Today and yesterday, I am featuring two people who, while not horror writers with books you can add to your collections, are instrumental in our community. They both do a lot of work to support the horror world, but most importantly, they both stepped up last year to co-manage the StokerCon virtual programming. And the result...it was amazing, the best we have ever had.
I wanted to invite them here to the blog this year because their personal Why I Love Horror stories are important. The fact that they spend so much of their free time working with and supporting the horror community is important. Sharing why horror means so much to them personally is also instructive to all of you, the library workers who work with horror readers. Understanding why
Yesterday I featured Robb Olson
here. But today it is Greg Greene's turn:
Greg Greene lives in Nashville where he obsesses over horror film & fiction. He's a Fangoria contributor, host of the podcast Chthonica, and proprietor of
threadsofdread.com, a shop of celebratory artifacts (ahem, merch) dedicated to horror authors, including Stephen Graham Jones, Paul Tremblay, Daniel Kraus, and Laird Barron. You can find Greg on Bluesky, Instagram, and Threads at @igreggreene, and at f
acebook.com/greg.greene. His new literary magazine, Rough Beast, launches this fall, featuring flash fiction, poems, cartoons, and commentary by contemporary legends of horror & weird lit. More information at
roughbeastmag.com.
I met Greg when he made
his first horror t-shirt-- Jade Daniels is my Final Girl. He got it ready just in time for the release of the second book in Stephen Graham Jones' Indian Lake Trilogy,
Don't Fear the Reaper. He reached out to me
to wear the shirt (along with SGJ) for the B&N virtual event for that book's launch. Click through
on the link for video proof that it did happen!
Greg and I not only stayed in touch, but since my young kid goes to school in Nashville, we have been able to hang out and become friends. Like Robb he is an amazing human first and one of the genre's biggest cheerleaders second. Our collaboration on the Ask Me Why I Love Horror T-shirt has been amazing. And now, Greg is venturing into the horror publishing sphere with his new literary magazine (linked above in bio). I for one will be subscribing. More on that soon.
Thank you to Greg for all you do to support horror and for sharing your personal Why I Love Horror story with everyone here today. It starts with a cheerleader (fitting I think) and ends with viscera. Love it!
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Why I Love Horror
by Greg Greene
My friend Judith was an NFL cheerleader for a season. Exciting, no doubt, but it came with strings: she couldn’t be seen in public sans makeup, had to dress sharp at all times, and fast food was verboten. I asked what she missed most while on duty. “Coca Cola,” she said, then leaned in and whispered, “I like the burn.”
* * *
Before asking Why horror?, let’s start with Why tragedy?
From Medea to King Lear to Death of a Salesman, tragic narratives have a grip on us, always have. My theory is that seeing a protagonist laid low by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune lets us re-experience - at a safe distance - our own misfortunes. Tragedies, conveyed in the media of theater, film, and oration, are a communal form of psychotherapy, letting us retell the darkest parts of the human experience within circles of empathy, and so slowly ameliorate our anguished hearts. Horror provides much the same service, letting us re-experience shock, trauma, and fear - mostly rooted in the powerlessness of childhood - at arm’s length.
And it’s not limited to postmortem reflection. With horror, we initiate our tribe into a wider, scarier world. Tales of hunting told around the campfire. Fairy tales told by the hearth. We speak of the perils of going into the woods at night, the risk of hunting alone. Horror can be a warning, yes, a simple survival aid. But more profoundly, it’s a way to teach the village children not what to avoid but what to expect; that humanness is lived on a razor’s edge. Forces we don’t understand are arrayed against us. We can be here today and disappeared tomorrow - without a trace, and without a word of warning or parting.
Horror gives flesh to the unimaginable. The Walking Dead’s domination in ratings and popular conversation was a surprise - this was an abnormally violent, gruesome, and grim show for American audiences. The series premiered in 2010, the same year as “Snowmageddon,” the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and a Russian heat wave that killed 55,000 people. One wonders if we aren’t subconsciously preparing ourselves for the apocalypse.
Horror is valuable and beneficial. It soothes the searing wounds of trauma and provides framing and perspective for our most existential of fears. It is preparing us for the psychic shock of a climatological or societal collapse and the anarchy to follow, empowering more of us to survive. This genre, this narrative mode, offers a degree of utility missing from all others. Horror is good for the human race.
But is that what I love about horror? No, not really.
I like the scares. The macabre. The sizzle and the scandal and the transgression. I like the viscera, I like the vivisection of souls, and the consequent welling up of courage in the face of abomination. It’s what my friend Judith said:
I like the burn.
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