In early September of 2022, when I heard that the horror writer Peter Straub had died, it was like a hole had opened up beneath my feet. Anyone who’s ever felt close to a writer, a musician, a movie star, through their work, can probably relate to the strange grief that comes when you hear one of them is gone. To me, it’s like a grief I don’t have the right to, not compared to those who may have actually known the person, yet I’ve felt compelled to explore the sense of loss by celebrating that person’s work. I worry it’s a selfish kind of grief, centered around myself rather than the person. And yet it stems from a place of gratitude, and comes with the desire to talk about it, to write about it, to honor them in the only ways I know how.

To some, the line between literary fiction and genre fiction is not only distinct, it is a considerable divide. I work in a bookstore and witness this all too often, where the shelves differentiating genres into respective areas in the store are more than just physical in their separation. Many people refuse to read a certain genre for any number of reasons, occasionally for no reason other than some kind of snobbery. Even I'm guilty of this, to a small degree. Which is to say, there is almost always reasoning behind the distinctions between genres and types of books--whether it's the simple distinction between mystery fiction and science fiction, or broader, such as teen fiction and adult fiction--but there is a strong point to be made, one I agree with, that most of these distinctions shouldn't shape our view of a book, especially not in a broader context.

Blog and Writing