Panel: How To Read Lovecraft When Black Lives Matter
Lovecraft Country has hit a nerve with millions of viewers, and there has been a good deal of press coverage on contemporary responses to Lovecraft’s racism, as expressed in his letters and his published work. Why should we continue to read the work of a man whose personal views are so repugnant? Can “Lovecraftian” fiction teach us how to deal with the “Other”?
Leslie S. Klinger is the editor of the highly-acclaimed New Annotated Dracula, New Annotated Frankenstein, and the two-volume New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft. He also edited the anthologies In the Shadow of Dracula and In the Shadow of Edgar Allen Poe, featuring 19th- century supernatural fiction. Together with Lisa Morton, he’s also edited the anthologies Ghost Stories and Weird Women, both with extensive selections of Victorian horror. Klinger’s annotated editions include the four-volume Annotated Sandman (with Neil Gaiman), Watchmen Annotated (with Dave Gibbons), and Annotated American Gods (again with Neil Gaiman). He serves as Treasurer of the Horror Writers Association and lives in Malibu with his wife Sharon, dog Jenny Calendar, and cat Rupert Giles.
Sheree Renée Thomas is an award-winning fiction writer, poet, and editor. Her work is inspired by myth and folklore, natural science, music, and conjure. Nine Bar Blues: Stories from an Ancient Future (Third Man Books, May 2020) is her fiction debut. She is also the author of two multigenre/hybrid collections, Sleeping Under the Tree of Life (Aqueduct Press July 2016), longlisted for the 2016 Otherwise Award and honored with a Publishers Weekly Starred Review and Shotgun Lullabies (Aqueduct January 2011). She edited the World Fantasy-winning groundbreaking black speculative fiction anthologies, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora and Dark Matter: Reading the Bones (Grand Central/Hachette 2000 and 2004) and is the first to introduce W.E.B. Du Bois’s science fiction short stories. She is the Associate Editor of the arts literary journal, Obsidian (Illinois State University, Normal). She was recently honored as a 2020 World Fantasy Award Finalist in the Special Award – Professional category for contributions to the genre. Visit http://www.shereereneethomas.com
Danielle Trussoni is a New York Times, USA Today and internationally bestselling author whose books have been translated into more than thirty languages. She has written five books. Her latest, The Ancestor was selected as an Editor’s Choice by The New York Times. She served as jury chair of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, and is the Horror Columnist for The New York Times Book Review. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her family.
Nisi Shawl is the winner of the 2019 Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award and two 2020 Locus Awards--one for co-creating and co-teaching the inclusivity-focused Writing the Other workshops, and one for editing the groundbreaking anthology New Suns. They wrote the 2016 Nebula finalist Everfair (Tor) and the 2008 Tiptree/Otherwise-winning collection Filter House (Aqueduct). Their stories are also collected in PM Press’s 2019 Talk like a Man and Dark Moon’s 2018 Primer to Nisi Shawl. Currently they’re drafting a sequel to Everfair with the working title “Kinning.” They live in Seattle and take frequent walks with their cat.