October Workshop of The Month
Introducing your instructor and what you'll be learning this month!
The Craft of Fear: Writing Horror That Does More Than Just Scare
The best horror writing is about so much more than just monsters and ghouls but rather uses those monsters and ghouls to tell deeper, more layered stories about human relationships, grief, loss, society, politics, identity, and themes beyond the spectral.
You will learn → How to write horror that upends, devours, surprises, unsettles, disorients, and titillates the reader. You don't have to consider yourself a genre writer or have any horror experience to benefit from learning how to harness fear and the uncanny in your writing.
About Your Instructor
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is a lesbian writer of essays, short stories, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. Her queer horror novelette Helen House (Burrow Press) was named one of the Best LGBTQ Books of 2022 by NBC News. She is the managing editor of both Autostraddle and TriQuarterly. Her short stories appear in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Catapult, The Offing, Joyland, Foglifter, and others. Some of her culture writing can be found in The Cut, The A.V. Club, Vulture, Refinery29, and Vice, and she previously worked as a restaurant reporter for Eater NY. She was a 2023-2024 Tin House Reading Fellow and a 2023 Lambda writer in residence. Her fiction will be featured in the upcoming anthology Be Gay, Do Crimes, out from Dzanc Books in 2025.
Lessons Available Now:
Kayla will publish her lessons in horror writing every Monday and Friday through the month of October, if you’d like to receive them …