 Last week Ginger Nuts of Horror welcomed Matt Blairstone and Alex Woodroe from Tenebrous Press to Ginger Nuts of Horror to discuss their new anthology Your Body is Not Your Body: A New Weird Anthology, an anthology where all proceeds from this anthology go to Equality Texas to combat the attempts of the Texas government to criminalize trans/GNC youth and their families. This week we bring you part one of our interview with the authors featured in this anthology G.E. Woods  Why did you submit to YB=/=YB? The anthology title stopped me cold. As a queer, nonbinary, disabled dancer, parent, volunteer sexuality educator, former child abuse prevention educator and rape victim advocate, and survivor of child abuse, I have A Lot of Feelings about Bodies, about the ways we approach and consider bodies, the agency an individual should have over their own, and often the lack thereof many of us have faced. It got me thinking about the ways those of us with marginalized experiences have had to pry the world’s fingers from our lives and bodies, how we can be deemed transgressive simply for existing, and how the world would love it if we didn’t try to claim ownership over ourselves. The title is this terrible dystopian dictum that’s playing out across the U.S. and the world, and then in response, the pages are flooded with trans/gnc writers creating whatever chaos we want, all in support of trans kids. Tell us what your story is about, and the themes you chose to focus on. I wrote “Tiny Magic” before the Texas guidance was released, and it was based off the trauma of my own life and of a lot of times when I’ve felt stuck in impossible circumstances (though most of the plot is quite different from my actual life.) At its core, “Tiny Magic” is about adults behaving badly and how kids try to make the best out of crummy circumstances. There’s also a point about being offered a false sense of security when the protagonist has the option to finally belong, but they’d have to engage with something that goes against their morality and we get to see what they do with that. What has your experience as a marginalized writer in the horror community been like? I’m just getting started in publishing as this is my first story acceptance, so it’s a humbling and phenomenal group to jump into the deep end with! I’ve been voraciously taking writing workshops for the past year, and the horror-specific ones are always the most freeing as I get to bring my whole queer self and geek out over horror. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep dwelling in these lgbtqia+ supportive spaces going forward. If someone wants to read more of your work, what would you recommend that they check out? Since this is my first publication, they can follow my socials, @gewoodswrites for both Twitter and Instagram (or my sometimes moldering website gewoods.com). I promise I’ll be screeching each time I get an acceptance (and when my friends do.) G.E. Woods first ran into the arms of horror as a 5-year-old working in haunted houses. Queer, nonbinary, and disabled, she writes fantastical novels where marginalized identities are normalized and short fiction and poetry filled with whimsical rage. Beyond writing, she’s a parent of goblin twins, dances under full moons, and talks to the trees near her home outside Chicago. Rain Corbyn  Why did you submit to YB=/=YB? I knew I wanted to write domestic cosmic horror around the conflict and grief that can surface in the clash between autistic visual thinking vs the limitations of verbal communication, but never really found a plot I liked for it. The submission call specifically asked for a sledgehammer approach to writing, and I was really full of anger at ableism and transphobic violence in all its big and small ways. So I just decided to run with rage itself as the plot, and the result is the story you find in the anthology. The prospect of helping an urgent cause in TX nudged me past my anxiety and impostor syndrome enough to hit send. Tell us what your story is about, and the themes you chose to focus on. In my story, an autistic trans person's partner is what's referred to as a tenderqueer: Someone who dodges accountability and manipulates others by co-opting and misusing the language of social justice and identity politics. After a conflict, this partner doxxes the protagonist, leading genuine fascists to show up. It doesn't go well for the fascists. Autistic people can have a strong sense of fairness, and that kind of manipulation upsets me deeply. I wanted to call out people who use radical language but whose behavior supports and entrenches existing violent systems. It's also about divergent minds, the limitations of communication, not being believed when we describe who and how we are, and when anger, meltdowns, and pushing back are tolerated as communication. What has your experience as a marginalized writer in the horror community been like? Overall pretty great! I'm new on the scene but I have seen and received a ton of empathy, support, and wisdom from this community. I've seen and participated in some brave, nuanced conversations that empowered me to write this story, one of the most honest things I have ever done. I am so grateful that Matt and Alex have chosen