HWA Oregon kept busy in November and December after a packed October of well-attended Halloween-related parties and readings.
The guest speaker at our November chapter meeting was our very own HWA Oregon member and Social Media Manager & Event Co-Coordinator, Amber Finnegan. Amber is also a freelance editor and provided a comprehensive overview of the types of editing and editors, costs, editing suggestions for writers, and resources.
Richard Leis, our chapter secretary, was guest speaker at our December chapter meeting. Richard spoke about reading and writing horror poetry to improve your horror prose craft.
If you would like to join or learn more about HWA Oregon, please contact us at oregonhwa@gmail.com and visit our website. We are “hwaoregon” on Instagram and Bluesky.
Virtual Book Club
We read Candy Cain Kills by Brian McAuley in November and enjoyed the fast, twist-filled read. We read Fever House by Kevin Rosson in December.
We read Fever House by Keith Rosson in December and loved it so much we decided to read the sequel, The Devil by Name, in January! We’ll discuss the second book at our book club meeting at the end of the month. Before that, we’ll get to hear from Rosson himself when he joins us at our next chapter meeting to discuss his writing and publishing journey.
Quarterly Writing Workshop
Our quarterly writing workshop resumes in January. At our inaugural event in November, four HWA Oregon members joined to read from their latest works and provide each other feedback, with the authors leading the discussion about their pieces, choosing what kind of feedback would be most important to them at this stage of their project.
Member News
The Muddy Goose Guide to the Weird Northwest: A Playable Adventure, published by Demagogue Press and edited by Erik Grove and Frances Lu-Pai Ippolito,was published on November 23. Scout guide meets playable board game, The Muddy Goose Guide features 24 Pacific Northwest contributors and locations to read and explore, including stories by Erik, Remy Nakamura, Katherine Quevedo, and Sarah Walker.
The editors and several contributors participated in a live event with Vintage Books on YouTube. More events are happening in the new year 2026.
Katherine Quevedo recently read for Speculative Sundays and has a new poem, “The Emerald Tapestry,” in Corvid Queen.
Katherine’s eco-horror story “Discount Night at the Haunted Eco Lodge” has been reprinted (in audio) by the podcast Scary Stories Whispered in the Rain.
Look for her “Ode on Keats’s ‘Ode on Indolence’” reprinted in The Hyacinth Review. It first appeared in The Decadent Review.
H. A. Spector has set new submission goals. Good luck!
Amber Finnegan has qualified as an Affiliate Member at HWA. Congratulations!
Iris Harris is working on a piece for submission to a call that captured her imagination.
Tom Witherspoon’s story “Prompted” will be published in the next A.I.-themed edition of Weird Fiction Quarterly.
Tom raved about the quarterly writing workshop and has finished a new draft of a story based on the feedback.
Lisa Lane (Lee Mitchell) short story “The Spirit Child” was recently featured in the Forgotten Frequency podcast. Her story begins at about 35 minutes:
Lisa is working on redrafts, and also received helpful feedback at the quarterly writing workshop.
Niyyah Ruscher-Haqq has been asked to submit a story to an anthology, and is working on a piece that is darker than anything she has done before.
Juleigh Howard-Hobson has a new poem concerning vampires and underground clubs in Utah in No Exit: A Collection of Utah Horror (Timber Ghost Press.)
J.S. Douglas’s short story “Dysmenorrhea” was recently published by Horrific Scribblings.
J.S.’s short story “Smile” was recently published by Timber Ghost Press.
She has another piece accepted for the upcoming issue of Rotting Leaf Magazine. It’ll be out in January.
Rhiannon Rasmussen’s debut short story collection, Maidens of Midnight and Other Lost Media, presenting 13 illustrated dark tales of “lo-fi” horror, will be shipping in late December from Dim Shores.
Richard Leis’s poem “Los Fantasmas en Su Boca,” was published on December 21 in Poisoned Soup for the Macabre, Depraved, and Insane from Brigids Gate Press.
Richard’s flash fiction story “Curious Cat” will be published in the next A.I.-themed edition of Weird Fiction Quarterly.