LOCATION: US

WEBSITE: Authormillieprice.com

I AM HORROR DECLARATION: Since I was a child, horror has been my security blanket. It was the place I could go to experience fear without worry of physical or emotional harm. I always understood that once the book or movie ended, the monsters were gone and wouldn’t return until I called. It gives me a sense of control in times when everything feels completely chaotic.

AREAS OF FOCUS: I am a genre-bending horror writer who likes to work in the area of tragedy, trauma, family, and monsters, both human and supernatural.

SELECTED WORKS:

COLLABORATION: (OPEN TO)

• film projects
• anthology writing
• podcast appearances
• documentaties

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LOCATION: US

WEBSITE: www.frodoblackins.com

I AM HORROR DECLARATION: Growing up Black in the suburbs, I often dealt with micro-aggressions, blatant racism, and at times, intense encounters with individuals who didn’t think I belonged in their shared space. Because I lived in a middle-to-upper-class suburb, there was a willful blindness turned towards these attitudes towards the few Black and POC residents. I’ve always felt that this type of experience has never been fully realized on the screen, and rather than using comedy to illustrate the feelings of isolation and anger I often felt growing up, I’ve found that horror is the best genre for me to share these stories. That shift shows up directly in my award-winning screenplay The Black Girl (Maybe) Lives, where my protagonist Christna navigates spaces that are ostensibly safe but structurally hostile environments where the threat isn’t a monster in the dark but the slow, suffocating realization that the people around you have decided who you are before you’ve opened your mouth. The horror I’m drawn to lives in that gap: between how a space presents itself and what it actually demands of you to survive it. That, to me, is sometimes more terrifying than ghosts and monsters–because I’ve lived it.

AREAS OF FOCUS: I specialize in thrillers that examine the complexities of being African American in predominantly white spaces, aka the suburbs.

SELECTED WORKS:

https://www.frodoblackins.com/screewriting;

COLLABORATION: (OPEN TO)

• film projects
• podcast appearances
• consulting and sensitivity reading

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LOCATION: US

WEBSITE: https://www.alexlovesmovies.com/↗

I AM HORROR DECLARATION: I grew up in the mean cul-de-sacs of Frankfort, KY, inhaling R.L. Stine and Anne Rice novels. The only Black kid in almost every class, I didn’t realize that writing about outcasts was my thing until it was staring back at me from the pages of every short story, every screenplay, every failed start of a novel I ever wrote. All I knew for sure was that I wanted to tell stories about messy, nerdy Black women like me. But I didn’t want to tell them to read like a diary. I’m a fairly happy person, so that’s boring. I want my audience to feel all the things. Fear. Shock. Dread. Laughing till you pee. Loneliness. Love. Only horror can capture all the above and still feel entertaining as hell. That’s why I’m a horror writer who specializes in Black female-led stories about misfits and antiheroes ensnared in bigger-than-life mysteries and dangerous traps.

AREAS OF FOCUS: I write twisted, witty, and emotional genre stories about misfits & antiheroes.

SELECTED WORKS: https://www.sequence8films.com/films

Help! – Written & Directed by Alex Chew

A resilient nanny is trapped with a combative little boy and his abused mother in 1960s rural Texas.

Official Selections…

2024 Filmquest, 2024 Rome International Film Festival, 2025 Portland Horror Film Festival, 2025 Julien Dubuque International Film Festival, 2025 Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival, 2025 Sidewalk Film Festival

COLLABORATION: (DEPENDS ON THE PROJECT)

• film projects
• anthology writing
• podcast appearances
• Master of Ceremonies or panel host

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LOCATION: MEXICO

WEBSITE: https://www.brenda-la-torre.com/↗

I AM HORROR DECLARATION: As a child, I grew up hearing about el Chamuco and la Llorona, among other tales that haunted my imagination. On the weekends, my Mamá would take my brother and me to church, and we’d look at the torture of Christ, and then at the representation of the saints who died of martyrdom, and I guess in a way it all merged within me. The folktales and the saints fascinated me as a child, and they still do. There wasn’t a lot of fiction that touched upon those themes, though. Despite my love of reading, I only encountered Anglo-Saxon fiction and the Grimm’s Fairytales. Which I loved, but I was confused as to why there weren’t any books about La Llorona published, since “everyone” seemed to know about her. I think what I love the most about horror is its flexibility. It’s the one place where you can actually merge saints and folktales just like they are in my brain. Horror is a place where you can explore your most macabre thoughts or questions, and for your story to still be beautiful and a comfort to others.

AREAS OF FOCUS: I specialize in Mexican body horror and folklore, including but not limited to La Llorona, Xochimilco Isla de las Muñecas, Santa Muerte, el Chupacabras, la Lechuza, la Bruja Bola de Fuego.

SELECTED WORKS:

BRUJA’S NEST – The Love Witch meets Monstrilio in Bruja’s Nest, where a young woman’s abuse history and ambition erupt into body horror, class war, and monstrous motherhood.

Raised amidst poverty, alcoholism, and sexual abuse, Yolanda is determined to seize control of her future. When she starts work as an indentured servant on the Fernández De la Rosa estate, she realizes she can secure a place as the lady of the house: with a spell from the local bruja, she can trick their naive son into getting her pregnant.

But the fertility ritual—piercing her flesh, tucking a rooster’s heart inside herself—begets more than she expected. Yolanda’s body swells and seethes with infection, her few allies dwindle, and she delivers a massive egg under the watchful eye of Santa Muerte, the Mexican folk saint of death. The hacienda where she’s been promised a permanent home is full of blasphemies, secrets, and bodies, and the family she’s tied herself to is loyal only to wealth and power.

