Gays and Ghouls: A Generative Queer Horror Workshop with Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya— October 21

What is queer horror? What are the narrative possibilities of queer horror?

Whether you've dabbled in queer horror before or are entirely new to writing speculative fiction, this 3-hour workshop will help you harness and reimagine classic horror tropes on the page and unlock new modes of storytelling. Divided into four chapters—Curses, Haunted Houses, Ghosts, and Monsters— we will explore themed readings, lessons, and generative writing prompts for each.

We will look at the underpinnings of queer horror, talk about what "queer horror" even means, and dissect various horror genre tropes, devices, and allegories as we apply them to the LGBTQ stories, relationships, and themes we want to explore in fiction.

Workshop Takeaways

• An expansive understanding of the power of writing queer horror

• New approaches for generating and developing "strange" fiction ideas

• Several seeds for new stories, generated in-class via multi-step writing prompts

• Tools for world-building, pacing, tension, and other key components of great literary horror writing

Additional info

If you can't attend this class live, it will be recorded! Students will receive a recording the day after the class, and it will be available for 30 days.

About the Instructor

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is a lesbian writer of essays, fiction, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. Her queer horror novelette Helen House was named one of the Best LGBTQ Books of 2022 by NBC News. She is the managing editor of Autostraddle, an assistant fiction editor at Foglifter, and the former managing editor of TriQuarterly.