Coming soon. Evelyn is currently working on her debut collection for Crimson PulpFic.
What is weird fiction, and how does it connect to the pulp tradition?
Weird fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It either eschews or radically reinterprets traditional supernatural antagonists like ghosts, vampires, and werewolves. China Miéville describes it as "a dark fantastic—horror plus fantasy—often featuring nontraditional alien monsters." Weird fiction blurs genre boundaries, creating an atmosphere of cosmic dread and wrongness that lingers long after the story ends.
Weird fiction found its home in Weird Tales, the legendary pulp magazine founded in 1923. For over three decades, Weird Tales published H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and countless others who defined the genre. Scholars argue that Weird Tales "functioned as a nexus point in the development of speculative fiction from which emerged the modern genres of fantasy and horror." The magazine was the first and most important market for weird and supernatural fiction.
Cosmic horror (also called Lovecraftian horror or eldritch horror) emphasizes the horror of the unknowable and incomprehensible rather than gore or shock. Named after H.P. Lovecraft, it evokes "the fear and awe we feel when confronted by phenomena beyond our comprehension, whose scope extends beyond the narrow field of human affairs." The horror derives from realizing that human interests, desires, and morality have no meaning or significance in the universe at large.
Edgar Allan Poe is often regarded as the pioneering author of weird fiction, creating supernatural stories distinct from traditional Gothic literature. H.P. Lovecraft built on Poe's foundation, developing cosmic horror and the Cthulhu Mythos. Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan) and Clark Ashton Smith joined Lovecraft in the "Weird Tales Trinity." Modern inheritors include Thomas Ligotti, Laird Barron, and the New Weird movement led by China Miéville and Jeff VanderMeer.
Evelyn Graves trades in gothic dread and modern obsession, drawing from folklore, occult history, and the spaces where the rational world frays. Her fiction explores forbidden knowledge, the price of curiosity, and the things that creep under your skin and stay there. Like the Weird Tales tradition, her stories remind readers that curiosity is how most people meet their end—and that some doors, once opened, can never be closed.