Interview with Catriona Ward (August Derleth, Shirley Jackson, World Fantasy Award Winner) Author of Looking Glass Sound

Jake and Ron are honored and thrilled to have author Catriona Ward on the podcast!
Her latest novel is Looking Glass Sound published by Tor Nightfire.

https://tornightfire.com/catalog/looking-glass-sound-catriona-ward/
https://us.macmillan.com/author/catrionaward

I recently caught Catriona Ward at the Brookline Booksmith in Massachusetts, where she sat on a panel with former Wrath of the iOtians guest Christopher Golden and the inimitable Gretchen Felker-Martin, author of Manhunt. And it's obvious that Catriona's fan base is large and adoring, and rightly so. She has a generosity of spirit that's immediately palpable.

Look no further than her willingness to talk with us in the midst of an exhausting cross country book tour.  Catriona's work is influenced by her globetrotting youth. She was born in Washington, D. C., but grew up, well, all over, with stops in Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen, England, and Morocco. Catriona earned her undergraduate degree in English Literature at Oxford, and a Master's in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.

In 2015, she brought her experience, education, and energy to bear on Rawblood. Published as The Girl from Rawblood in the U. S. in 2016,  the book signaled the arrival of a major new talent in horror fiction and won an August Derleth Award at the British Fantasy Awards to boot.  Catriona followed up in 2019 with Little Eve, which also won a Derleth and a Shirley Jackson Award.

In 2022, Catriona blew readers, critics, and no less an authority than Stephen King himself away with The Last House on Needless Street, a mind bender of a novel that I hope every iOtian listener has already enjoyed.  The book won an amazing third Derleth Award for Catriona. And was also shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award, the British Book Award, and a Red Tentacle Kitschie, which, for those not in the know, is a juried prize awarded for elevating the tone of genre literature.

2023 brought us Sundial, which was nominated for the Bram Stoker and Locus Awards. Of its author, Danielle Trussoni of the New York Times remarked, “Ward is willing to go places so dark, so dismal, that it borders on sadism.” In our line of work, that's high praise.  Elevated horror indeed. 

 Catriona combines elements of the psychological thriller, the gothic, and a hallucinatory high strangeness to create a voice that is uniquely hers. No one else could have written Looking Glass Sound, her other 2023 release with Tor Nightfire. Which I might add continues to publish the best of the best of contemporary horror.

Catriona spoke with us about this book from a hotel room in the Twilight Zone, en route to her next speaking gig. We were thrilled!

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