RA for Horror | Musings of the Monster Librarian

Becky Spratford is a Readers’ Advisor for patrons 13 and up at the Berwyn (IL) Public Library. She is also a steering committee member for the Adult Reading Roundtable, which provides Readers’ Advisory training in the Chicagoland area. You can see more of Becky’s work on her two popular and critically acclaimed blogs, RA for All and RA for All: Horror, or in her book The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror, 2nd edition (ALA Editions, 2012). She is also a proud member of the Horror Writers Association.

As the expert in readers’ advisory for the horror genre in the library world, Becky is sharing with us her tips for librarians and mainstream readers interested in discovering women horror writers. Thank you so much, Becky!

Discovery of Women Horror Writers for Public Library Collections

A guest post by Becky Spratford

One of the biggest complaints I get from my fellow librarians is that it is so hard to identify new horror authors in general, and to find women writers is almost impossible. In honor of Women in Horror Recognition Month, Kirsten and I have teamed up to provide a month of posts aimed at helping you, the public librarian, to identify good female horror authors to add to your collections.

Now of course, the two places you should start your search for answers to any horror collection questions at your library are RA for All: Horror and Monster Librarian. But the larger question is, where do we get our info? That’s what I am going to do in this post–share my favorite resources for discovering new books and authors.

One of the problems with horror fiction is that outside of the biggest names, most horror is released by small presses. Now the good news here is that many of these presses highly value librarians. To help us both discover and purchase their titles, they are making a better effort to make their books available through Baker and Taylor and Ingram. Even just as recently as 4 years ago, I would have to get administrative permission to make purchases from specific small presses on a case by case basis; now I can simply include them with my regular collection purchases on Ingram.

Now you can go to my full list of horror small presses here, but the ones I have had the best luck with in recent years for discovering authors (including plenty of women writers) who are best for public library collections are:

Speaking of JournalStone, one of the best things they do to aid your discovery of new authors is the annual writing contest they host. This year’s winner happens to also be a woman Cynthia Tottleben. Her winning novel, The Eye Unseen, has just been released and is getting a lot of attention.

But just relying on the small presses and their marketing campaigns has its limitations; for example, are the books they are touting actually good for a general audience? One way to figure out the cream of the crop is to look at who is being nominated for the horror industry’s most trusted award, The Bram Stoker Award. Now, I speak from experience because as a member of the Horror Writers Association [who sponsors the award], I can, and do, recommend books for each year’s award. Starting early by looking at the Stoker Preliminary Ballot each year is a good idea. It comes out in early February each year. Click here for the current preliminary ballot. But spending a little time looking at the nominees and winners from the last few years is also helpful for your collection development. If you are particularly looking for up and comers, I suggest the First Novel and the various short story categories.

In general, the Horror Writers Association’s website has many resources, reviews, and links that you can use. I suggest setting up an RSS feed to the Horror Writers Association’s blog which will allow you to see an ongoing conversations about horror fiction today.

So there are my trade secrets about how I discover horror authors for my library’s collection, but so as not to make you do all the work yourself, here are some of my current favorite women in horror. Please note, all write to a YA or adult audience. Links lead either to my blog or Goodreads.

Once you know where to look, it is not that hard to discover great new women writers. Just remember that RA for All Horror and Monster Librarian are both there to help you, the librarian, help your horror patrons.

Yes, it’s that time of year again– Women in Horror Month is here! It’s too bad that it takes a special month for horror lovers and makers who are women to be brought up into the light, but that really does seem to be what it takes. While there are a lot of great women writers of horror, very few of them are well known, so this month we’re going to spotlight some of them. I’ll be bringing up some of the older posts we’ve done on some of the great women we have interviewed or had as guest bloggers previously, sharing some information about writers of the past, suggesting links on women writers that might be of interest, and publishing interviews with some of the wonderful women writers of horror out there who mainstream readers and librarians may not be familiar with. We are working on putting together an index of women horror writers, but that is a BIG project, so whether that will be done by the end of the month I don’t know.

So here’s the thing. Spotlighting women writers in horror doesn’t mean I think you should read or recommend a book JUST because it’s by a woman. But by not knowing about the work of these women writers, you miss out on some really, really good storytelling. The immediate name that comes up when someone says “women writers of horror” is almost always Mary Shelley, followed by Anne Rice and maybe Shirley Jackson. Even in the Reader’s Advisory Guide to Horror Fiction, Becky Spratford mentions very few women authors outside a short section identifiying five excellent contemporary women writers.(Lisa Morton, Alexandra Sokoloff, Sarah Langan, Sarah Pinborough, and Caitlin Kiernan, as I recall) But there are so many more great books out there that are just MISSED, and I hope that this month we’ll be able to bring some of those to your attention!

Here’s a link to the WiHM Facebook page, which is collecting together posts from a variety of participating sites. And here’s a link to their tumblr– they are collecting donations right now as well. Also check out Becky’s blog, RA for Horror, this month. I know she’s got some great things coming up!

Enjoy!