Meet First Word on Horror’s Mariana Enriquez:
Please introduce yourself:
My name is Mariana Enriquez, I’m a writer from Argentina. I love horror, but I do other things too. I also work as a journalist. I’m 51 and lately I think it’s important to share my age.
What is horror to you, what makes a work of art one in the horror genre?
Horror is a language and a form of communication. We have told each other horror stories as long as we could talk and communicate. It’s a way to deal with life and death. It can become art at any stage: as an oral history, as a sign of the times, as beauty, and as a way of looking at personal and social ills. And as fun too, because humor is horror’s twin.
What made you want to work in horror?
Reading great horror and gothic writers from early on like Ray Bradbury, Borges, Stephen King and Shirley Jackson. But honestly, I don’t think this a question you can answer rationally. I just like horror, it moves me, and that’s where my imagination lives.
Where do you get your inspiration?
From everyday events, from my own twisted desires and fantasies, and from other art –lately specially from the visual arts. And alot from oral history, for example: stories told on the internet, on the radio, on podcasts, things that people share in passing, and urban exploration of haunted places. And history of course, which is full of trauma and ghosts.
What would you like your legacy to be in the genre (or elsewhere)?
I don’t really believe in legacy. I would like to be read when I’m dead, just like any other writer, but that’s it.
What is Women in Horror Month to you and why is it still important this many years later?
We don’t really celebrate it or have anything like this in the Spanish speaking world, so it’s my first. I didn’t know you have a month every year!
Who are some of the Women in Horror who you look up to and who do you want to bring attention to in your field or others?
In no specific order: journalists like Desireé De Fez (who knows everything about horror movies and used to work at the Sitges Film Festival), the Spanish author Pilar Pedraza (whose work needs to be translated more widely), authors like Mónica Ojeda and María Fernanda Ampuero from Ecuador, Elaine Vilar Madruga from Cuba, movie director Laura Casabé from Argentina, French film director Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Australian film directors Natalie Erica James and Jennifer Kent, and Korean writer Bora Chung.
What are you currently working on that you can tell us about?
A novel and a non fiction book about my reading, about how I taught myself to read. I don’t want to jinx the novel however. I have been working on it for some time now and am nearly ready to finish it.
Where can readers keep up with you?
My Instagram handle is @marianaenriquez1973. It’s my only social media account. My latest book is a collection of short stories called A Sunny Place for Shady People. You can read my books in English via Hogarth in the US or Granta in the UK and Australia. Their catalogues are here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/2136029/mariana-enriquez/ https://granta.com/contributor/mariana-enriquez/
(The book covers are quite different so that’s cool!)