Mike Thorn's Blog, page 2
January 30, 2025
Shelter for the Damned featured in “Nightmares Exist Outside Logic” (Lawrence Library blog)
“Themes of adolescence, rage, toxic masculinity and addiction are portrayed in a terrifying but comprehensible way, and the book manages to succeed in pulling at empathetic heartstrings while simultaneously delivering a very dark, surreal story that will occupy minds for ages.”
Read the full article.
Read the full article.
January 12, 2025
Craftwork Episode 15: Character Case Files, Consecution, & the Acoustics of Language w/ Rod Moody-Corbett
Listen to Craftwork Episode 15: Character Case Files, Consecution, & the Acoustics of Language w/ Rod Moody-Corbett.
In this interview, we chat with Rod Moody-Corbett about tonal dissonance, sponging up influences, writing from memory, and so much more.
Rod Moody-Corbett is an award-winning writer from Newfoundland. His writing has appeared in Socrates on the Beach, The Drift, The Paris Review Daily, and Fiddlehead, among other publications. He is the recipient of the 2022 Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Story, a Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Award for Short Fiction, the University of Calgary’s Kaleidoscope Prize, and the CBC Canada Writes Short Story Prize (People’s Choice Award). He serves as a contributing editor for Canadian Notes and Queries.
Books mentioned in this episode:
Experience – Martin Amis
Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World; The Hundred Brothers; The Verificationist – Donald Antrim
Last Evenings on Earth – Roberto Bolaño
Save the Cat! Writes a Novel – Jessica Brody
My Education – Susan Choi
Underworld – Don DeLillo
Notes from Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Last Samurai – Helen DeWitt
Erasure – Percival Everett
Bad Behavior; Because They Wanted To; Don’t Cry – Mary Gaitskill
A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me; Jernigan – David Gates
Airships – Barry Hannah
The Road Through the Wall – Shirley Jackson
Get Shorty; Rum Punch – Elmore Leonard
Last Resort – Andrew Lipstein
The Sentence is a Lonely Place – Garielle Lutz
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
The Ice Storm – Rick Moody
Lectures on Literature – Vladimir Nabokov
A House for Mr. Biswas – V. S. Naipaul
Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas; Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family – Nicholas Pileggi
Monkey Beach – Eden Robinson
The Life of the Mind – Christine Smallwood
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman – Laurence Sterne
The Visiting Privilege – Joy Williams
To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
Sour Heart – Jenny Zhang
In this interview, we chat with Rod Moody-Corbett about tonal dissonance, sponging up influences, writing from memory, and so much more.
Rod Moody-Corbett is an award-winning writer from Newfoundland. His writing has appeared in Socrates on the Beach, The Drift, The Paris Review Daily, and Fiddlehead, among other publications. He is the recipient of the 2022 Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Story, a Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Award for Short Fiction, the University of Calgary’s Kaleidoscope Prize, and the CBC Canada Writes Short Story Prize (People’s Choice Award). He serves as a contributing editor for Canadian Notes and Queries.
Books mentioned in this episode:
Experience – Martin Amis
Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World; The Hundred Brothers; The Verificationist – Donald Antrim
Last Evenings on Earth – Roberto Bolaño
Save the Cat! Writes a Novel – Jessica Brody
My Education – Susan Choi
Underworld – Don DeLillo
Notes from Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Last Samurai – Helen DeWitt
Erasure – Percival Everett
Bad Behavior; Because They Wanted To; Don’t Cry – Mary Gaitskill
A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me; Jernigan – David Gates
Airships – Barry Hannah
The Road Through the Wall – Shirley Jackson
Get Shorty; Rum Punch – Elmore Leonard
Last Resort – Andrew Lipstein
The Sentence is a Lonely Place – Garielle Lutz
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
The Ice Storm – Rick Moody
Lectures on Literature – Vladimir Nabokov
A House for Mr. Biswas – V. S. Naipaul
Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas; Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family – Nicholas Pileggi
Monkey Beach – Eden Robinson
The Life of the Mind – Christine Smallwood
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman – Laurence Sterne
The Visiting Privilege – Joy Williams
To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
Sour Heart – Jenny Zhang
December 30, 2024
Best first reads, 2024
Pre-2024 releases only.
