The Best Horror Novelists (Who Happen to be Female)

So why do we read horror when it scares us so much? Because horror often helps us confront what terrifies us in the real world. It’s a safe place to work through nasty emotions and difficult life events, like trauma and grief. Maybe this explains why women can write horror so expertly.

When you think about it, women have been uniquely positioned throughout history to write genre fiction, a kind of writing that can offer marginalized individuals an avenue to speak their truth through fiction.

Haunted house stories often revolve around a horrific past related to family relationships. Ghostly mothers and children seek redress for wrongs. In novels like Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black, the nurseries are the haunted rooms. And in some cases, like in Edith Wharton’s story Mr. Jones, a young woman who has inherited an estate must constantly bow to the wishes of an imperious former caretaker, the titular Mr. Jones. Physical violence takes place inside the private domain of the home and can bleed into horror fiction as well. It’s no wonder women can create such memorable monsters.

In Monster, She Wrote, we celebrate the women who have contributed to the horror and speculative fiction genres. Here are just a few of our favorites.

What Halloween reading would you recommend to your fellow readers? Let's talk books in the comments!

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