February 21 is the official release date for the biographical reference 100+ Black Women in Horror. Containing the biographies of over one hundred black women who write horror, 100+ Black Women in Horror is a reference guide, a veritable who’s who of female horror writers from the African Diaspora. This volume is an expansion of the original 2014 book 60 Black Women in Horror.
February is African American History Month in the United States as well as Women in Horror Month (WiHM). 100+ Black Women in Horror is a result of the intersection between the two celebrations. It consists of an alphabetical listing of the women with biographies, photos, and web addresses, as well as interviews with 17 of the included women and an essay by David Watson on LA Banks and Octavia Butler. It is not limited to African American authors, but includes women from all over the diaspora!
100+ Black Women in Horror began as a series of blog posts, written for Women in Horror Month and Black History Month, between 2013 and 2018. This book contains seventeen of the interviews originally featured on Sumiko Saulson’s horror blog, Things That Go Bump in My Head, http://www.SumikoSaulson.com. The women in this release are either primarily authors of horror prose or poetry, such as Tananarive Due and Linda Addison, or women who write in other genres primarily, but have one or more works in the horror genre, such as Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, and Zane.
Free eBooks will be made available to schools and libraries through a special distribution program through Smashwords.
Discounted versions of the book are available exclusively through Lulu.com, through buy links you can find at www.SumikoSaulson.com and the publisher, the non-profit www.IconoclastProductions.com. A free PDF download of Book will be available exclusively through the publisher and author sites listed above.
The book is available everywhere else for the standard price of 99 cents for the eBook, available through Kobo, iTunes Store, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Smashwords; $10 for the Standard Paperback, $12 for the Premium Paperback, and $30 for the Deluxe Hardcover with Case Wrap, perfect for libraries and schools wishing to keep it as a reference guide.
100+ Black Women in Horror will be a great addition to the libraries of horror lovers, African Diaspora or horror scholars, and fans of Black literature.
horror took place in the Victorian era, the same period of time that the Civil War and the post war Restoration took place in the United States. The dark histories involving the African slave trade and the genocide of New World’s indigenous peoples were primary features of a guilt-ridden American conscience. Wronged native peoples and oppressed African slaves were some of the ghosts and bogeymen of American gothic. That is clearly the case in Beloved, which is about the petulant spirit of Sethe’s murdered two year old daughter, Beloved. Sethe killed her own child to protect her from slavery, and has been haunted ever since.
If it weren’t for the fact that Sula won a Nobel Prize for American literature, we might think of it as magical realism, as it certainly utilizes many elements of the genre. Many supernatural elements are used to illustrate the town of Bottom’s discomfort with and rejection of the unconventional protagonist Sula Peace. These magical elements are illustrations of the town’s scapegoating behavior. They clearly symbolize the tendency to demonize women for liberal and sexually unrepressed behavior. However, there is a more than superficial resemblance between Sula’s connection to the paranormal occurrences and witchcraft. Sula seems like a witch, and the town seems to be on a witch hunt.
Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon opens up with some of the most horrifying scenes I’ve ever read. One involves the hunting of a runaway slave by a pack of dogs, and the other involves an extended analogy about leaping to suicide while attempting to fly away from enslavement. Song of Solomon uses several elements of magical realism. Many of these are directly or indirectly connected with a character named Pilate, a woman who was born without a belly button. She is guardian angel/earth mother figure in the life of the protagonist, Milkman.
There is the further complication of determining whether or not supernatural occurrences are real in magical realism. In Toni Morrison’s controversial debut novel The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove, a sexually molested young black girl, retreats into a fantasy world where she feels beautiful because she imagines she has blue eyes. The book has been banned multiple times because it deals with tough subjects like incest and child molestation. However, at the core of it is a deeper truth: our most terrifying monsters are the ones that are real.
Tyhitia Green writes horror, fantasy, and science fiction. She sometimes dabbles in other genres as well. She began writing poetry as a child and ventured into fiction years later. Her horror flash story, Margie, appeared in the July 2009 issue of Necrotic Tissue magazine, and her non-fiction has appeared in Lightspeed magazine and on Black Girl Nerds.com.
Tyhitia Green’s short story Margie appeared in the July 2009 issue of Necrotic Tissue. It was the 7th Issue of the quarterly horror magazine. Necrotic Tissue got its name from the medical horror genre, and offered a lot of stories in that genre but wasn’t limited to it. This tended to up the gore factor. Generally well-received, the writer-centered publication offered advice to aspiring horror writers, along with an open call that introduced many new and upcoming authors to the genre. It gained a reputation for helping to show where the future in horror lies. It went out of business in 2012 after 18 issues. See a review of Issue 7 below.
