In this interview, we chat with Craig Laurance Gidney about genre mashups, writing workshops, telling Mom which of your stories to avoid, and so much more.

Craig Laurance Gidney (he/him/his) is the author of Sea, Swallow Me & Other Stories; Skin Deep Magic: Stories; Bereft (a YA novella); and A Spectral Hue (a novel). He has been a Lambda Literary Finalist three times, was a Carl Brandon Parallax Award Finalist, and won the inaugural Joseph S. Pulver Sr. Award for Weird Fiction. The Nectar of Nightmares is his most recent collection. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Books and stories mentioned in this episode:

• The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
• Giovanni’s Room; Go Tell It on the Mountain; If Beale Street Could Talk  – James Baldwin
• Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell; Piranesi – Susanna Clarke
• Dhalgren – Samuel R. Delany
• The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
• The Uncanny – Sigmund Freud
• A Ring of Endless Light; A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L'Engle
• Black Light – Elizabeth Hand
• The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus – Joel Chandler Harris
• “The Golden Pot”; “The Sandman” – E. T. A. Hoffmann
• Finnegan’s Wake – James Joyce
• “Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk” – Franz Kafka
• Delirium’s Mistress – Tanith Lee
• “The Outsider”; “The Rats in the Walls” – H.P. Lovecraft
• The Winds of Winter – George R. R. Martin
• The Starless Sea – Erin Morgenstern
• Tar Baby – Toni Morrison
• “A Good Man is Hard to Find” – Flannery O’Connor
• Corpsepaint – David Peak
• Queen of Teeth – Hailey Piper