Charlene Elsby for Women in Horror Month
1. Introduce yourself. What do you want people to know about you and your work?
I write fiction—novels, novellas, and short stories. My narratives tend to be first person, (mostly unhinged women) and include a lot of inner monologue. I write horror that’s based on the terrible things that people think and do to each other.
2. Who or what were your earliest horror influences?
I remember switching seamlessly from reading all of the Sweet Valley Twins and Sweet Valley High series books to the R.L. Stine Fear Street and Christopher Pike novels. I don’t remember considering that to be much of a change; I think the shelves were pretty close together in the library. I barely remember reading R.L. Stine’s first “adult” novel when it came out, but I didn’t like it as much.
3. You hold a doctorate in philosophy, and your expertise in that field often plays a role in your work. Which philosophers/theories are most ripe for mining when it comes to the horror genre, and what can we learn from them?
I have argued that existence itself is horrific and all it takes to become part of the horror genre is to write down, without a filter, the things that happen. A lot of the philosophy I’m referring to strives for the authentic self-reflection and rigorous analysis required to reveal something’s essence (otherwise known as phenomenology and existentialism). When you strip away the euphemisms, rationalization, and overall sweeping under the rug method of how we explain ourselves to ourselves, there’s a metric fuckton of darkness down there. I have found that the academics are much less shocked by the things I’ve written, e.g., in Violent Faculties, because these are the types who have read Sade and Bataille and all those describing the extremes of experience and have integrated those facets of humanity into their concept of how the world works.
4. Take us through a day-in-the-life of Charlene Elsby.
First, one of my cats (there are four) will wake me up just before my alarm is set to go off, insisting that overnight he’s been starved within an inch of his life. I’ll drink one coffee (in a 24 oz mug), doom scroll a bit, and pretty up the ol’ flesh corpse to make it presentable for other humans. Then I’ll work my day job, go for a little walk over my lunch break, work some more, and try to remember to do my physio exercises. On a special day, I’ll go to the post office or get a latte from the café that’s roughly 1000 steps away. On a really special day, I’ll have enough energy left to work on something creative after hours.
5. Imagine you're standing in front of a crowd of every horror creative—authors, filmmakers, podcasters, journalists, etc. What would you want them to know about your experience as a woman in the genre, both in general and in the year 2025?
One of the things that helps me to dial back the pessimism a bit is how many connections I’ve made with people of all genders through horror. I write a lot about feminine rage, and I remember when Clash published Hexis, we just assumed that the readers would be women. Maybe chalk it up to the capacity of fiction to establish empathic connections, but that book reached a lot of people, and so did Bedlam and The Devil Thinks I’m Pretty and Violent Faculties, which are all focused on violent and unhinged women with legitimate reasons to be angry described in detail, and people have reached out to me, saying, “Yeah, I get it,” or “Ohhhh, now I get it,” and that’s really fucking satisfying. There are certainly people out there who vehemently disagree with all that I stand for, but they reach out less often. ;)
Charlene Elsby is a philosophy doctor whose books include Hexis, The Devil Thinks I'm Pretty, Violent Faculties, and Red Flags. Her essays and interviews have appeared in Bustle Books, The Millions, and the LA Review of Books.
Her newest book, The Organization is Here to Support You, is out today from Weirdpunk Books.