This Part Two of the Three Part 2018 series on Black Women in Horror, a continuation of the Black Women in Horror project that started in 2013 as a part of 
Author of the short story Letty in the anthology Sycorax’s Daughters, Dr. Regina N. Bradley is a writer and researcher of African American Life and Culture. She is the author of “Boondock Kollage: Stories from the Hip Hop South.” a collection of twelve short stories that addresses issues of race, place, and identity in the post–Civil Rights American South. She is an acclaimed fiction writer, with her work being featured in Obsidian journal, Oxford American, and Transition Magazine. Dr. Bradley is an Assistant Professor of English and African Diaspora Studies at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, GA. She can be reached at 
Amber Doe is an artist, poet and author. She wrote The Last of the Red Hot Lovers, a short horror story in Sycorax’s Daughters. She has been published in the Finnish art journal Hesa Inprint three times; By Sixteen for their Phobia issue and Moon in Cancer and This will hurt for their Harvest Issue. Both pieces are related to the longer piece The Last of the Red Hot Lovers published in Sycorax. She was born in Washington DC, raised in Philadelphia PA and an Indian reservation outside of Charlotte, NC. Amber earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College.
A.J. Locke is an author and poet from Trinidad and Tobago. Her poems The Lonely, Salty Sea, and A Real Friend Will Let You Break by A. J. Locke appeared in the horror anthology Sycorax’s Daughters. She writes urban fantasy and paranormal. Her books include Affairs of the Dead (The Reanimation Files #1), Requiem for the Living (The Reanimation Files #2), The Ravaging In Between (The Reanimation Files #3), A Torment of Savages (The Reanimation Files #4), Black Widow Witch, and Elemental Inferno.
Carole McDonnell is a horror, paranormal, sci-fi and inspirational writer. She is Jamaican but grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Her books include Turn Back, O Time: and Other Tales of the Faes of Malku, The Charcoal Bride, The Daughters of Men, Wind Follower, My Life as an Onion, A Fool’s Journey through Proverbs, Scapegoats and Sacred Cows of Bible Study, The King’s Journal of Lost and Secret Things, NO! Not the Deli!, Great Sufferers of the Bible, and Blogging the Psalms. She contributed short stories to the anthologies So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy, While the Morning Stars Sing: An Anthology of Spiritually Infused Speculative Fiction, Diversity Is Coming, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, and Rococoa. She contributed How to Speak to the Bogeyman and Terror and the Dark to Sycorax’s Daughters.
Dana T. Mcknight is a black, queer American speculative fiction and multimedia artist. Here disciplines include illustration, literature, sculpture, experimental sound, performance art, poetry and painting. She is the founder of Dreamland Art Gallery, an alternative art and performance space in Buffalo, NY and a Co-Creator for RIQSE (Radical Inclusive Queer Sex Education). She contributed the short story Taking the Good to Sycorax’s Daughters.
African American fantasy, paranormal romance and horror author L. Penelope’s debut work was the 2015 novel Song of Blood & Stone, the first of the Earthsinger Chronicles. Since then she’s written Whispers of Shadow & Flame (Earthsinger Chronicles #2), Cry of Metal & Bone (Earthsinger Chronicles #3), Angelborn (Angelborn Cycle #1), and Angelfall (Angelborn Cycle #2). Her short story AngelBorn was included in the anthology Sycorax’s Daughters, and she was in the Touch the Dark Anthology.
Andrea Vocab Sanderson is a singer, songwriter, spoken word poet, host, emcee, hip hop artist, and community activist. She contributed the short horror story Thirsty for Love to Sycorax’s Daughters. She has recorded several albums of spoken word and hip-hop poetry, including Wind Song Poem, Sessions in Flight, Speak of Woes, Her Hercules, Cradle of Silence, Son of David, Thoughts of Pain, Grind ‘Til I Bubble, Truest Reflection, and Spit Fire.
Nicole D. Sconiers is a Los Angeles author and screenwriter. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in The Absent Willow Review, Clutch, Inglewoodlandia and other publications, and she penned several exclusives for Dr. Phil. She contributed the short horror story Kim to Sycorax’s Daughters. She is the author of the short story collection Escape from Beckyville Tales of Race, Hair and Rag.
Spoken word poet Tanesha Nicole Tyler wrote the horror poem Polydactyly for Sycorax’s Daughters. Her talk My Art is Active: Exploring Social Activism through the Spoken Word uses spoken word and is available through Westminster College SLC on Youtube. Two of her poems were published in Ink&Nebula Poetry Magazine. Her poems include This Body and Afterparty. TaneshaNicole attended competitions at both the regional and national level including Utah Arts Festival, CUPSI, IWPS and the Women of the World Poetry Slam where she placed 9th out of 96 poets. TaneshaNicole’s poem Afterparty was featured as the poem of the day on Button Poetry’s YouTube channel.