TOP 10 (one per author)
Daisy Miller, by Henry James (1879)
A Room with a View, by E. M. Forster (1908)
Pan’s Garden: A Volume of Nature Stories, by Algernon Blackwood (1912)
The Custom of the Country, by Edith Wharton (1913)
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
Cassandra at the Wedding, by Dorothy Baker (1962)
Another World, by Pat Barker (1998)
Heartbreaker, by Maryse Meijer (2016)
Babysitter, by Joyce Carol Oates (2022)
The Guest, by Emma Cline (2023)
ADDITIONAL STANDOUT READS
We Are Here to Hurt Each Other, by Paula D. Ashe (2022)
This Mortal Coil, by Cynthia Asquith (1947)
The Space of Literature, by Maurice Blanchot (1955)
The Writing of the Disaster, by Maurice Blanchot (1980)
Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury (1957)
Wieland; or, The Transformation: An American Tale, by Charles Brockden Brown (1798)
Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker, by Charles Brockden Brown (1799)
The Sublime and the Beautiful, by Edmund Burke (1757)
The Daughters of Block Island, by Christa Carmen (2023)
Gothic Metaphysics: From Alchemy to the Anthropocene, by Jodey Castricano (2021)
The King in Yellow, by Robert W. Chambers (1895)
Don’t Look Now, by Daphne du Maurier (1971)
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, by Ruth Franklin (2016)
Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories, by Craig Laurance Gidney (2008)
Twice-Told Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1837)
The Marble Faun, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1860)
The Talented Mr. Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith (1955)
The Woman in Black, by Susan Hill (1983)
The Witchcraft of Salem Village, by Shirley Jackson (1956)
Let Me Tell You, by Shirley Jackson [edited by Laurence Hyman & Sarah Hyman DeWitt] (2015)
Burn Man: Selected Stories, by Mark Anthony Jarman (2023)
Man and His Symbols, edited by C. G. Jung & M.-L von Franz (1964)
Uzumaki, by Junji Ito (2013)
The Red Tree, by Caitlín R. Kiernan (2009)
The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative, by Thomas King (2003)
Something Like an Autobiography, by Akira Kurosawa (1981)
What Are You, by Lindsay Lerman (2022)
Existence and Existents, by Emmanuel Levinas (1947)
Peyton Place, by Grace Metalious (1956)
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, by Lorrie Moore (1994)
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, by Toni Morrison (1992)
Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley (1990)
Black Water, by Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
New England’s Gothic Literature, by Faye Ringel (1995)
The Gothic Literature and History of New England, by Faye Ringel (2022)
The Devil’s Candy: The Anatomy of a Hollywood Fiasco, by Julie Salamon (1991)
The Last Man, by Mary Shelley (1826)
The Craft of Writing, by William Sloane (1979)
Lost Boy Lost Girl, by Peter Straub (2003)
The Door, by Magda Szabó (1987)
The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, by Tzvetan Todorov (1970)
A Fatal Inversion, by Barbara Vine (1987)
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker (1982)
Star-Begotten, by H. G. Wells (1937)
Ghosts, by Edith Wharton (1937)
The Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe (1987)
Strange Seed, by T. M. Wright (1978)
TOP 10 (one per author)
Daisy Miller, by Henry James (1879)
A Room with a View, by E. M. Forster (1908)
Pan’s Garden: A Volume of Nature Stories, by Algernon Blackwood (1912)
The Custom of the Country, by Edith Wharton (1913)
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
Cassandra at the Wedding, by Dorothy Baker (1962)
Another World, by Pat Barker (1998)
Heartbreaker, by Maryse Meijer (2016)
Babysitter, by Joyce Carol Oates (2022)
The Guest, by Emma Cline (2023)
ADDITIONAL STANDOUT READS
We Are Here to Hurt Each Other, by Paula D. Ashe (2022)
This Mortal Coil, by Cynthia Asquith (1947)
The Space of Literature, by Maurice Blanchot (1955)
The Writing of the Disaster, by Maurice Blanchot (1980)
Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury (1957)
Wieland; or, The Transformation: An American Tale, by Charles Brockden Brown (1798)
Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker, by Charles Brockden Brown (1799)
The Sublime and the Beautiful, by Edmund Burke (1757)
