My guest on this Halloween-themed episode is Ainslie Hogarth. Ainslie is the author of two YA horror novels, The Lonely and The Boy Meets Girl Massacre (Annotated), and the adult novel Motherthing, which was a New York Times Best Book of the Year and was included in Cosmopolitan’s list of Best Horror Books of All Time. Her short fiction has been published in Hazlitt, Black Static, and elsewhere. Her most recent book is the novel Normal Women, published by Strange Light in 2023. In its review of the book, Booklist said that “Hogarth has a talent for writing depth and invoking lavish mental pictures.”

Ainslie and talk about Halloween, provoking readers, and the perils of trying to remake yourself as a writer.

This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.

Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.