Colleen Ennen’s Fiction Craft Talk: Horror In and Out of Genre

Good horror writing gets your heart beating and your mind racing. At its best it has a real, emotional effect. But how does it do that? And shouldn’t that be the goal of all fiction?

In this talk, writer Colleen Ennen will discuss three concepts of horror—the uncanny, the duality of the known and unknown, and the emotional registers of terror and horror—as approaches to writing good horror, and as lenses to apply to the writing of all fiction, regardless of genre.

The goal of this talk is to share new craft tools to approach writing fiction of any ilk. Writers of all genres and traditions, and in all stages of their writing journeys, are welcome.

Colleen Ennen is a writer of alternatively horrifying, fantastic, and surrealist fiction. She is a Sarah Lawrence College MFA candidate (2019) and Writing Institute instructor. In addition, she reviews prose and poetry for The Lit Pub, works as a reader for Lumina, where she has published several profiles, and The Rumpus. She has interned at The Believer, has worked as an Editorial Assistant at Lumina, and has been a worryingly passionate bookseller. Her day job of the last seven years is in project management.

This event is free to attend and open to the public.