CREATOR LINKS:
Facebook: /colleen.anderson.9699
Instagram: @c_anderson_author
INTERVIEW
What got you into horror to begin with – what’s your core Horror memory?
I fell into it, but as a kid, when my parents were fighting, my mother bundled us into the car and off to the drive-in we went. Fall of the House of Usher and The House of Seven Gables are my earliest horror memories.
Do you have a favourite horror subgenre (or more than one) and if so, what is it? What/Who are your favourite books/films/podcasts/artists/creatives working in that subgenre?
Weird fiction is one of my faves, with works like China Mieville, Gemma Files and Jeff VanderMeer.
Early Black Mirror series in film, Jordan Peele’s works.
Also body horror.
Poetry by Stephanie Wytowich, Sara Tantlinger, Linda Addison…really, there are so many fantastic writers that my favourites change yearly.
What is the horror project of your heart – perhaps something you’ve already got out there, something you’re working on now, or something you’d like to do?
My SF body horror poetry collection: To the Last Ion, will be out this September through Lycan Valley Press.
I’m working on some food horror poems, and several short stories.
I wrote these after completing a collection, Vellum Leaves and Lettered Skins, on Rapunzel.
I’ve just finished a collaboration on transformation poems. We have this at a publisher right now but the poems encompass known myths and legends from various cultures as well as those we created.
Which 5 horror books can you not stop thinking about, or have influenced you most in some way? (If not books, you can pick 5 films, 5 pieces of art, 5 songs… or mix & match!)
The Bird Box by Josh Malerman,
Hailey Piper’s Queen of Teeth,
Jeff VanderMeer’s Strange Bird,
Gemma Files’ Hexslinger Series,
Angela Carter’s works; not always horror but the language is lush.
If you had to describe the tones and themes of your own work in terms of movies, books, songs, or art, what would you choose and why?
This is a hard one. Definitely some of it would be Black Mirror because of the disturbing twists on future science but maybe more of it might be like Daniele Serra‘s illustration artwork for its atmosphere, Mario Sanchez Nevado‘s digital art, which captures surreal, ecological otherness, Lynne Hansen‘s artwork for the disturbingly bizarre, François Vaillancourt‘s art for atmopsheric mood and weird content.
Introduce us to something you’ve created, and pitch it to the audience!
Awaking Pandora is a mosaic novella of weird, near-future eco horror. The protagonist in each story must deal with survival and a loved one’s death in a world affected by a strange miasma and toxic climate change. Each story references a Greek myth.