Author | Critic
What do you desire from the natural world? For millions of years, we’ve been shaped and reshaped by the environment around us. If technology has the power to mimic lush lands and blue waters, how do we bond if we can’t tell what is real or not—or worse, does it even matter? In this issue, we journey through galaxies where love knows no bounds, nature that heals, wild hearts to be untamed, plants that lust.
Read Augur 8.3.
Proposal Submission Details
Mike Thorn seeks proposals of no more than 500 words for essays (5000-7000 words) on or related to the topics listed below.
He is especially interested in essays addressing multiple Straub-authored novels and stories, and in analyses of under-studied works, such as Straub’s poetry collections; Marriages; Under Venus; If You Could See Me Now; Mr. X; and In the Night Room. He might consider close readings of individual novels or stories in some cases, but he will give preference to proposals referencing multiple texts. Send proposals and queries to mikethorn@live.com.
Proposals should include descriptive titles, preliminary reference lists, and brief, 100-word personal bios.
Chapter Topics
Pre-Gothic Straub: On the Poetry and Early Literary Novels: Proposals should address Marriages and Under Venus; they might also draw on Straub’s poetry collections.
The Early American Gothic Sequence: Proposals should address Julia, If You Could See Me Now, and Ghost Story. They might also consider Under Venus.
Narrative Unreliability and Genre-Slipperiness: On Straub’s “Blue Rose” Novels: Proposals should address Koko, Mystery, and The Throat; they might also consider The Juniper Tree and Other Blue Rose Stories.
Straub Gets Weird: On Straub’s Engagements with H. P. Lovecraft and the Weird Tradition: Proposals should address the novels Mr. X and Floating Dragon. They might also consider A Dark Matter, The Talisman, or other novels or stories deemed Weird or Weird-adjacent.
American Serial Killer Mythologies: Proposals should address The Hellfire Club and A Special Place. They might also consider other novels or short stories depicting serial killers, including the “Blue Rose” novels (Koko, Mystery, and The Throat), The Green Woman, Black House, Mr. X, “A Short Guide to the City”, “Ashputtle”, and “Bunny is Good Bread.”
The Metafictional Straub: Intertextuality and Narrative Self-Reflection: Proposals should address lost boy lost girl and In the Night Room. They might also address the preceding Timothy Underhill “Blue Rose” novels (Koko, Mystery, and The Throat) and other metafictional works, such as The Buffalo Hunter and The Hellfire Club.
Straub’s Short Fiction: Proposals should address at least one story or novella from each of the following collections: Houses Without Doors; Magic Terror; Interior Darkness.
Writers and Writing in Straub’s Fiction: Proposals should address The Hellfire Club and at least one of the Timothy Underhill novels (Koko, Mystery, The Throat, lost boy lost girl, and In the Night Room). They might also consider Ghost Story or other novels and stories representing writers and writing, including Mrs. God, “The Juniper Tree” and “The Geezers.”
Gothic Trauma: Proposals should explore depictions of individual and collective trauma in Peter Straub’s fiction. They might address personal traumas in stories and novels like “The Juniper Tree”, “Bunny is Good Bread”, Julia, If You Could See Me Now, Ghost Story, Under Venus, The Hellfire Club,and A Dark Matter, and/or representations of PTSD and the Vietnam war in Koko, The Throat, and “The Ghost Village.”
Nonfictional Straub: Critical Commentary and Curations: Proposals should consider some of the author’s essays and introductions compiled in Sides, Conjunctions, Poe’s Children, “Beyond the Veil of Vision: Peter Straub and Anthony Discenza”, and American Fantastic Tales.
Straub’s Literary Legacy and Influence: Proposals should place Straub’s work in conversation with his literary successors. Proposals should examine one or more of Straub’s novels or stories in tandem with one or more works by Kelly Link, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Elizabeth Hand, Stephen Graham Jones, Brian Evenson, or another high-profile fiction writer who has publicly cited Straub’s influence.
Editor Biography
Mike Thorn is the author of Shelter for the Damned, Darkest Hours, and Peel Back and See. His scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in American Gothic Studies, The Oxford Handbook of Shirley Jackson, The Weird: A Companion, American Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper, Thinking Horror: A Journal of Horror Philosophy, and elsewhere. He holds his PhD in English from the University of New Brunswick.
“Thinking of reading some horror books to celebrate Halloween? We speak with an author from Calgary about his annual list of favorite horror reads.”
