Be very afraid: Island writers put together horror collection

There are certainly lots of anthologies of writers from P.E.I., but here's one with a difference.

It's called Fear From a Small Place:Writers from Canada's smallest province unleash their greatest fear, and it's all about horror.

There are 20 different writers from P.E.I. involved, fromall sorts of different styles.

The collection was edited by Island writer Dave Stewart, a fan and sometimes contributor to the horror canon.

"For me horror has always meant many things," he told Mainstreet's Angela Walker.

"It's not always just a ghost or a guy with a knife in your closet. It can be a relationship that turns you into something else, it can be going out on a family outing and finding out it's not as innocent as you first thought. Horror for me is something that reflects something that's going on, it can enlighten us about some of our fears, it can change the way we look at things, it's not always just 'mwaa-ahah.'"

The idea came from a similar art project Stewart had previously done at the Guild with several artists tackling one genre.

He wondered if it could move to writing.

"I got a bunch of people together who I thought would be willing to tackle the idea of horror, not everybody is," he said.

"I did task them with defining it in the way that they understood horror, so that could mean anything. I just looked around me at interesting people."

All different writing forms

He invited several different kinds of writers, who could submit anything they wanted, so the collection is not just short stories.

In addition to fiction and non-fiction, there is poetry from John MacKenzie, a script from TV veteran David Moses, and a one-page illustrated story from graphic novelist Dale Nicholson.

"My short story is called "Souvenir," and all I'm going to say it's about an Islander who takes a piece of something with him to save as a souvenir," said Stewart.

Fear From a Small Place will be launched at the Great George on Friday, May 19 at 7 pm.

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