"When I was a kid, I was super, super geeky, it was so nerdy. And all I read was dragon books, or ghost books, or elf books…someone tried to give me a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, and I just remember thinking, Where are the dragons? And when I went to do my doctorate in creative writing and literature —especially at the time, and even now, they kind of steamroll that out of you, they sort of train you to think that there are two things called literary and genre… if you're a good writer, and smart, you write literary (later on, I came to understand, that just meant realism). And that literary was a series of conventions that had nothing to do with genre. And then I just missed — I really desperately missed [genre] — especially horror, because it's something that's able to marry the darker, more realistic, gritty parts of fiction that I love so much, with kind of the nerdy stuff like ghosts and monsters."

An urban Native of Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee descent, writer Erika T. Wurth joins guest host Allyson Gavaletz to take readers behind the scenes of her fabulous new novel, White Horse, and to talk about her own family's story, clairvoyance, nostalgia, heavy metal music, finding comfort in reading horror, her favorite contemporary horror writers and much more. We end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Madyson.

Featured Books (Episode):

White Horse by Erika T. Wurth

Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction by Benjamin Percy

Damn Fine Story: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative by Chuck Wendig

Mastering Suspense, Structure and Plot by Jane K. Cleland

Featured Books (TBR Topoff)

My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

This episode of Poured Over was produced and hosted by Allyson Gavaletz and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).