The Daughters of Block Island, by Christa Carmen (2023)
Gothic Metaphysics: From Alchemy to the Anthropocene, by Jodey Castricano (2021)
The King in Yellow, by Robert W. Chambers (1895)
Don’t Look Now, by Daphne du Maurier (1971)
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, by Ruth Franklin (2016)
Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories, by Craig Laurance Gidney (2008)
Twice-Told Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1837)
The Marble Faun, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1860)
The Talented Mr. Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith (1955)
The Woman in Black, by Susan Hill (1983)
The Witchcraft of Salem Village, by Shirley Jackson (1956)
Let Me Tell You, by Shirley Jackson [edited by Laurence Hyman & Sarah Hyman DeWitt] (2015)
Burn Man: Selected Stories, by Mark Anthony Jarman (2023)
Man and His Symbols, edited by C. G. Jung & M.-L von Franz (1964)
Uzumaki, by Junji Ito (2013)
The Red Tree, by Caitlín R. Kiernan (2009)
The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative, by Thomas King (2003)
Something Like an Autobiography, by Akira Kurosawa (1981)
What Are You, by Lindsay Lerman (2022)
Existence and Existents, by Emmanuel Levinas (1947)
Peyton Place, by Grace Metalious (1956)
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, by Lorrie Moore (1994)
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, by Toni Morrison (1992)
Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley (1990)
Black Water, by Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
New England’s Gothic Literature, by Faye Ringel (1995)
The Gothic Literature and History of New England, by Faye Ringel (2022)
The Devil’s Candy: The Anatomy of a Hollywood Fiasco, by Julie Salamon (1991)
The Last Man, by Mary Shelley (1826)
The Craft of Writing, by William Sloane (1979)
Lost Boy Lost Girl, by Peter Straub (2003)
The Door, by Magda Szabó (1987)
The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, by Tzvetan Todorov (1970)
A Fatal Inversion, by Barbara Vine (1987)
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker (1982)
Star-Begotten, by H. G. Wells (1937)
Ghosts, by Edith Wharton (1937)
The Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe (1987)
Strange Seed, by T. M. Wright (1978)
December 22, 2024
Craftwork Episode 14: Debauchery, Plotless Fiction, & the Paranoiac-Critical Method w/ Nour Abi-Nakhoul
Listen to Craftwork Episode 14: Debauchery, Plotless Fiction, & the Paranoiac-Critical Method w/ Nour Abi-Nakhoul.
In this interview, we chat with Nour Abi-Nakhoul about copy editing, creative nonfiction, feverish creations, and so much more.
Nour Abi-Nakhoul is a writer and editor based in Montreal. She is the editor-in-chief of the award-winning quarterly Maisonneuve Magazine. Her short fiction has appeared in Hazlitt and The Walrus. Her debut novel, Supplication, was released by Penguin Random House in 2024.
Books mentioned in this episode:
Kilworthy Tanner – Jean Marc Ah-Sen
We Are Here to Hurt Each Other – Paula D. Ashe
Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
The Guest – Emma Cline
The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Autobiography of X; Pew – Catherine Lacey
The Apple in the Dark – Clarice Lispector
Fever Dream – Samanta Schweblin
The Adventures of Ratman – Ellen Weiss
In this interview, we chat with Nour Abi-Nakhoul about copy editing, creative nonfiction, feverish creations, and so much more.
Nour Abi-Nakhoul is a writer and editor based in Montreal. She is the editor-in-chief of the award-winning quarterly Maisonneuve Magazine. Her short fiction has appeared in Hazlitt and The Walrus. Her debut novel, Supplication, was released by Penguin Random House in 2024.
Books mentioned in this episode:
Kilworthy Tanner – Jean Marc Ah-Sen
We Are Here to Hurt Each Other – Paula D. Ashe
Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
The Guest – Emma Cline
The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Autobiography of X; Pew – Catherine Lacey
The Apple in the Dark – Clarice Lispector
Fever Dream – Samanta Schweblin
The Adventures of Ratman – Ellen Weiss
October 28, 2024
Mike Thorn discusses Bram Stoker’s “Gibbet Hill” on CBC Eyeopener
Loren McGinnis interviewed Mike Thorn about the recently uncovered Bram Stoker story “Gibbet Hill" for CBC Eyeopener.
