Sexuality and Lovecraft
Lovecraft’s work has a distinct absence of overt sexuality. While Lovecraft’s stories contain some deviant sexual behaviors, nothing is ever depicted in detail. However, modern authors and filmmakers seem unable to make a film without inserting (sometimes graphic) sex into the script. Why is that? Is it just the tentacles? or Is it something deeper? Downum, Joshi, Peterson, Cook, Smiley
Amanda Downum is the author of the Necromancer Chronicles, Dreams of Shreds & Tatters, and The Poison Court. Her short fiction has appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, and Weird Tales, and in the anthologies Lovecraft Unbound and Dreams From the Witch House. Unsatisfied with only writing about necromancy, she recently began a new career as a mortician. She lives in Austin, Texas for the time being.
S. T. Joshi has prepared comprehensive editions of H. P. Lovecraft’s collected fiction, essays, poetry, and letters. He is the author of The Weird Tale (1990), The Modern Weird Tale (2001), I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft (2010), and Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction (2012), and has edited the anthology American Supernatural Tales (2007) and the Black Wings series of Lovecraftian tales.
Evan J. Peterson is the author of Drag Star! (Choice of Games), the world’s first drag RPG, as well as The PrEP Diaries: A Safe(r) Sex Memoir (Lethe Press). He is a Clarion West alum and author of the horror poetry chapbooks Skin Job and The Midnight Channel as well as editor of the Lambda Literary finalist Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam: Gay City 5. His writing has also appeared in Weird Tales, Unspeakable Horror 2, Queers Destroy Horror, Boing Boing, and Best Gay Stories 2015. He is the founder of the now-concluded Seattle programs Minor Arcana Press and SHRIEK: Women of Horror Film. Evanjpeterson.com can tell you more.
Garrett Cook is an author with Deadite Press and an editor with Eraserhead Press. His work has appeared in A Breath from the Sky, DOA III, Giallo Fantastique, Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade and more. His next book Crisis Boy comes out October 15th.
Jim Smiley has had many jobs. Infantryman, private investigator....and his new career has caused relations to disown him, and made dogs to weep in the zocalo. He is an author of strange things. He is the author of both Girls' Night In and Both Alike in Dignity, is a contributor to Dark Discoveries magazine, and is a submissions editor for Dark Regions Press.