13 female horror writers you should read

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley – portrait. British author, 1797 – 1851. Author of Frankenstein. Married to Percy B Shelley. Daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

Women have been creating some truly spooky stories for centuries. Read on to learn about some of the female masters of the horror genre.

Too often, women are merely the subjects of horror. Whether they’re in front of the camera or on the page, they feature prominently throughout some of the most acclaimed works of terror in the genre.

What they’re doing, however, is another matter. Women in horror fiction are often relegated to one of two roles: victim or villain. Rarely are they anything other than the terrorized innocent or the evil witch.  Of course, modern works of horror have gained ground in this respect. Look at the rise of Ellen Ripley from the Alien franchise, or Laurie Strode in Halloween. Things are getting better, if slowly.

Turn your focus towards creators, however, and the issue becomes clearer. Quick, without looking to Google, name a female horror movie director. Now, name all the male horror directors you can think of. How do the lists compare?

Women in the literary world have faced similar roadblocks. Whether they’ve been outright discouraged from writing horror, or simply reassigned to another genre by publishers, female horror writers often do not get the same recognition as do their male counterparts. Look at Mary Shelley, for example, who wrote the classic Frankenstein, but was overshadowed during her lifetime by her late husband Percey Shelley and his friend, Lord Byron. Other writers on this list, like Elizabeth Gaskell or Louisa May Alcott, are more often categorized as romance or historical fiction authors.

While this list contains a few big-name writers, such as Anne Rice and Edith Wharton, many more may be unknown to you. If you’re searching for a scary book this Halloween season, and especially one written by a woman, read on.