Your favorite regional horror writers

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Inspired quite shamelessly by the Stephen King thread revival. 'Regional' writing as a genre or signifier can be a slippery subject but one thing I've always liked is how horror writers in particular seem to have a knack for capturing a place or location with a strength often only matched by mystery writers, perhaps logically given similar impulses to looking beneath veneers. Arguably this is a case of perception/romanticization on the part of the reader if you've not actually been there, but such is literature -- and I think part of the strength of such regional writers is how they capture the mundane or 'picturesque' and twist it into something far more involved.

So while Maine is King's now and forever, Lovecraft quite obviously pretty well owns Providence and southern New England in its day, while someone like M. R. James, though his settings were scattered throughout England and to a lesser extent the Continent, did some amazing work set in Suffolk and Norfolk. But who else would you nominate and why, especially among newer writers?

Ned Raggett, Sunday, 13 May 2007 19:18 (eighteen years ago)

I don't think Faulkner qualifies as "horror," - and he's certainly not new - but for some reason he's the only writer I can think of right now; of course he's all about the state of Mississippi.

Oh wait, Anne Rice set a lot of work in New Orleans... before she got all Christian lately.

Sara R-C, Sunday, 13 May 2007 19:28 (eighteen years ago)


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