Tabitha Thompson is an African American horror writer from Florida. Her first short story Heading West, was picked up by Sirens Call Publications in 2013 for their online magazine issue #12 Dead And Dying. West Nile was released in 2014 also with Sirens Call Publications for their issue #16 Apocalyptic Fiction. She has released several horror short stories and flash fiction. Her latest release, Decency Defiled, a workplace based horror short story, was released through J Ellington Ashton Press as part of the anthology titled Rejected For Content 6: Workplace Relations.
R.J. Joseph has had three horror short stories published in anthologies: “A Woman’s Work” in Transitions and Awakenings by Sanguine Press, “To Give Her Whatsoever She May Ask” in Sycorax’s Daughters, and “Mama’s Babies” in Road Kill: Texas Horror by Texas Writers, Volume 2. She writes creatively and academically in and about the horror genre. In May 2017 she presented her paper, “Where My Girls At: The Absence of Black Femininity from Vampire Culture” at the International Vampire Film and Arts Festival in Transylvania.
Violette L. Meier is an Atlanta-based speculative fiction writer, poet, folk artist and published author of eight books. Tales of a Numinous Nature is a spine tingling collection of her short horror stories. She writes horror-tinged paranormal tales like Ruah the Immortal, The First Chronicle of Zayashariya: Out of Night, Angel Crush, and Son of the Rock. Her other titles include: Violette Ardor: A Volume of Poetry, This Sickness We Call Love: Poems of Love, Lust, & Lamentation, and Loving and Living Life.
Chanel Harry is a horror novelist who combines psychological horror with paranormal terrors in her novel, The Other Child, about a child psychologist who has to separate a vengeful spirit from the traumatized children it inhabits at Black Hallow School for Blind and Disabled Girls. Other horror titles include Heebie Jeebies: Tales of Terror, a macabre and terrifying ten story collection; Skin Witch: Tales of Soucouyants; and The Restless: Evil Has Come Home. She hails from the Bronx, New York. Her mother is from Trinidad and Tobago, which she visits annually. She is immersed in her mother’s culture, and her book Skin Witch is about the Soucouyant vampire folklore from Trinidad.
A speculative fiction author, her short story, L’innocent is in the horror genre and was published originally in Black Girl Magic Literary Magazine and later self-published on Amazon. It was reviewed on the Grave Yard Shift Sisters web site. She writes horror, sci-fi, fantasy, urban romance, traditional romance, paranormal romance, African American fiction, and general fiction. Her bylines can be found on Amazon and at Blacksci-fi.com, Black Girl Magic Literary Magazine and xoNecole. Tiara is also a ghostwriter with Gotham Ghostwriters, one of the leading ghostwriting agencies in the country.
Tabitha Thompson is an African American horror writer from Florida. Her first short story Heading West, was picked up by Sirens Call Publications in 2013 for their online magazine issue #12 Dead And Dying. West Nile was released in 2014 also with Sirens Call Publications for their issue #16 Apocalyptic Fiction. She has released several horror short stories and flash fiction. Her latest release, Decency Defiled, a workplace based horror short story, was released through J Ellington Ashton Press as part of the anthology titled Rejected For Content 6: Workplace Relations.
St. Louis native and vampire lover, author Kai Leakes began her obsession with all things fantasy, romance, and the dark as a teen. Kai is the creator of the popular dark fantasy/horror series ‘Sin Eaters: Devotion Books & Sin Eater Chronicles’ novellas. She has short stories in several Afrocentric speculative fiction anthologies Taste the Taint: A Cursed Story in Sycorax’s Daughters, Sisters in Black Magic Women, Free Your Mind in The City: A Cyberfunk Anthology and Traveler’s Song, a Pulse Prelude in Rococoa. She cowrote Christmas Kind of Love with Nikki Michelle.
Kamika Aziza is the writer of a childrens’ book series and a comic book series both based in Jamaica. She studied Radio and Television broadcasting at Trident Technical college where she also graduated with a certificate in Radio Production. She works on a comic book series titled “League of Maroons” based on Caribbean folk lore, and a children’s book series titled “The Adventures of Kam Kam”, both currently available for Amazon Kindle, as well as the poetry chapbook “Random Poems from a Desperate Mind,”
Tiffany Austin is a poet who contributed “Toward a Peacock Poem” to the horror anthology Sycorax’s Daughters, she also wrote essay “The Gendered Bias in Sonia Sanchez’ Haiku,” which is a part of the anthology “Sonia Sanchez’ Poetic Spirit through Haiku.” Tiffany Austin presently lives in Nassau, Bahamas, where she teaches.
Contributor to Sycorax’s Daughters, she wrote the short story “Ma Laja,” and is the author of the horror-tinged midgrade dark fantasy series “The Jumbies and Rise of the Jumbies,” the contemporary young adult novel Angel’s Grace and nine non-fiction books for kids in elementary through high school. She’s a former elementary school teacher, currently on the faculty at Lesley University’s Creative Writing MFA program.