Listen here.
Continuing a new annual tradition. Titles organized by author name.
Hawksmoor, by Peter Ackroyd (1989)
Dark Entries, by Robert Aickman (1964)
We Are Here to Hurt Each Other, by Paula D. Ashe (2022)
This Mortal Coil, by Cynthia Asquith (1947)
The Damnation Game, by Clive Barker (1985)
Tender is the Flesh, by Agustina Bazterrica (2017; 2020 translation by Sarah Moses)
The Listener and Other Stories, by Algernon Blackwood (1907)
The Scarf, by Robert Bloch (1947/1966)
Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury (1962)
Long After Midnight: 22 Hauntings and Celebrations, by Ray Bradbury (1976)
Wieland; or, The Transformation: An American Tale, by Charles Brockden Brown (1798)
Ancient Images, by Ramsey Campbell (1989)
The King in Yellow, by Robert W. Chambers (1895)
The Juniper Tree, by Barbara Comyns (1985)
The Breaking Point, by Daphne du Maurier (1959)
Don’t Look Now, by Daphne du Maurier (1971)
The Between, by Tananarive Due (1995)
The Pines, by Robert Dunbar (1989)
American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis (1991)
Lunar Park, by Bret Easton Ellis (2005)
I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream, by Harlan Ellison (1967)
The Collector, by John Fowles (1963)
Aura, by Carlos Fuentes (1962; 1986 translation by Lysander Kemp)
Something Stirs, by Charles L. Grant (1991)
Red Dragon, by Thomas Harris (1981)
Twice-Told Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1837)
The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1851)
The Woman in Black, by Susan Hill (1983)
The House on the Borderland, by William Hope Hodgson (1908)
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, by James Hogg (1824)
The Damned, by Joris-Karl Huysmans (1891)
The Lottery and Other Stories, by Shirley Jackson (1949)
Hangsaman, by Shirley Jackson (1951)
The Sundial, by Shirley Jackson (1958)
The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson (1959)
We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson (1962)
Ghost Stories of Henry James, by Henry James (2008, edited by Martin Schofield)
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, by M. R. James (1904)
Blood Secrets, by Craig Jones (1978)
Uzumaki, by Junji Ito (2000; 2013 translation by Yuji Oniki)
The Girl Next Door, by Jack Ketchum (1989)
The Red Tree, by Caitlín R. Kiernan (2009)
Carrie, by Stephen King (1974)
‘Salem’s Lot, by Stephen King (1975)
The Shining, by Stephen King (1977)
Cujo, by Stephen King (1981)
Pet Sematary, by Stephen King (1983)
It, by Stephen King (1986)
Full Dark, No Stars, by Stephen King (2010)
And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe, by Gwendolyn Kiste (2017)
The Ceremonies, by T. E. D. Klein (1984)
The Cipher, by Kathe Koja (1991)
Bad Brains, by Kathe Koja (1992)
Skin, by Kathe Koja (1993)
Conjure Wife, by Fritz Leiber (1943)
The Fifth Child, by Doris Lessing (1988)
Rosemary’s Baby, by Ira Levin (1967)
The Stepford Wives, by Ira Levin (1972)
The Monk: A Romance, by Matthew Gregory Lewis (1796)
Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe, by Thomas Ligotti (2015)
The Hounds of Tindalos, by Frank Belknap Long (1946)
Tales of H. P. Lovecraft, by H. P. Lovecraft (2007, edited by Joyce Carol Oates)
The House of Souls, by Arthur Machen (1906)
Burnt Offerings, by Robert Marasco (1973)
The Beetle, by Richard Marsh (1897)
I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson (1954)
Shock!, by Richard Matheson (1961)
Melmoth the Wanderer, by Charles Robert Maturin (1820)
Child of God, by Cormac McCarthy (1973)
Toplin, by Michael McDowell, (1985)
Heartbreaker, by Maryse Meijer (2016)
The Seventh Mansion, by Maryse Meijer (2020)
Strange is the Night, by S. P. Miskowski (2017)
Beloved, by Toni Morrison (1987)
Zombie, by Joyce Carol Oates (1995)
Jack of Spades, by Joyce Carol Oates (2015)
Widdershins, by Oliver Onions (1911)
Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe, by Edgar Allan Poe (1956, edited by Edward H. Davidson)
The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe (1794)
Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice (1976)
Traplines, by Eden Robinson (1996)
The Subjugated Beast, by R. R. Ryan (1938)
The Room, by Hubert Selby Jr. (1971)
The Demon, by Hubert Selby Jr. (1976)
New Stories from the Twilight Zone, by Rod Serling (1965)
Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley (1818)
The House Next Door, by Anne Rivers Siddons (1978)
The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies, by Clark Ashton Smith (2014, edited by S. T. Joshi)
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
Dracula, by Bram Stoker (1897)
Julia, by Peter Straub (1975)
Ghost Story, by Peter Straub (1979)
Koko, by Peter Straub (1988)
Houses without Doors, by Peter Straub (1990)
The Other, by Thomas Tryon (1971)
Ghosts, by Edith Wharton (1937)
The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde (1890)
The Island of Doctor Moreau, by H. G. Wells (1896)
The Invisible Man, by H. G. Wells (1897)
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, by Yukio Mishima (1963)
In this interview, we chat with Ramsey Campbell about creative instincts, happy accidents, eerie children’s tales, and so much more.
