Horror movies can be a conduit for us to explore our fears, anxieties, and have a little fun while doing it. This makes them an ideal guide for nonfiction writers. This generative course will focus on the craft of blending memoir and cultural criticism into a conversation with horror movies to help us examine the things that haunt us. Although we will look at other examples, we’ll primarily do this by examining the craft choices in Tania De Rozario’s essay “I Hope We Shine On” from her book, Dinner on Monster Island, and in my own essay, “My Hand on the Glass” from It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror. We will also explore how we can adopt the plots and characters of movies like Hereditary, The Shining, Doctor Sleep, and I Saw the TV Glow to tell our own stories.

Through in-class prompts and discussion, we’ll create our personal definitions of horror, examine what we can learn about writing from horror movies, peek at the reasons horror movies fascinate us as well as examine how various writers have used horror movies to give voice to their queerness, mental health issues, and other parts of their identity through the characters in their favorite horror movie. My hope is that students will leave the class with a deeper understanding of how the horror movies that speak to us can help facilitate telling our own personal stories.

About the Instructor

August Owens Grimm, formerly known as Bruce, is a co-editor of Fat and Queer: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Bodies and Lives and is featured in the Los Angeles Times Bestseller, It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror. They were recently a finalist for The Iowa Review and the Tucson Festival of Books nonfiction prizes. He’s been a Pushcart nominee and will be attending the 2024 Tin House Summer Workshop.

My Life is a Horror Movie, 4 Sessions with August Owens Grimm