World Horror Grand Master and Splatterpunk Awards co-founder Brian Keene says, ‘Absolutely, but …’
Is the Horror Writers Association doing enough to promote and recognize older writers? The question is among the top issues in 2023 for the genre’s premier professional organization after a couple of horror legends have publicly questioned the HWA’s promotional decision-making this year.
The HWA “is a nonprofit organization of writers and publishing professionals around the world, dedicated to promoting dark literature and the interests of those who write it.” It’s the genre’s top writing group, presenting the Bram Stoker Awards annually.
In January, the HWA expelled and revoked the membership of Thomas F. Monteleone, a 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, for violating the group’s anti-harassment policies after his actions on a podcast and social media with regards to diversity and marginalized communities. In a statement, the HWA Board of Trustees condemned Monteleone’s words and actions, saying it “does not condone hate speech in any way, shape, or form.”
In June, on the HWA’s Facebook page, three-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author Mort Castle posted his disappointment at not being interviewed for a May blog series titled “Celebrating Our Elders.” His post generated hundreds of comments. Some sympathized with Castle, but some were critical of his decision to air it publicly.
What is really happening here? I decided to ask 2014 World Horror Grand Master Award recipient Brian Keene about the issue. I watched his Brian Keene Live podcast on June 21st and posed this question: “What’s your take on some of the older guard of horror writers feeling forgotten by the younger generation of horror writers? Do they have a point or is it simply the natural evolution of the genre?” The link to Keene’s podcast on YouTube is here, and he starts answering the question 1 hour and 13 minutes into the show.
I specifically wanted to ask Keene because he’s the perfect bridge between the old and new generations of horror writers. A two-time Bram Stoker Award winner and author of 2003’s seminal novel The Rising, Keene is highly respected among the current crop of horror writers, but he also publicly promotes and genuinely appreciates older writers who built the foundations of modern horror.
“I absolutely believe they have a point,” Keene replied on his podcast. “Look, we’re not all Stephen King. Steve has achieved the rare state in writing where he has transcended the genre. He is very much in my mind this era’s Charles Dickens. I think when people want to understand, particularly the Twentieth Century, they’re going to turn to Stephen King novels. One hundred years from now, two hundred years, Steve will still be read. That’s a rare gift, and he should be very proud of that.
“That’s not going to happen for most of us. We live in a time when Dick Laymon used to regularly outsell King and (Dean) Koontz overseas, particularly in Australia. Dick has been gone 20 years, and already his work is starting to be forgotten, which is unfortunate. It’s that way for a lot of writers, and a lot of living writers. So, absolutely they have a point, but it is also the natural evolution of the genre.”
Laymon died in 2001. His novel The Traveling Vampire Show won a Bram Stoker Award in 2000. He is also one of the original Splatterpunk Awards Hall of Legends inductees.
Keene is aware of the comments by Castle and Monteleone, and even devoted much of Episode 5 of his podcast on February 1st to denouncing Monteleone’s remarks. The show received more than 1,800 views and is a must-watch for anyone interested in diversity and honoring past writers in the horror genre. In a blistering rebuke, Keene admonished Monteleone for his “misplaced anger.”
“Equity, diversity, and inclusivity initiatives aren’t the culprit here,” Keene said on the podcast. “It’s the shifting historical memory. That’s the factor. Not newer marginalized voices.”
In that same podcast, Keene used Monteleone’s effort to champion Stuart David Schiff for a Lifetime Achievement Award as one example of forgotten horror writers of the past.
“There are a lot of folks, Stuart Schiff included, whose contributions should be recognized, honored, and remembered,” Keene said. “And they’re not being remembered. Your fears about that are valid. The genre’s historical memory has always been shifting. It’s always been shit. They don’t remember Carl Jacobi, Frank B. Long. They don’t remember Donald Wandrei. I got a stack over here. Tom Piccirilli, Karl Edward Wagner.”
In his June 21st podcast, Keene addressed the Castle and Monteleone controversies.
“I know there was a big kerfuffle with Mort Castle,” Keene said. “I did not see Mort’s comments, but people I trust have paraphrased them for me. I think we can have empathy for Mort. I don’t think it’s terrible of him to feel forgotten. I think his feelings are valid because Mort did some important things. I don’t know, maybe Mort should’ve read the room … maybe there was a better way of expressing it.
“Tom’s comments were reprehensible. They were inexcusable. And I’m in no way defending him. But I do think Tom’s comments stem from a place of hurt, of feeling forgotten. There was a time when Tom Monteleone did a lot in this genre. He was one of the movers and shakers. In some of the much-deserved blowback to his comments, you saw a lot of ‘Who’s Tom Monteleone?’ which kind of proves the point. The guy was feeling forgotten.”
Keene said he talked to Bram Stoker Award-nominated author Ronald Malfi about the issue during StokerCon 2023 earlier this month.
“Ron Malfi and I had a heart-to-heart about this in the bar at StokerCon,” Keene said. “We feel it’s our generation’s responsibility to spotlight some of these people. I try to do that in my newsletter. Right now, I’m campaigning for Chet Williamson to get a Lifetime Achievement Award from the HWA. I think he deserves it.”
Williamson received six Stoker Award nominations from 1987 to 1990, including two for his novels Ash Wednesday and Reign.
In his June 25th newsletter, Keene promoted David J. Schow’s new book The Outer Limits at 60 “because I think David is somebody who still deserves to be read.”
Schow received a Stoker Award nomination in 1987, won a Splatterpunk Award in 2018, and was the first recipient of the Splatterpunk Awards J.F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award.
Keene cited Linda D. Addison as a success story for horror’s older writers. Addison, the first African-American to win a Stoker Award, received the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017. She still produces outstanding work, winning a Stoker Award as recently as 2019 for her poetry collection The Place of Broken Things, co-authored with Alessandro Manzetti.
“I love that Linda Addison is finally getting the spotlight,” Keene said. “Linda’s one of the first people I ever met in this industry. For years she wrote … it was only other horror writers reading her. I love how the public is discovering this beautiful body of work that she has. But there are many more Linda Addisons out there that I think we can do that for as well.
“I think we need to do a better job of lifting up these older writers because that’s part of diversity, too,” Keene continued. “I don’t know how we go about doing that because at the same time there are more and more people entering this genre as writers than ever before. I would not want to be a writer starting out these days because the competition is insane. When I was starting out, I was competing with 200, maybe 250, other people. Now it’s thousands and thousands and thousands because of self-publishing, indie press, mainstream press, small press, all these venues to publishing. And we’re almost competing with AI.”
Keene walks the walk with regards to this issue. He promoted the history of horror alongside the current horror scene via his popular podcast The Horror Show with Brian Keene, which lasted more than five years and nearly 300 episodes. He and fellow author Wrath James White co-founded the Splatterpunk Awards, which debuted in 2018 and has honored numerous older writers.
Still, Keene wonders what more he can do.
“How do we balance lifting up these new voices, selling our own books, and lifting up those who came before us? I don’t know. This is the number one thing I think about these days. I sit out on the front porch in the evening with the cats, and I mull over ideas on how to tackle this issue. I don’t have an answer yet, but when I come up with one, you’re all going to hear it.”
The Official Website of Horror and Fantasy Writer Lionel Ray Green 
Pingback: Pixel Scroll 6/27/23 All The World Seems Less Vile When We’re Reading The File | File 770