Tiffany Morris is a Mi’kmaw writer of horror fiction and experimental poetry. Her chapbook, Havoc In Silence, is forthcoming from Molten Molecular Minutiae in Spring 2019. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Room Magazine, Eye to the Telescope, Blood Bath Lit Zine, among other places. Find her online at tiffmorris.com or on twitter @tiffmorris.
1) what is horror?
Horror is existential anxiety made flesh (and blood, bone, gore, ooze). It’s a carnivalesque domestication of our fears around death and all things unseen and unknowable; a medium in which these things are not just passively witnessed, but acknowledged and confronted within the relative safety of story.
2) why horror?
I’ve always been fascinated by the unseen and unknowable and how it can be depicted in different mediums, especially within the immediacy of horror. Broadly, I think horror storytelling is an exercise in group/public catharsis, a mechanism by which we can work through the radical subjectivity of our fears, and in so doing, also tune into what elements of it are shared, collective, or universal.
3) where do you see horror going?
I can see horror becoming more political and experimental, which is awesome. I can also see the occult continuing to be a popular theme, as it tends to become prevalent in times of acute uncertainty- the reclamation of personal power and attunement with unknowable/unseen cosmic forces deliberately undermines human societal structures and hierarchies, so it makes sense. I would personally love to see more occult themes that really focus on the anarchic, the psychedelic, and the psychological, and I can foresee horror leaning into that in the coming years.
THINKING HORROR 