Many of the most memorable novels & stories we read would never make it under the label of "horror." And yet, so many novels & stories house and cultivate the spirit, style, and content of horror. We need only think of Toni Morrison's Beloved, Flannery O'Connor, Le Guin, Kafka, & Dan Chaon, among many others, to see how horror is in what's considered "non-horror." This class will provide prompts for creating non-horror scenes that glint with horror by showing how previous authors have crafted their writing & scenes. Moreover, as a class for both fans/writers of horror and non-horror, the goal is to show how what we often consider staples of the horror genre--e.g. the monster, the killer, gore--can be found in unlikely places and what that can tell us about how horror operates more broadly in literature.
Instructor: Kyle Winkler is the author of Grasshands, The Nothing That is, OH PAIN, and Boris Says the Words. He is an Associate Professor of English at Kent State University at Tuscarawas. He received a Ph.D. in Composition and Rhetoric from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. He also is a faculty member in the MFA program at Ashland University, teaching horror and speculative fiction writing.
