Writing Life and Writing Horror with Sean Moreland

Almonte Readers & Writers is pleased to present the May series of Art of Writing workshops and courses exploring aspects of creative and technical skills development in literary arts, offered as part of the 2025 Lanark Lit Festival of Writing.

In this workshop, we will explore the intersection of two seemingly separate genres, horror fiction and autobiography. horror can be a powerful and liberating lens through which to look at and write about ourselves, along with our inner lives and inner demons. Using horror to exorcise (or exercise) them can offer insights into our fears and desires while making for more unconventional writing and provocative stories.

About the instructor:

Sean Moreland is an educator, editor and reluctant writer whose essays (often focused on gothic, horror and weird fiction in its literary, cinematic, and sequential art guises) have appeared in many journals and collections, including Horror Literature Through History, Lovecraftian Proceedings, The Edgar Allan Poe Review, Making and Unmaking Ancient Memory, and The Oxford Handbook of Edgar Allan Poe.
They have (co)edited collections including Fear and Learning: Essays on the Pedagogy of Horror (2013), Monstrous Children and Childish Monsters (2015), The Lovecraftian Poe: Essays on Influence, Reception, Interpretation and Transformation (2017) and New Directions in Supernatural Horror: The Critical Legacy of H.P. Lovecraft (2018). They also write short fiction and poetry, some of which has been published in venues including The Malahat Review, Dissections, Vastarien, Lackington’s, Black Treacle, Bywords, and Over The Rainbow: Folk and Fairy Tales from the Margins.
Sean teaches in the Department of English at the University of Ottawa – view their profile here. They occasionally interview, review, and ruminate about weirdness at Postscripts to Darkness. More on Sean is available here.

The 2025 Lanark Lit Festival of Writing is presented by Almonte Readers & Writers thanks to the generous funding support of Lanark County, the Municipality of Mississippi Mills, the Perth & District Community Foundation, and the Elizabeth Kelly Library Foundation, with community partnership from the Mississippi Mills Public Library, the Perth & District Public Library, Mill Street Books, Almonte Writers Guild, and with the community support of Equator Coffee, OVC Almonte, Jazzy’s Brewhaus and other local partners.

Pre-registration required via Tickets Please  
Early-bird rate: $30 (until April 19)
Regular rate: $40

Explore the full calendar of events for the 2025 Lanark Lit Festival of Writing!