NAME: Leanna Renee Hieber
CREATIVE FIELD: Author/ Playwright / Actor
WEBSITE: leannareneehieber.com
CREATIVE LINKS:
Instagram: @leannareneehieber
Facebook: @lrhieber
CREATIVE BIO:
Leanna is a professional actress, playwright, ghost tour guide and an award-winning, bestselling author of fiction and non-fiction for Tor and Kensington Books.
A Haunted History of Invisible Women, co-authored with Andrea Janes, was a Bram Stoker Award Finalist for Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction and their follow-up, America’s Most Gothic, was an Instant USA Today Bestseller.
A 4-time Prism award winner for her Gothic Strangely Beautiful saga and a Daphne du Maurier finalist for Darker Still, Leanna’s novels have received translations into multiple languages, her short stories have been featured in notable anthologies, and non-fiction essays have appeared in Apex Magazine, The Deadlands, Haunted Magazine and more.
Featured in film and television on shows like Mysteries at the Museum and Beyond the Unknown discussing Victorian Spiritualism, she lives in New York and lectures around the country on Gothic and paranormal themes that intersect with women’s history.
INTERVIEW
What got you into horror to begin with – what’s your core Horror memory?
Falling in love with Edgar Allan Poe when I was around 8 years old, I carried around a battered paperback copy of his collected works like it was a security blanket. As a kid, when I first saw the classic, iconic picture of him, it felt like I was meeting an old friend again and that familiarity has never left me.
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?
Gothic horror! It is often what I write and what I’m always drawn to. The Gothic (and all of *its* sub-genres) captured me early in life and continues to work its magic on me.
Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak is a particular stand-out for me in the genre, as are the works of Silvia Moreno-Garcia, whose Mexican Gothic really put her on the map but she had already been working in and around the Gothic for many, many years.
I was honored to have been included in the Gothic anthology she edited called Candle in the Attic Window back in 2011.
As far as Gothic podcasts, the She Wore Black podcast is an expertly comprehensive examination of the genre and Agatha consistently highlights fantastic writers working today.
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?
In addition to my ongoing ghost-filled fiction and non-fiction, I’m also a ghost tour guide, an actress and a playwright. The current work of my heart is a one-woman show about Victorian Spiritualism that I hope to start touring this fall.
While this 45 minute piece won’t be horror entirely- it will center powerful women’s history as the core narrative- I will be discussing seance culture and it’s allure. I will address the fear and mystery surrounding the concept of summoning and communicating with the dead that persists to this day.
This show is something I hope to be doing for the rest of my life, as all the women that I will “channel” in the piece can change through time, allowing me to keep highlighting different fascinating and important female figures, and lifting up local legends depending on where the piece will tour into.
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. The works of Poe continue to be a constant source of inspiration.
2. I was so inspired by Wilde’s THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY as a kid that a haunted-painting-narrative became the backbone of my first young adult trilogy starting with DARKER STILL.
3. I nod directly to Daphne du Maurier’s entire body of work in my next young adult book, RAVENFIELD HALL.
4. I think Victor LaValle’s THE BALLAD OF BLACK TOM, a beautifully written subversion of Lovecraft, is one of the finest novellas in the world, I recommend it constantly as a way to replace the famously racist undertones of Lovecraftian source texts with something far more compelling and rewarding.
5. Del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” reinforced how historical fantasy can speak to our current political landscape in a profoundly inspiring way.
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?
George Roux’s 19th century painting called “Spirite“, featuring a beautiful ghostly woman at a piano with a shocked man in the shadows is my entire body of work if I had to describe it in one image.
My novels have the look and sound of Crimson Peak, but with a larger cast of found-family characters who are trying to do their best to navigate a world that’s often stacked against them.
I write in a PG-13 content range because I write for young adults and adults, and all my novels are set in the same universe.
My non-fiction focuses on a lot of women’s issues so all your favorite women singer-songwriters would apply, especially if they’re goth.
Introduce us to something you’ve created, and pitch it to the audience!
My latest non-fiction, co-authored with Andrea Janes, AMERICA’S MOST GOTHIC: HAUNTED HISTORY STRANGER THAN FICTION, is an examination of the intersection of Gothic literary tropes with real, haunted history from around the United States and Canada. We feature a range of wild, disturbing, harrowing and thrilling tales that have additional staying power and relevance because they parallel Gothic structures.
The Gothic always places its finger on the pulse of the anxieties of the age in which it is written and we are seeing a renaissance of the Gothic playing out now. We discuss those important patterns historically and what that might mean for us presently. Available in hardcover, digital and audiobook wherever books are sold!