YOUR BODY IS NOT YOUR BODY: AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHORS PART 3

27/4/2022

Ginger Nuts of Horror has been running a series of articles from 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 three of our interview with the authors featured in this anthology

Rhiannon Rasmussen

Why did you submit to Your Body is Not Your Body?

As soon as I saw the call I answered it. I'm nonbinary and body horror has often spoken to my dysphoria and relationship with myself and my body in some positive ways and some negative. The rawness is human and the discomfort, the inability to understand or confirm to what the so-called majority says it wants, is queer.

And of course what's going on in Texas--and many other states--is dehumanizing, deliberately cruel, targeted hate. I can't talk about it without getting incandescently angry. I'm so glad to see so many members of the indie horror community stepping up to support trans people, and I'm incredibly honored to have this small piece I wrote on these themes which resonate so deeply with me go to such an important cause.

Tell us what your story is about, and the themes you chose to focus on.

My story, "The Lives of Scavengers," is about leaving behind the sorrows of others and leaving behind the burdens of your family that we are so often expected to carry and analyze and fret over. Leave them and be free.

What has your experience as a marginalized writer in the horror community been like?

I'm very lucky and the horror community has been overall welcoming to me. Of course there's going to be issues in any community but there's a real joy of acceptance and finding the unknown, and a huge interest in queer fiction, acknowledging queer/trans roots and readings, and exploration which I haven't found reflected in many other genre communities.

If someone wants to read more of your work, what would you recommend that they check out?

I have several short stories, some horror and some not, up as pay-what-you-want downloads on my itchio page https://charibdys.itch.io/ and my YA dark science-fiction coming-of-age novella The Wasp Child is out now through the lovely Vernacular Press.

Rhiannon Rasmussen is a horror author and illustrator interested in monstrosity and the persistence of hope. Rhiannon’s fiction has appeared in publications including Lightspeed Magazine, Evil in Technicolor, and Magic: the Gathering. Visit rhiannonrs.com for more.

Meagan Hotz

Why did you submit to Your Body is Not Your Body?

It was instinctive. I saw the call, I had a story, and I thought, alright. Let's do it. No questions asked. The cause was good and it felt like now was the time. Sometimes you get that feeling. I was just happy there was some way for me to help.

Tell us what your story is about, and the themes you chose to focus on.

Ten years ago I was living in an apartment that was infested with mice and may or may not have had a gas leak. You get weird feelings when you're living in that environment and some of those weird feelings came back during the pandemic, intensified by the way that everyone was expected to just... keep on going as normal. "Rat race" is the idiom but there's something about the humble mouse that resonates with me with our place in the world right now. Our presence is expected and disrespected; we exist to eat, reproduce and die. People are treated like parts to be replaced in the ever-operational money machine. It's hard to find your own humanity when you're so caught up in the cogs of that system, let alone that of the people around you. So I guess that's the theme. The weight of capitalism, of bigotry, and what it does to your sense of self.

What has your experience as a marginalized writer in the horror community been like?

In the actual community itself, it's been great. But I owe a lot of that fact to the fact that I came into the community alongside other LGBTQ+ horror writers/directors/etc. and that really helped. Being involved with other marginalized horror fans is actually what pushed me to really commit myself to my love of the genre. Horror comes with a special kind of passion and it's easy to channel our rage and fear and love through that passion. Obviously, I'm lucky to have these people who've been at my side all these years, and there's still a lot of work to do, but I'm forever grateful towards the weird little part of the community I've found myself in.

If someone wants to read more of your work, what would you recommend that they check out?

I've got a list of some notable things (and things upcoming!) on my carrd! https://meaganhotz.carrd.co/

Meagan Hotz is a Canadian writer and graduate of the Vancouver Film School's Writing for Film & Television program. Her short films have been screened internationally, with accolades including Best Short at the Screamfest Horror Film Festival. She lives in Vancouver with her pets and a potentially haunted couch.

Vincent Endwell

Why did you submit to Your Body is Not Your Body?

In the onslaught of anti-trans sentiment and state violence, it was nice to see a project for which the proceeds would go to help trans people impacted by the horror coming out of Texas. The fact that it was an anthology collection calling explicitly for the bizarre & gruesome that resonates with me was what inspired me personally to submit. That I had a story that I felt would be quite thematically appropriate certainly helped seal the deal. With a title like that? How could I not.

Tell us what your story is about, and the themes you chose to focus on.

In brief, my story is about how existing in a body is intrinsically horrifying, and even worse is how that repulsive meat (which you cannot escape) will be used to control and dehumanize you.

I'll admit, this story is not the most explicitly Trans(TM) story I've written, but upon coming across the title for this anthology collection, I knew it was the one I had to submit. And in a manner, I regard it as a trans story, in that it is a story very deeply about fear of one’s body, but more so fear of what other people will do to your body and the horrors you will be forced to endure because of what they feel is morally right.

The push by the right to criminalize both abortion and transgender existence is part of a broader white supremacist project of maintaining control over reproduction both to ensure white population growth, enforce cisheteropatriarchal gender norms as a means of social control, and to further genocidal aims against non-white people. Because of this, struggles for bodily autonomy are intimately linked. In both instances, trans people and/or pregnant people are forced into a horrifying bodily existence that is framed as something natural or right, and so it is those themes with which I am grappling.

Of course, I grapple with this through the lens of a woman in love with a dead Christian mommy blogger. You know, they did specify Weird Horror.

What has your experience as a marginalized writer in the horror community been like?

I think it would be a stretch to say I am part of a broader horror community. The friendships and acquaintances I have cultivated with other horror writers have been wonderful, and it is always a delight to find people who share one’s taste. I will say that my first experience with posting my horror writing was on Wattpad, where I was assumed to be a different gender by my acquaintances and readers, making that my first real affirming experience of the “no one knows who you are on the internet” variety.

If someone wants to read more of your work, what would you recommend that they check out?
I have few publishing credits to my name, but over the years I have posted a number of horror stories to my blog, virgilsbirds.wordpress.com. Out of those, the one most similar to my piece in this collection is “A Clean Cut in the Bloated Flesh” https://virgilsbirds.wordpress.com/2016/07/12/a-clean-cut-in-the-bloated-flesh/. Otherwise, I have a much more pleasant poem featured in As It Ought to Be Magazine (https://asitoughttobemagazine.com/2020/10/12/aster-perkins-ramps/). You can also follow my twitter (@endwellian) if you so choose, and stay tuned.

Vincent Endwell (they/them) is a third gender/androgyne writer, composer, neuroscience graduate student, and white settler located in Lenapehoking (New York City). Their work has been previously featured in As it Ought to Be Magazine and The Apothecary.

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.

Preorder a copy of Your Body is Not Your Body: A New Weird Anthology here

Further reading
YOUR BODY IS NOT YOUR BODY: A NEW WEIRD ANTHOLOGY, AN INTERVIEW WITH TENEBROUS PRESS

YOUR BODY IS NOT YOUR BODY: AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHORS PART 1

YOUR BODY IS NOT YOUR BODY: AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHORS PART 2