Writing horror in the eighties: An interview with Lisa Tuttle. Issue 1 (1st April 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hantke, Steffen
• Is Part Of: Horror studies. Volume 10:Issue 1(2019)
• Page Start: 123
• Page End: 132
• Publication Date: 2019-04-01
• Subjects: Horror in mass media -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Horror -- Periodicals; 700.4164
• DOI: 10.1386/host.10.1.123_1
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2040-3275

Abstract

In this interview, horror fiction writer Lisa Tuttle traces the progress of her career as a professional writer in various forms of the fantastic, especially as a writer of horror fiction, over four decades. Speaking as a professional writer and insider of commercial publishing, Tuttle offers her views on the changing definitions of horror as a genre category, as a response to changing historical conditions, and as a form of creative expression. Tracing the earliest stages of her career back to the boom in horror fiction during the 1970s and 1980s, she reflects on the causes of this boom, the upsides and downsides of horror's unprecedented primacy in popular fiction, and the eventual decline of horror as a viable commercial property by the beginning of the 1990s.