Listen here.
Listen here.
October 23, 2024
Craftwork S1E13: Ecstasy, Ruin, & the Talent of the Room w/ Kathe Koja
Listen to Craftwork S1E13: Ecstasy, Ruin, & the Talent of the Room w/ Kathe Koja.
In this interview, we chat with Kathe Koja about balancing simultaneous projects, resisting online distractions, raising the literary dead, and so much more.
Kathe Koja writes novels and short fiction, and creates and produces live and virtual events. Her award-winning books include The Cipher, Skin, Buddha Boy, Under The Poppy and Velocities, and she is currently at work on the Dark Factory immersive fiction project including Dark Factory, Dark Park and Dark Matter. Catherine the Ghost is her newest novel.
You can find her at kathekoja.com and on Instagram, Facebook and Threads.
Books mentioned in this episode:
Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life – Ruth Franklin
Faust – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Mouse and His Child; Riddley Walker – Russell Hoban
The Default World – Naomi Kanakia
Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett – James Knowlson
A Place of Greater Safety; Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel
Doctor Faustus – Christopher Marlowe
Rimbaud: A Biography – Graham Robb
Frankenstein; The Last Man – Mary Shelley
Lost Boy Lost Girl – Peter Straub
The Secret Power of Music: The Transformation of Self and Society through Musical Energy – David Tame
In this interview, we chat with Kathe Koja about balancing simultaneous projects, resisting online distractions, raising the literary dead, and so much more.
Kathe Koja writes novels and short fiction, and creates and produces live and virtual events. Her award-winning books include The Cipher, Skin, Buddha Boy, Under The Poppy and Velocities, and she is currently at work on the Dark Factory immersive fiction project including Dark Factory, Dark Park and Dark Matter. Catherine the Ghost is her newest novel.
You can find her at kathekoja.com and on Instagram, Facebook and Threads.
Books mentioned in this episode:
Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life – Ruth Franklin
Faust – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Mouse and His Child; Riddley Walker – Russell Hoban
The Default World – Naomi Kanakia
Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett – James Knowlson
A Place of Greater Safety; Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel
Doctor Faustus – Christopher Marlowe
Rimbaud: A Biography – Graham Robb
Frankenstein; The Last Man – Mary Shelley
Lost Boy Lost Girl – Peter Straub
The Secret Power of Music: The Transformation of Self and Society through Musical Energy – David Tame
October 12, 2024
Mike Thorn featured in short documentary, American Twilight: 50 Years of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Once Upon a Time in Texas...Celebrating 50 Years of Tobe Hooper & The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
In this new short documentary, America's foremost drive-in movie critic, Joe Bob Briggs, and several contributors to American Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper provide insights into Hooper and his enigmatic filmography and contributions to the horror genre. Featuring commentary by Mike Thorn.
In this new short documentary, America's foremost drive-in movie critic, Joe Bob Briggs, and several contributors to American Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper provide insights into Hooper and his enigmatic filmography and contributions to the horror genre. Featuring commentary by Mike Thorn.
October 11, 2024
Shepherd guest post: Mike Thorn’s 3 favorite reads from September 2023 to October 2024
The folks at Shepherd asked me to name the 3 best books I've read between September 30 2023 and October 1 2024.
See my choices here.
See my choices here.
October 9, 2024
Peel Back and See reviewed on Stranger Sights
“I think the central theme here is that we are peeling back the layers of society, and of humanity, to see what lies beneath – and it ain’t pretty.”
Read the full review.
Order Peel Back and See.
Read the full review.
Order Peel Back and See.
October 8, 2024
CFP for Monstrum 8.2: Vegan and Animal Liberation Horror (Guest Editor: Mike Thorn)
Submissions are now open for Monstrum 8.2, a special issue devoted to horror and ecohorror’s engagements with veganism and animal liberation. We seek proposals for essays (5,000-7,000 words) devoted to horror texts, modalities, and philosophies with a focus on veganism or animal rights.
More details here.
More details here.