But Yolanda will do anything to protect her child, who deserves the love and safety she never had. Even if everyone insists he’s a monster. PREORDER HERE!

COLLABORATION:

• film projects
• anthology writing
• podcast appearances
• academic collaboration
• documentaries
• consulting and sensitivity reading
• visual art/illustration
• Master of Ceremonies or panel host

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LOCATION: US

WEBSITE: https://pedroiniguez.com/↗

I AM HORROR DECLARATION: I grew up on horror films, comics, and literature, but I’d rarely see Latinos represented within those realms. My work typically explores horror through a Latinx lens, spotlighting shared experiences (immigration, racism, poverty, identity). As the first person of Mexican descent to receive the Bram Stoker Award, it is an honor to continue creating in a genre I love for the people I love.

AREAS OF FOCUS: Through multiple mediums (novels, short stories, poetry, comics, children’s books) I specialize in weird fiction, cosmic horror, and body horror, typically through a Latinx/Mexican-American lens.

SELECTED WORKS:

Speculative Fiction Database: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?146104; Horror Writers Association: Latinx Heritage in Horror: Introduction to Latinx Horror Month 2023 by Pedro Iniguez; YouTube: AI and Writing: A Conversation with Author Pedro Iñiguez

COLLABORATION: (DEPENDS ON THE PROJECT)

• film projects
• anthology writing
• consulting and sensitivity reading

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LOCATION: US

WEBSITE: https://www.lindaaddisonwriter.com/

I AM HORROR DECLARATION: In the beginning of my career, I thought being an award-winning writer was a nice label to have on my writing résumé, but I didn’t know how that was going to happen with poetry. In 2001, when my book, Consumed, Reduced to Beautiful Grey Ashes, won the HWA Bram Stoker Award® in Poetry, and I later found out that I was the first African-American to win the award in any category, I was overwhelmed with joy. I didn’t really think about whether I was writing horror. I just wrote what came to me. My poetry and short stories often had a moody, dark edge to them, which the horror community embraced. At that time, the tag of psychological horror suddenly made sense to me. My writing is inspired by my reactions to the world around me, my frustration and anger at the way people are treated because they are different. Also, I began journaling in high school, trying to understand the first 18 years of my life, where I grew up not feeling safe in my home or the world outside. The library was my sanctuary, and I read everything from horror, science fiction, fantasy, and psychology. I was trying to understand why humans do things to hurt others when it was clear to me that we’re all equal humans on one planet. Until I left home, my writing slanted more towards science fiction and fantasy, but in college, I began to feel ready to look at the pain of my childhood. Writing helped me process my negative feelings and allowed me to be in touch with positive things in my life and the world. It has been said that there is no shadow without light. Writing horror allows me to feel joy.

AREAS OF FOCUS: Poetry editor at Space & Time magazine since 1999; Psychological horror poetry and fiction.

SELECTED WORKS:

COLLABORATION: (DEPENDS ON THE PROJECT)

• film projects
• anthology writing

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LOCATION: Scotland

WEBSITE: www.nailahking.com

I AM HORROR DECLARATION: My first ever favourite ghost story was told to me by my mother. She described a fabled demonic encounter with a poltergeist. It emerged after a strange girl appeared in her small town. The event was so infamous that it made the local newspaper. Jumbies, duppies, soucouyants, rolling calf, bacoo, and more—all part of my Caribbean heritage—were stories I embraced from a young age. Still, I noticed every horror story, film, and book at that time didn’t feature characters that looked like me. The ghost stories and tales of small communities with secrets captivated me. I always wanted to recreate some of that magic. Being a Black woman with a chronic mental health condition, living in the diaspora, has shaped me. It makes me want to read and engage with peers who also write about haunted and troubled Black women. Their rage, love, triumph, and histories, even as they survive similar horrors, resonate with me. I write those stories, too, for myself and my peers. I live to craft characters that let many of us feel seen through their darkness. Horror allows us to explore culturally specific histories on our own terms and shed light on uncertain, menacing futures. It makes it possible for characters to confront their most disturbing selves, delve into their inner darkness, and face what they find—be it literal ghosts, the terror and sorrow of grief, or insidious systemic injustices and violence. The genre asks whether darkness lies within us or if evil is pervasive, lurking, and inevitable, yet sometimes defeatable.

AREAS OF FOCUS: My focus in writing horror, and the hybrid spaces between genres like crime and noir, centers on haunted, complicated, and dangerous Black women. These stories are sometimes described as women’s rage, good for her, weird lit, or fem gore. My work incorporates my interpretation of Caribbean magic, folklore, and its canonical characters. Although my stories feature practices linked to such traditions—like plant magic for healing and protection, as well as darker aspects like poisoning—I do not directly name them as such since I am not a practitioner. I explore themes of misogynoir, grief, and revenge through the perspectives of Black women; crime and grit; inner, outer, and other worlds to explore oppression, racism, and identity. There is always an undercurrent of millennial ennui. This includes the sadness of longing for the 90s, the pre-digital era, along with the often false nostalgia that comes with it. I use lighter sitcom tones to balance out each story.

SELECTED WORKS: THE DEAD LAST LIST: https://heyzine.com/flip-book/3325f6b2a2.html?fbclid=PAY2xjawHb1ClleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABpgGiYjBI6rU42WkJMutqimoJMBbUqo731os2WVtAqmoqUdL9XHrBmhyDqA_aem_cmqt2jkGO2thy1G3gKyk0A#page/23

(L) The Decentres (R) The Oracle

COLLABORATION: (DEPENDS ON THE PROJECT)

• anthology writing
• podcast appearances
• consulting and sensitivity reading
• Master of Ceremonies or panel host

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