Beatrice Winifred Iker
From publications to awards and reviews, here are all Beatrice's announced projects!
This horror flash is about a frighteningly unhealthy relationship. I hope readers experience the uncomfortableness the narrator feels for participating in something profane and yet falling head-first into it.
This is the shortest poem I've ever written, comprised of ~60 words and 2 stanzas. These are the words of a lionhearted ghost, whom I've ensured is now resting peacefully.
"...opens with a sting of body horror before going to quite a different place..."
Death in the Mouth was recommended reading.
"The Deathing Room" - FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction
In defiance of death, I wrote this horror poem for myself when I lost one of my best friends. It's bloody and heartbreaking and insolent.
Death in the Mouth won an Australian Shadow Award for Edited Works
The award is given by the Australasian Horror Writers Association (AHWA) for “the finest in horror and dark fiction published by an Australasian within the calendar year.”
The fabulously talented co-editors for Death in the Mouth: An Anthology of Original Horror by People of Color are Cassie Hart & Sloane Leong.
"They'll Keep You Gestated" - Death in the Mouth (Anthology)
I craved a nightmare set in a bright, pristine hallway. This psychological horror short story is my fucked up ode to liminal spaces.
Death in the Mouth is an Australian Shadow Award winner
"I Shall Not Surrender" - Anathema Magazine
There's a Confederate monument off MLK Avenue in my hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee. It's on the east side of town, the side my elders still call the colored side. Our side.
While this is a Southern Gothic poem, more importantly, this is a declaration.
Ignyte Award finalist
"Georgia Clay Blood" - Fantasy Magazine
My mind only turns to one thing when driving between those infinite, barren fields in Georgia. The pain. The torture. I was born on this land and am not far removed from the suffering. This Southern Gothic poem is my thorny testimony.
Rhysling Award finalist
"Full of powerful and moving imagery, it echoes with a sense of time, and a look forward in a future that’s still a work in progress."
Epistolary stories are my favorite to tell. Letters, diary entries, sermons, and a conjure woman's log book are ways I tell this historical Southern Gothic about one woman's righteous vengeance. It is inspired by the historical and beloved (especially by me) spiritual 'Down By the Riverside'.
The interview was in the Black Heritage in Horror series.
"Black Girls in Castles" - Mixed Mag
In high school, a teacher told me I was a "bleeding heart liberal" and that I wouldn't make it far in life as a result. Fuck that guy.