this story to be my writing debut, because now I can't go back to safer, smaller, straighter writing. If someone wants to read more of your work, what would you recommend that they check out? This is my first published horror story, but I have narrated the audiobooks for The Mud Ballad by Jo Quenell, Nightmare Yearnings by Eric Raglin, and, forthcoming, Meat Photo by C.V. Hunt and Andersen Prunty. Rain Corbyn is a queer, nonbinary, autistic voice actor and writer. This is their horror writing debut, and their narration work includes the audiobooks for The Mud Ballad by Jo Quenell, Nightmare Yearnings by Eric Raglin, the upcoming Meat Photo by C.V. Hunt and Andersen Prunty, and lots of pseudonymous smut. They live in sin and New York. Joe Koch  Why did you submit to YB=/=YB? Rage. Legislation that strips an individual's bodily autonomy is a step toward fascism. I don't think it's a good idea for the government to tell you how to rear your children. The interference of CPS will rend loving families like yours apart and overburden a system that already cannot house the youth in its care or prevent their abuse while in it. I've worked in social services. Child abuse makes me sick and angry. Helping children learn about their bodies and make decisions and experience bodily autonomy is not child abuse. It's what a loving parent does. It's something I was not able to experience, and it enrages me that the opportunity for kids growing up today to skip some of the useless pain I went through is being questioned and attacked. Just let people live. Tell us what your story is about, and the themes you chose to focus on. "Chironoplasty" is a nightmarish fantasy about a centaur seeking illicit alien top surgery. There's a lot of focus from anti-trans people on body parts, and in keeping with our culture's male gaze, specifically on what they refer to as "lopping off" or "mangling" the breast. And it's a tricky violent way to negatively frame surgical affirmation that I wanted to lean into rather than resist, to look at how this imaginary violence might match our worst dysphoria. Because so what? So what if someone changes their body? Our bodies are changing constantly with time. So in "Chironoplasty," there is a city with specific time boundaries that are also reshaped as the story and medical intervention progresses. I play with the concept of "queer time" and some physics that point towards a nonbinary, nonlinear, and fluid construction of the universe. The style is a very wild, dense, emotionally and mythologically charged approach to writing prose that I really enjoy. What has your experience as a marginalized writer in the horror community been like? Dare I say it's been wonderful so far? I don't want to jinx it. Trolls have not yet come for me. Fellow authors and editors have been kind, patient, and supportive as I've gone through changes over the past two years. I'm pretty much totally out and have been out through my transition process. This openness creates a bit of a built in defense. I'm not afraid of getting outed because I'm already right here. But that doesn't work for everybody. It's harder for authors who need to keep privacy for their own sense of peace. Personally, I'm happier when I can speak freely. If someone wants to read more of your work, what would you recommend that they check out? For more short horror stories, my new collection CONVULSIVE will be out in April. It's up for pre-order now at Apocalypse Party press here: https://www.apocalypse-party.com/convulsive.html For a longer work of cosmic body horror with roots in fairy tales and the Yellow King mythos, check out my novella THE WINGSPAN OF SEVERED HANDS from Weirdpunk Books: https://www.amazon.com/Wingspan-Severed-Hands-Joanna-Koch/dp/195165806X Joe Koch (he/they) writes literary horror and surrealist trash. Joe is a Shirley Jackson Award finalist and the author of The Wingspan of Severed Hands, The Couvade, and Convulsive. They’ve had over fifty short stories published in books and journals like Year's Best Hardcore Horror, The Big Book of Blasphemy, Not All Monsters, and Liminal Spaces. Find Joe online at horrorsong.blog and on Twitter @horrorsong. W.N. Derring-Judith  Why did you submit to YB=/=YB? I hate Greg Abbott and love subverting xtian "morality". Tell us what your story is about, and the themes you chose to focus on. The story is about how the American highway system (and by extension, capitalism) is a literal false god. The style is heavily influenced by the works of Natalie Terezi Rei Watts, and the concept was at least partially inspired by Ian Wright's fantastic Marx on Capital as a Real God essay. What has your experience as a marginalized writer in the horror community been like? Very welcoming for me, less welcoming for some of my friends. If someone wants to read more of your work, what would you recommend that they check out? This is my "debut" short story, but I also write under the handle "UraniumEmpire" in the "SCP Foundation" collaborative writing project. W. N. Derring-Judith was born and raised in Texas, and barely escaped with its life. You can contact xer at wnderringjudith@gmail.com. S. A. Chant  Why did you submit to YB=/=YB? Well, I wanted to unhinge my jaw and devour all