NAME: Elizabeth Broadbent
CREATIVE FIELD: Author
WEBSITE: linktr.ee/elizabethbroadbent
AUTHOR BIO:
Elizabeth Broadbent is the Southern Gothic author of Blood Cypress (Raw Dog Screaming Press), Ink Vine and Other Swamp Stories, and Ninety-Eight Sabers (both Undertaker Books).
During her decade long journalism career, she wrote for publications like The Washington Post, Insider, and Time while staff writing for Scary Mommy.
As a horror scholar, her essays have appeared with Nightmare Magazine and Ginger Nuts of Horror; she is a book reviewer at Cemetery Dance and a staff writer for NightTide Magazine.
A native of the South Carolina swamps, she lives in the Commonwealth of Virginia with two dogs, three sons, four cats, a flock of crows, and a very patient husband.
INTERVIEW
What got you into horror to begin with – what’s your core Horror memory?
I read Firestarter when I was nine or so, the same age as Charlie, and Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides when I was eleven (Southern Gothic horror).
I have an essay about that in NightTide — The Past is Never Dead: Southern Gothic and Child Abuse.
For me, horror is a way to safely examine trauma of all kinds — personal, historical, generational. The past is never dead. It’s not even past.
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?
Southern Gothic, 100%. Sapphic horror of all kinds.
It took me a long time to learn that I didn’t have to read or be excited about every single horror book release — there’s a lot of pressure to keep up. I read what I love, and that includes both Southern Gothic and marginalized creators. I like to learn about worlds that aren’t mine.
My favorite books in that vein are Absalom, Absalom!, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Salvation on Sand Mountain, all of Jesmyn Ward’s books … so many. As for writers working in the genre, I’m loving Aimee Hardy and Del Sandeen.
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?
That’s a hard question. Blood Cypress was that for me, but so is the novel I’m currently working on. And the last one. And the one before that. I have to get obsessed with my current work or else it won’t be good. So right now, my answer is the novel I’m writing. Think the Murdaugh dynasty meets Tiger King.
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!)
1. William Faulkner. The prose and structure — there’s so much there.
2. Flannery O’Conner’s characters
3. Candace Nola’s plots
4. Jesmyn Ward’s landscapes, realism, and characterization
5. Aimee Hardy’s use of dialect
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?
Trauma? The South is a land of generational trauma we can’t escape until we confront. I was raised by racist, abusive narcissists. I couldn’t escape that until I confronted it either, and that confrontation, assimilation, and subsequent remaking is the work of a lifetime. Much like being a Southerner—until we confront our legacy, understand it, and remake it, we will be forever in thrall to white privilege and white supremacy, forever harming our Black neighbors.
Introduce us to something you’ve created, and pitch it to the audience!
Ink Vine and Other Swamp Stories is a collection of interconnected short stories set in the town of Lower Congaree, and anchored by the sapphic horroromance novella, Ink Vine.
The stories run the gamit from shoeless patriarchs to beautiful murderesses to swamp witches, but they all deal with being an outsider in a culture that values surface politeness at the expense of true community.