A Diverse Kind of Horror
When I initially wrote this post, we were planning to open a call for BIPOC authors in early 2025. Due to our good fortune in signing three AMAZING BIPOC authors for 2026 (Leticia Urieta, L. Marie Wood, and Nicole Givens Kurtz), we decided to postpone our BIPOC call, and wait to share this post.
But given the events of the last few months, I think this is important to share now instead of waiting until we open a BIPOC call. Our commitment to diversity is unwavering, and we want to make it clear that to us, DEI is something we will pursue no matter what.
Where I live in Tennessee, the idea of DEI is routinely mocked as unnecessary and a “liberal evil.” If I told folks about the idea of a “BIPOC-only call,” it’d probably get called communism—or worse.
I’m not here to bash my home state (or defend it). Instead, I tell you this to illustrate the importance of diversity in the written word.
I’ve heard it said that travel is the best antidote to narrow-mindedness and the -isms it breeds (racism, sexism, etc…). As someone who has crossed precisely one international border (and was immediately met by men with guns on the other side), world travel has never been something I can afford.
Thankfully, my local library is free.
For those of us who have been economically challenged, yet want to travel beyond the horizons, books are the best (and perhaps only) way to do that. From far-west Texas, I explored the streets of Afghanistan through Khalid Houssini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner. I’ve ridden through the Middle East and the Balkans with Agatha Christie on the Orient Express. The world is small enough to circumnavigate in eighty days with Jules Verne. From South Africa came the story of how Nelson Mandela used a symbol of oppression to unite the nation during the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Even Argentina, through W.E.B. Griffin’s Honor Bound series, is within reach of a serious reader.
But when you look at lists like that, what stands out is a lack of diversity. I can go anywhere, but when my guide shares my skin color and worldview, do I fully experience the new world the book shares?
There’s a reason I mentioned Houssini first: ten years after reading his books, I still vividly recall scenes from them. Afghanistan is his world, and he tells it through his eyes. It’s an experience that stands out, an immersion into a new world, not a guided tour with a familiar voice at the helm.
Yet even in America, voices like Housseni, who can tell their stories in a relevant, lasting way, are rare. It’s not that the stories aren’t there, it’s that the talent to tell them in a way that is both understandable and marketable takes years of time and effort to develop. Time and resources many of the people with stories are unable to dedicate to an art form.
That’s why we have BIPOC calls. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion isn't just a buzzphrase; it creates the kind of books that stand out from the crowd. Horror is global, yet most horror books take place in only a few mostly white places. And when they do venture to more international places, the stories still revolve around white characters and viewpoints.
For those of us who want to travel through books, it’s not enough.
We need more. Strong voices to bring different worlds, new worlds, to us. Horrors beyond our imagination not because they’re gruesome or brutal, but because they’re things we’d never considered before. BIPOC calls bring this and so much more to our world, and they’re worth pursuing.