When Words Collide 2026

Join Gemma for a blood-curdling hour on writing epistolary horror for the 21st century.

FYI
Epistolary horror builds its scares through "found documents"—diaries, letters, emails, police transcripts, recordings—rather than a traditional narrator. By stripping away omniscience, the form turns readers into investigators, forcing them to assemble fragments of evidence into a terrifying whole.

Classic examples include Dracula, Carrie, and World War Z—each using documents like diary entries, committee testimonies, and oral histories to build dread from the ground up.

About Gemma
Gemma Files is a Canadian horror writer, journalist, and film critic. Her short story, "The Emperor's Old Bones," won the International Horror Guild Award for Best Short Story of 1999. Five of her short stories were adapted for the television series The Hunger.