An Interview with Brooke Wonders

 
For this special Halloween FTRS event, “A Night of Monsters,” the inmates take over the asylum. UNI’s Brooke Wonders, alongside students in her horror literature course, will be reading new stories of terror and dread. Dr. Wonders’s scary stories have appeared in Black Warrior Review, The Rupture, and The Dark, among others. She is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Northern Iowa and editor of literary horror magazine Grimoire. 

 

The Final Thursday Reading Series takes place on October 31 at the Hearst Center for the Arts in Cedar Falls, Iowa. NOTE: this special event will begin at 7:15. There will be no open mic tonight, but the open mic will return in November. The event will also be simulcast on Zoom. Click HERE to register for a link.

 

Interview conducted by Jim O’Loughlin 

 

JIM O’LOUGHLIN: Let me start with a big picture question. Instinctively, it would seem like getting scared is something we all would want to avoid, but many readers are drawn to horror and suspense fiction precisely to get scared. How do you understand that draw for readers?
BROOKE WONDERS: Do people enjoy the fear, or moving through fear--or both? I'm in the "both" category. I like how horror values intensity of sensation, an aesthetic predilection that has a long literary history: the Gothic influences sensationalist literature which influences pulp fiction. At a psychological level, horror ends. In films and novels, there's a finite point at which the terror is over. That doesn't always happen in real life. Horror consoles us with the illusion of control, and I am a control freak at heart. 

JO: As a writer, what has drawn you to writing horror fiction? What does that genre allow you to do that draws you to it?
BW: I love how horror is rooted in the senses and resists intellectualization. Great horror, if you're open to it, circumvents the rational mind; it lives in the nervous system. My writing process focuses on image and emotion. An image comes to me via observation or epiphany, sometimes with an emotion attached. Answering the question, "why and how does this image haunt me?" is how the story comes into being. Horror is particularly well-suited to this process. 

 

JO: You are also a memoirist, and I wonder if you feel more connection or distance when working in those two genres.
BW: I love this question. It makes the choice of fiction or nonfiction into something spatial (distance) and relational (connection). I’m a kinetic writer; I'll go on walks or make faces in the mirror while working on a piece. I feel connected to my unconscious when I write. If I had to describe writer's block, I'd say it feels like disconnection or distance. I begin from image and emotion whether I'm writing fiction or nonfiction; the only difference is, for nonfiction I'm not allowed to make stuff up. But both require me to go to difficult places psychologically, and for the sensations I'm evoking to feel real, they have come from lived experience. If there's any difference between nonfiction and horror, for me personally, I'd say horror feels safer to write than nonfiction because I can conceal more of myself without breaking the reader's trust. 

 

JO: So, you’ve got a plan for Halloween and FTRS! We’ve never done a special event exactly like this before. Without giving away any surprises, can you talk about what your class will be doing and what attendees should expect?

BW: Audiences should expect a phantasmagorical display of the subterranean recesses of the mind. This is an 18-and-over event, or 13+ for mature teens who attend with an adult. There will be Halloween treats and decor, and costumes are welcome. Hope to see you there!