Women Writing Horror: The Importance of Female Representation in My Favorite Genre

As a little girl growing up with a love of all things horror, I got a lot of funny looks from people – family and friends included. I was the only bookworm in my family, and the only person interested in the things that went bump in the night. Trying to explain to my teachers or guidance counselors that the stuff I read and watched wasn’t unhealthy for me – especially in comparison to what my real life was like – wasn’t easy.

While I had what most people would call a “rough childhood”, there were a lot of good, shining points throughout, and one of the brightest of those points was my love of books. Reading transported me to another world, one where the bad things happening around me weren’t really there and couldn’t do any more…