Contemporary Black Horror Writers

Let’s get one thing clear: The Gothic Library stands with Black Lives Matter and with the protests against police brutality and against the injustices done to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and too many others. As we watch the horrors play out in the news and on our streets, it becomes clear why Black authors are some of the most poignant voices in horror fiction. To be Black in America is to live in a real-world horror story, an idea that Leila Taylor explored in depth in her book Darkly: Black History and America’s Gothic Soul. I have briefly touched before on the past contributions of African-American writers to the Gothic genre, but today I want to highlight a few living authors whom you can support:

Tananarive Due

If you ask horror lovers about contemporary Black writers, Tananarive Due’s name is usually the first out of anyone’s mouth. She has written over a dozen novels, most of which blend science fiction and horror. One of her most popular is The Good House (2003), which centers the very Gothic premise of an evil force inside a woman’s old family home that is driving locals to acts of violence. Due has also written many short stories, some of which are included in her 2015 collection Ghost Summer. Apart from her fiction, Due is also a highly respected film scholar. Her class at UCLA on “The Sunken Place: Racism, Survival and the Black Horror Aesthetic” has gained national attention, and she recently starred in the documentary Horror Noire, produced by Shudder.

Victor LaValle

One thing that contemporary Black horror writers often have to grapple with is the legacy of racism left by foundational members of the genre. Victor LaValle did this powerfully in his popular novella The Ballad of Black Tom, which came out from Tor.com in 2016. This novella reimagines one of H. P. Lovecraft’s most overtly racist stories, “The Horror at Red Hook,” from the perspective of a Black man. LaValle’s most recent book is The Changeling (2017), a harrowing fantasy novel about a young father’s dangerous quest into unknown worlds to uncover what has happened to his wife and child.

Helen Oyeyemi

Helen Oyeyemi is a British author whose first novel back in 2004 was The Icarus Girl, an eerie take on the Gothic trope of doubles or doppelgangers set in Nigeria. Another of her novels is White is for Witching (2009), a particularly Gothic tale about a missing mother, a malignant house, and some rather restless spirits. Oyeyemi’s more recent novels, Boy, Snow, Bird (2014) and Gingerbread (2019) are fairy-tale retellings with a bit of a dark edge.

Chesya Burke

Chesya Burke is a speculative fiction author whose many short stories have been published in Clarkesworld and Nightmare Magazine. Her 2011 anthology Let’s Play White contains a selection of her horror stories, ranging from gritty tales of historical Harlem to a fresh twist on the zombie apocalypse. Burke’s debut novel, The Strange Crimes of Little Africa (2015), is a mystery set in 1920s Harlem. Like Tananarive Due, Burke is also a well-known horror critic, particularly celebrated for her commentary on race in the popular television show The Walking Dead.

John Edward Lawson

He’s the founder of the indie horror publisher Raw Dog Screaming Press, which was recently recognized by the Horror Writers Association with the Specialty Press Award in 2018. But in addition to publishing the works of others, John Edward Lawson is also a prolific author himself of short horror stories, dark poetry, serialized novels, and more. Two of his anthologies include Paramourn: Unfortunate Romances  (2014), which explores the dark side of romance, and Devil Entendre (2014), a more traditional horror collection.

Have you read any of the above authors? What other contemporary Black horror writers do you recommend? Please share in the comments—I’m always looking to add to my TBR list.