38 – Tananarive Due and Black Girls Doing Magical Things

This week the Queen of black horror is Talking Scared. Tananarive Due is bestowing her patronage on little ol’ me and I’m not quite sure what to do with myself.

Tananarive ranks amongst the most respected horror writers of the 21st Century, from her breakout effort, The Between, to her British Fantasy Award winning collection, Ghost Summer and her magnum opus (so far at least) The Good House.  

She took the time to talk me through her career, from breaking free of the MFA fixation on white guys and their naval-gazing, to the time she used good old rock ‘n’ roll to coerce Stephen King into blurbing her book. We also take in the volcanic impact of Jordan Peele and why black horror lit is ready to follow in film’s footsteps.

If you are interested in horror generally then this is not a conversation to miss. Especially when Tananarive gets into her forthcoming novel, The Reformatory – seven years in the making, and inspired by her own ancestry and the bloody history of a brutal prison. 

Enjoy 

Books mentions in this conversation include: 

• The Between (1995), by Tananarive Due
• The Good House (2003), by Tananarive Due
• Ghost Summer (2015) by Tananarive Due
• My Soul to Keep (1997) by Tananarive Due
• Dark Dreams (2004), edited by Brandon Massey
• “The Comet” (1920), by W.E. Dubois 

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Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design.