For so long in the horror genre women have been marginalized, excluded, or harassed. Even today, the genre remains male-dominated. I am constantly seeing instances where female authors are not taken seriously in the genre or outright mistreated, and this needs to stop. Horror is for everyone!

That being said, with today being International Women’s Day, I thought it was the perfect chance for me to share with you some of my favorite female horror authors. These authors vary widely in the subgenres they write, so there is a little something for everyone. Enjoy!

Liz Kerin

Liz Kerin is a newer horror author, but upon reading her novel Night’s Edge last year, she instantly became one of my favorites! Her book is a fantastic new take on the vampire mythos, and its sequel First Light is releasing this April. I am dying to read it!

Bio

author | screenwriter | playwright

Liz Kerin is the author of the NIGHT’S EDGE duology (forthcoming from Tor Nightfire on June 20, 2023 with a sequel slated for April 2024) and dark fantasy adventure THE PHANTOM FOREST (2019). In addition to her work in literary fiction, Liz is also a screenwriter and award-winning playwright. Her whimsical family dramedy STOP-MOTION was awarded the 2018 Parity Commission and received a production at Theater for the New City in NYC in 2021, and her work has received multiple honors from The Road Theatre, Theatricum Botanicum, and the Kennedy Center. She is a graduate of the Rita and Burton Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at NYU Tisch and has numerous film/TV projects in active development. She lives in Southern California where you can find her working in her garden or hiking in the hills with her Corgi, Clementine.

Gwendolyn Kiste

Gwendolyn Kiste is an absolute powerhouse! She is a multi-award-winning author, and all of her books are completely different. I love how all of them introduce highly original horror elements. Her newest novel The Haunting of Velkwood just released, and I absolutely loved this book when I received an ARC back in October.

Bio

Gwendolyn Kiste is the three-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens, Reluctant Immortals, And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe, Pretty Marys All in a Row, The Invention of Ghosts, and Boneset & Feathers. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in outlets including Lit Hub, Nightmare, Tor Nightfire, Titan Books, Vastarien, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, and The Dark among others. She’s a Lambda Literary Award winner, and her fiction has also received the This Is Horror award for Novel of the Year as well as nominations for the Premios Kelvin and Ignotus awards.Originally from Ohio, she now resides on an abandoned horse farm outside of Pittsburgh with her husband, their calico cat, and not nearly enough ghosts. You can also find her online at Facebook and Instagram.

Carmen Maria Machado

Carmen Maria Machado is a versatile and fantastic author who experiences with many different genres. Her collection of stories entitled Her Body and Other Parties absolutely blew me away. She experiments a lot with feminist ideas and LGBTQIA+ concepts, and I love the diversity of her work. Machado is a multi-award-winning author, and based on the diversity of her work, she is able to reach a wide fanbase.

Bio

Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House, the graphic novel The Low, Low Woods, and the award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. In 2018, the New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of “The New Vanguard,” one of “15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century.”

Her essays, fiction, poetry, and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta, Vogue, This American Life, Harper’s Bazaar, Tin House, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Believer, Guernica, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She is the former Abrams Artist-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.

CJ Leede

CJ Leede is a new voice in horror, and her novel Maeve Fly is a brutal, feminist reimagining of American Psycho. When I read Maeve Fly last year, I was completely blown away. It was such an intense splatterpunk novel with a fantastic feminist edge.

Bio

CJ LEEDE is a horror writer, hiker, and Trekkie. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University, and a BA from NYU’s Gallatin School, where she studied Mythology and the Middle Ages. When she is not driving around the country, she can be found in LA with her boyfriend and rescue dogs. She is the author of Maeve Fly, winner of the Octavia E. Butler 2023 Golden Poppy Award.

Alma Katsu

Alma Katsu is such a unique horror author in that she combines historical fiction with horror. The first book I read by her was The Hunger, a horror take on the Donner Party tragedy. Her backlog of books covers a wide variety of historical elements, including the Titanic and the Japanese Internment Camps.

Bio

Alma Katsu’s books have been nominated and won multiple prestigious awards including the Stoker, Goodreads Readers Choice, International Thriller Writers, Locus Magazine, the Western Heritage Awards, Spain’s Celsius 232 festival, and appeared on numerous Best Books lists including NPR, the Observer, Barnes and Noble, Apple Books, Goodreads, and Amazon.

She has written to spy novels (RED WIDOW and RED LONDON), the logical marriage of her love of storytelling with her 30+ year career in intelligence.  She also writes novels that combine historical fiction with supernatural and horror elements. THE HUNGER (2018), a reimagining of the story of the Donner Party, was named one of NPR’s 100 favorite horror stories, was on numerous Best Books of the Year lists, and continues to be honored as a new classic in horror. Her first book, THE TAKER (2011), was named one of the top ten debut novels of 2011 by Booklist.

Ms. Katsu has relocated from the Washington, DC area to the mountains of West Virginia, where she lives with her musician husband Bruce and their two dogs, Nick and Ash.

These are only a few of the fantastic female voices in horror, and I urge you to seek out as many female horror authors as you can. Women have such a unique voice that they bring to the horror genre, and I am always amazed by the diversity they highlight and represent. I hope that you enjoy the authors who I have featured here, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on their work!