transphobes, but barring that, I wanted to at least write something queer and nasty that would help get funds to trans folks in need. Love and rage, basically. Tell us what your story is about, and the themes you chose to focus on. My story, "High Maintenance", is about an android—the sexy kind—whose owner/lover is obsessed with fine-tuning his appearance and behavior. For obvious reasons, I wanted to write about bodily autonomy and the weird ways people will find to exercise agency when they have none. When you're told that you're less human than other people, that your rights matter less than the rights of your oppressors, and that your suffering is excusable because someone else thrives on it—what happens when you fully internalize that? If someone wants to read more of your work, what would you recommend that they check out? "High Maintenance" is my first foray into horror, but those who like creepy-romantic stories might enjoy Caroline's Heart, my Weird West novella about a witch trying to resurrect her dead lover. S. A. Chant (they/them) is a prize-winning pie baker and sci-fi/fantasy writer. Their debut novel, Peter Darling, was longlisted for the Otherwise Award (2018). They live in Seattle with a cat who was recently described as a 'gooey cryptid'. Cosmin Mihai Birsan  Why did you submit to YB=/=YB? Shortly after hearing the news out of Texas, a friend who's also part of the trans community liked the "submissions call" tweet, and it showed up on my feed. (If you're reading this, hi, Elliot!) I immediately knew I wanted to see if I could get involved, so I did in the best way I knew how! As a non-American, I guess I want to believe in the image drilled into the heads of every young consumer of American media, that being of America as a land that's a bit less blatantly authoritarian and that wouldn't threaten proper parenting in favour of oppressing a marginalised community for the sake of misguided "normalcy", and among southern states such as Texas my heart particular holds a lot of love for the rustic, and southern gothic aesthetics that captivate so much of the horror I enjoy. Tell us what your story is about, and the themes you chose to focus on. That's the fun part! I'd rather skirt around this one! I guess I'd say "Patterns and how we break them and abide by them, and in turn how they break and mold us." I wanted to write a story about disassociation, and play with tropes like an unreliable narrator, not in the sense of one that lies to the reader as much as one that can't be trusted to understand the world around them, and I don't think it's a complicated world either! It's the sort of thing where there are no "wrong" or "lesser" answers. According to sources such as the National Association of Mental Illness, up to 75% of people experience at least one depersonalization/derealization episode in their lives, so I feel confident in saying that this is a story about disassociation from the perspective of a well-doctored blank slate. How you engage with it should hopefully evoke your own feelings and experiences on the subject. Do let me know if I did or didn't hit the mark, I guess! What has your experience as a marginalized writer in the horror community been like? Funnily enough, my entrée into horror has been through the queer community, so it's been more of a "What has your experience as a horror nut been like within the queer community?" for me. But in all fairness, it's been great, although I'm kinda just dipping my toes into the pond here. I only started tapping into my own creative energy about two years back after a sheltered upbringing in which creative expression was frowned down upon if not downright prohibited, so this is the first time one of my stories is ever put out in front of an audience larger than a few hand-picked friends, and I'm as nervous as I am excited. If someone wants to read more of your work, what would you recommend that they check out? I hope people end up liking what I wrote and I'd love to hear ANY feedback on it, constructive or otherwise! Twitter's @CossTheImpaler and DMs are eternally open! (Alternatively on Discord @Cosmin#0451) Cosmin-Mihai Bîrsan: Nonbinary horror nut. Real life vampire. Cosmic entity that casually dabbles in a myriad of artforms. YOUR BODY IS NOT YOUR BODY: A NEW WEIRD ANTHOLOGY This is a preorder item. Book will ship sometime in April...or as soon as we can get it off the presses. All proceeds from this anthology go to Equality Texas to combat the attempts of the Texas government to criminalize trans/GNC youth and their families. EXTREME CONDITIONS DEMAND EXTREME RESPONSES. Twenty-seven writers and eight illustrators from the Trans/Gender Nonconforming communities come together to voice their rage, defiance and fearlessness in the decidedly nontraditional fashion of New Weird Horror that Tenebrous Press excels at! Final Table of Contents coming soon. Featured writers include Hailey Piper, Joe Koch, LC von Hessen, M. Lopes da Silva, Bitter Karella and many more. Cover art by Mx. Morgan G. Robles. Further reading YOUR BODY IS NOT YOUR BODY: A NEW WEIRD ANTHOLOGY, AN INTERVIEW WITH TENEBROUS PRESS  the heart and soul of horror author interviewsComments are closed.
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