Welcome back to Weird Little Worlds, Gemma Files! Gemma contributed her short story “Pelican” to the 2022 anthology Mother: Tales of Love and Terror, and she’s coming back to Playlist of the Damned with more chills and thrills to keep you up at night!
Gemma was born in London, England, but her family moved to Toronto shortly after her birth. She’s been there ever since. Gemma is a horror writer, journalist, and former film critic, screenwriter, and teacher, with a degree in journalism from Ryerson Polytechnic University.
A lot of the things Gemma chooses to write about stem from experiences in her own life. In fact, she teaches a course “Write What You Fear” encouraging writers to use this method as well. She feels that a good horror story often evolves from simply noticing the weird things happening around us (and then the characters) every day.
Her short story, “The Emperor’s Old Bones”, won the International Horror Guild Award for Best Short Story of 1999. She also had five of her short stories adapted for the television series The Hunger. Her first novel, A Book of Tongues, won the 2010 Black Quill Award for “Best Small Press Chill” from Dark Scribe Magazine. Her novel Experimental Film won the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel and the Sunburst Award for Best Canadian Speculative Fiction in 2016.
WLW recently posted an interview with Gemma. You can read it on our blog, here. We can’t wait for you to see what she brings to the Playlist!
Gemma has chosen “Cryptorchid” by Marilyn Manson as the theme song for her story in Playlist of the Damned.
The Weird Team is comprised of several unhinged individuals that have a love of life and a lust for adventure. They scour the world to find the strangest, scariest, and most wonderful news in the universe.
