Roundup: Scary, Creepy, Dead, and Haunting Posts

As we look forward to updating the Ploughshares blog for the new year, we’re also looking back at all the great posts since the blog started in 2009.  Our roundups explore the archives and gather past posts around a certain theme to help you jump-start your week.  Since Halloween and Day of the Dead both take place this week, we’ve gathered posts that discuss that which is scary, creepy, grotesque, supernatural, dead, and “haunting.”

• If you’re scrambling for a Halloween costume, Ploughshares staff and interns have some suggestions in “Scare Quotes and Regency Dresses: Literary Costumes for Halloween.”

• Peter B. Hyland discusses the combination of luxury and the grotesque called vanitas in his post “Death, Abundance, and Table Setting.”

• Christine Sneed explores how genre fiction differs from literary fiction, and whether to write a bestselling vampire romance in “The Vampire in the Ivory Tower: Genre Fiction.”

• Tired of hearing books described as “haunting”?  Andrew Ladd takes on the misuse and overuse of this word in a “Blurbese” blog post.

• If you are up for a classic about the dead, check out Akshay Ahuja’s review of the lost classic “The Phantom Carriage.”

• Speaking of dead, do you have a story that just isn’t working?  Christine Sneed writes about when to give up on a deceased story.

• And for more spooky reading suggestions, try Ploughshares’ “Favorite Scary Stories (and Other Frightful Literature).”