DoT EP110: Monster, She Wrote Authors Lisa Kroger and Melanie R. Anderson On the History of Female Horror Writing, Plus New Comedy from Corey Rodrigues

The Department of Tangents Podcast

If you ask a random reader to name foundational women horror writers, you might get two or three names. Mary Shelley. Shirley Jackson. Maybe Daphne du Maurier or Anne Rice. But as Lisa Kroger and Melanie R. Anderson point out in their new book, Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror & Speculative Fiction, if that’s where our knowledge begins and ends, we’re missing out on a lot. Eli Colter, who wrote, amongst other things, weird westerns. C.L. Moore who helped introduce swashbuckling rebels into the sci-fi canon. Angela Carter’s re-imagining of folk tales. There are also works of literary fiction we might not put in the horror genre, like Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Kroger and Anderson give readers a primer on women writers whose work you may have missed, and puts it in a historical context. You can learn about the origins of the gothic story, the influence of spiritualism in writing and pop culture, how writers supported their families with their short works, a bit about pulp magazines like Weird Tales, and even how one writer put together a group of mystics (or mystic-adjacents) to help guard the coast of England during World War II. But beware – Monster, She Wrote is likely to add considerable height to your reading pile. A note about the sound quality – we tried to do this interview with Skype, but it kept cutting out. So we had to do it the old fashioned way, the way I started recording interviews in the last century, on speaker phone with a recorder. I’ve sweetened it up a bit through some plug-in magic, but you’ll notice the switch a few minutes in. Monster, She Wrote is out now from Quirk Books and you can find out more about it at www.quirkbooks.com or wherever you get wonderful books. You can also keep track of Lisa Kroger’s work at www.lisakroger.com and Melanie R. Anderson at www.melanieranderson.com. The Know Fear Podcast is at www.knowfearcast.com, and on Twitter under @knowfearcast. This week’s featured track from the new Best of Boston Stand-Up, Volume 1. Boston has a long and fine tradition of stand-up comedy, and this album is a good introduction to some of the funniest comedians you can see regularly around town. Veterans like Steve Sweeney, Don Gavin, Tony V., Kenny Rogerson, and Jimmy Dunn; more recent headliners like Kelly MacFarland, Will Noonan, Dan Crohn, Christine Hurley, and Corey Rodrigues, who you are about to hear. This is a bit about Rodrigues going out for a day at the beach, and the reaction he got when he tried to put on sunscreen. I won’t give away too much, but Rodrigues is black, and the audience at this taping was mostly white. That allowed Rodrigues to have a little fun with their expectations partway through the story. Look for more of Rodrigues’s stuff on the Dry Bar Comedy YouTube channel, and find his album, My Turn, on Apple Music and Google Play. His Web site is www.coreyrodrigues.com.