To those of you nodding along with Tom Monteleone...

A note to certain members of the horror community. I know you’re out there—writers and readers who saw the substack post from Tom Monteleone over the weekend and quietly agree with his estimation of many of the writers who’d received Stoker Awards, or Lifetime Achievement Awards from the HWA. Honestly, it’s easy to do. We get wrapped up in our lives and perceptions and rely on our own experiences and acquired knowledge to filter the information we’re receiving. If you read Monteleone’s screed and agreed with it, even somewhat, maybe you haven’t taken the single moment of wondering if there’s another way to approach it.

 I’m 57 years old. When I was a kid, horror was already my home, and most of the books I read were by straight white men. There were women in the genre, of course, and I read many of them, particularly Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and Nancy A. Collins. I could make a long list of the women writing horror in the 80’s and early 90’s whose work I read in those days, but the point is that straight white men were ubiquitous. Some of those writers were incredibly talented, either as prose stylists or storytellers or, occasionally, both, but horror fiction was booming in the 80’s and publishers wanted to pump out as many horror paperbacks as possible to fill demand. That meant a lot of lower quality novels were published to go along with the good stuff. The doors were thrown wide open...

 Sort of.

 Maybe it was that most of the writers clamoring to rush through those doors were white men. Maybe it was that white men were pitching the kinds of books editors thought their readers would buy. Perhaps a combination of those elements. If you want to do the research for a book or a documentary, please go ahead. I’ll be first in line to read or watch the results.

 Yes, there were obviously exceptions, but the non-white authors writing horror usually showed up in more literary spheres, until Tananarive Due published The Between in 1995.

 Circling back to Tom Monteleone and those of you who nodded along to his recent remarks. Even before the banner year she’s had with The Reformatory, I’m sure Monteleone had heard of Tananarive (and my apologies to her for bringing her into this, but the historical context is part of the story). Her first two novels were nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. She was being published very firmly as a horror writer, by mainstream publishers like HarperCollins and Atria. When Tananarive Due turns sixty years old, I have no doubt that she will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the HWA. (In case you don’t know, you have to have reached the age of sixty and still be among the living in order to be considered for the honor.) It would be my hope that even Tom Monteleone would acknowledge Ms. Due’s greatness and accomplishments...because he has seen it happen without having to go looking. Her work is part of the parade passing by his metaphorical front porch.

 He’s SEEN it. You’ve seen it. If she'd marched in a parade in another town, or even on another street, you and he would have no idea, but Monteleone finds it impossible to imagine there's value beyond what he sees from his front porch, and he certainly isn't interested in going in search of it.

 Let’s take a look at some of the authors Monteleone views as unworthy of recognition.

 He dismisses Linda Addison mostly, I believe, because she’s best known as a poet. In order to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award, Monteleone reminds us, one must have “significantly contributed to and influenced the field.” It’s obvious he views the field as comprised as writers like himself, never considering that one’s contributions and influence do not need to touch you or even enter your awareness to be legitimate and worth celebrating. Linda Addison does not need you to acknowledge her worth to be worthy. She doesn’t need to have been embraced by readers who are not interested in poetry for her contributions to be significant. You don’t need to have felt her influence or even observed it for her to be influential. I wonder how many horror writers have written poetry because Linda Addison makes them sit up and take notice of the art form. I’d wager the number is far higher than the number of authors who took up writing horror novels because they’d read something by Thomas F. Monteleone. Linda has blazed a trail for others to follow, and lit the goddamn path for them. She’s been a mentor and an example to follow. How many can say the same?

 And to claim you consider her your friend? Shame on you. Learn something. Instead of assuming Linda’s race is the reason for her recognition, consider that her race is the reason you haven’t educated yourself as to why she has actually been honored.

 Owl Goingback has had three novels nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, and won for two of them. The man has written six full-length novels. How many writers in the field can say fully half of their novels have been nominated, and one in three have won the award? Not I. And sure as hell not Tom Monteleone, who spent a decade failing as a science-fiction writer before adopting horror because it was 1980 and horror was hotter than hell and it was much easier for him to sell himself as a horror writer than a science-fiction writer.

 If race played a part in any of these authors being recognized for their contributions to and influence upon the genre, it plays a role that Monteleone fails—or refuses—to understand. For long decades, when the mainstream horror community received and consumed a steady diet of stories written by straight, white, and mostly male authors, these authors were breaking the mold. They were offering alternatives. If you did not read them, that is on you, not on them. Others did read them, were influenced by them, and found them significant.

 Jewelle Gomez’s first novel was rejected by mainstream publishing houses because her protagonist was a Black lesbian. She was told having this character as her lead made the book “unsellable.” Gomez published the novel with a small press because in 1991, no mainstream publisher would give space on their horror fiction list to that when they could publish another middle-aged-white-guy-goes-back-to-his-hometown-and-finds-evil novel. But Jewelle Gomez wasn’t going to let that stop her. She had passion and talent and a story to tell, and she paved the way. She contributed to the genre. She influenced the genre. She showed writers who came after her that their stories were worth telling.

 Carol J. Clover wrote the groundbreaking examination of horror film, Men, Women, and Chainsaws. I won my first Stoker for my first book, a non-fiction anthology of essays by horror writers about horror films called CUT! That book beat Carol Clover’s book, but it shouldn’t have. CUT! is largely forgotten, even by me most of the time, but Clover’s book is taught in college courses and regarded as a milestone in film criticism.

 I’m not going to go through every writer Monteleone dismissed the other day. Suffice to say that Nancy Holder has won more Stokers than Monteleone. Elizabeth Massie has won at least two, including for her first novel, Sineater, and—like the other novelists he has publicly disdained, is a far better writer than Monteleone, whose long-since-squandered respect in the horror community came more for his work as an editor than as a writer. And as for Koji Suzuki—well, Tom’s ignorance of Suzuki’s influence and contributions is just embarrassing for him. Contemporary parlance like “showing his whole ass” and “telling on himself” come to mind, but really, what’s the point?

 Anyway...back to those of you who might have read and nodded along to that bullshit the other day. My ignorance of someone’s contributions and significance does not invalidate does things. Neither does my disinterest in a writer’s work, or even my active dislike of a writer’s work. You are not the sole fucking arbiter of such things. If you’re not interested in educating yourself about why others see merit where you do not, you can choose to keep that to yourself. If you make the other choice, don’t be surprised when people point out the bias that is evident to everyone but yourself.