"The Old Knowledge" and Women of the Weird

Anna Taborska is an excellent author. I think her work is getting stronger and stronger with each tale I see. A collection of her tales must be an event of high significance in the field of weird fiction. (Her father, by the way, was an accomplished poet-in-exile over here in London post WW2). If memory serves me correctly, I remember she also directed an excellent short horror film.

Another female author of genuine superlative talent is Thana Niveau, but doubtless Ligottians are already familiar with her work. But if not, they should be.

Mark S.

[nomis]

I thought Thana Niveau had already been added to this thread, but reviewing it now I see that's not the case.

I feel as though there have been more than a few great weird writers who happen to be female that have appeared since I initiated this topic, something that pleases me to no end.

[Freyasfire]

Thana Niveau has been mentioned here before, but on another thread, I believe. In any case, I also wholeheartedly recommend people further exploring her work if they are not familiar with it. Her lifelong passion for all things horror shines through every story that I've read by her.

[Derek]

I thought KJ Bishop's recent collection That Book Your Mad Ancestor Wrote was a wonderful compendium of the fantastical and weird.

Well worth checking out.

[Piranesi]

Ligotti writes somewhere that "extraordinary subjects require a certain deviousness in the telling, that a twisted or obscure technique is needed to realize the maximum power of the strange."

"Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams" by Sylvia Plath is exactly that - deviously narrated, twisted, obscure. The narrator works in a mental ward where she transcribes the dreams of patients, memorizing the dreams and copying them into her own journal of dreams:

"Whatever the dream I unearth, by work, taxing work, and even by a kind of prayer, I am sure to find a thumbprint in the corner, a malicious detail to the right of center, a bodiless midair Cheshire cat grin, which shows the whole work to be gotten up by the genius of Johnny Panic, and him alone. He’s sly, he’s subtle, he’s sudden as thunder, but he gives himself away only too often. He simply can’t resist melodrama."

It's one of those stories that I keep returning to, enjoying it more each time.