The Oxford Companion to English Literature describes Ramsey Campbell as “Britain’s most respected living horror writer”, and the Washington Post sums up his work as “one of the monumental accomplishments of modern popular fiction”. His awards include the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association, the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015 he was made an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University for outstanding services to literature. His latest novels are Fellstones, The Lonely Lands, The Incubations and An Echo of Children. His Brichester Mythos trilogy consists of The Searching Dead, Born to the Dark and The Way of the Worm. His collections include Waking Nightmares, Ghosts and Grisly Things, Told by the Dead, Just Behind You, Holes for Faces, By the Light of My Skull, Fearful Implications, and a two-volume retrospective roundup (Phantasmagorical Stories) as well as The Village Killings and Other Novellas. His non-fiction is collected as Ramsey Campbell, Probably and Ramsey Campbell, Certainly, while Ramsey’s Rambles collects his video reviews, and Six Stooges and Counting is a book-length study of the Three Stooges. Limericks of the Alarming and Phantasmal is a history of horror fiction in the form of fifty limericks.
Books and stories mentioned in this episode:
Where: Charlotte Street Arts Centre (732 Charlotte St, Fredericton, NB E3B 1M5, Canada)
When: Jan 29, 2026 to Mar 5, 2026, Thursdays at 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. AST
This course will engage with horror literature’s legacies and unique capacities for catharsis, allegory, and personal expression. We will discuss what scares us and investigate the psychology of fear within the context of fiction, digging into the nuts-and-bolts processes of generating fear in the reader. We will explore the wide range of horror’s sub-genres and aesthetic possibilities, looking at tropes, traditions, and metaphors as opportunities for creative openings rather than restrictions. We will discuss the importance of atmosphere, point-of-view, and convincing characterization. Drawing on insights and fiction by some of horror literature’s most important and exciting figures, we will dive into the genre with a focus on craft and technique.
Hosts Josh and Jamie and special returning guest Mike Thorn kick off SPOOKTOBER by discussing two different eras of largely faithful Stephen King adaptations: Mary Lambert’s playful, colorful and yet still effectively upsetting and morbid realization of PET SEMATARY (1989) and Lawrence Kasdan’s attempt at keeping a straight (expensive Hollywood production) face while King bizarrely remixes many of his career-long obsessions in the painkiller induced fever dream of DREAMCATCHER (2003).
In this interview, we chat with Gemma Files about horny monsters, Lovecraftian Airbnbs, the female gaze, and so much more.
Previously a film critic, journalist and teacher, Gemma Files has been an award-winning horror author since 1999. She’s best-known for her novel Experimental Film (Open Road Media) and her collections of short fiction, including the Bram Stoker Award-winning In That Endlessness, Our End and Blood From the Air (both from Grimscribe). Her next book, Little Horn: Stories, will be out in October from Shortwave. She is the autistic mother of an autistic son. For fun she sings, and doodles pretty monsters.
Books mentioned in this episode:
Taweewat Wantha’s Attack 13 is unabashedly commercial entertainment — a horror movie made with the kind of cleanness, galloping pace, and pulsing score typical of much contemporary action cinema. However, within its mainstream parameters, it finds openings for some genuinely nasty imagery and social observation, and it creatively crossbreeds high school melodrama and supernatural horror conventions.
Mike Thorn 