Silk & Sinew Roundtable on Floaties for Krakens

We talk monsters! Frightening, beautifully strange, misunderstood monsters.

This week, I had the pleasure of appearing on the wonderful Floaties for Krakens podcast as part of a roundtable for Silk & Sinew authors. First, a little background on Silk & Sinew, an anthology coming in May 2025 from Bad Hand Books. Per our editor and the mastermind behind this project, Kristy Park Kulski:

“SILK & SINEW seeks to tease forth folk horror rooted in the experience of the Asian Diaspora. From lengths of muscle and vein, ground bones, endless ropes of sinew it is with our bodies folk horror is woven.

The history of Asian immigrants and their descendants in regions of the former colonial powers has often been obscured. Our presences and experiences, either go unrecognized, are deemed unimportant, or are regarded with derision. In still other cases, we are akin to an interesting collectable obtained during vacation, discovered, owned, and assigned a shelf for display. For many, immigration has been propelled by war, poverty, and political upheaval either directly produced or coalesced as a by-product of Western Colonialism.

Old sins, dark magic, twisted rituals, and beliefs seep forth again refusing to be ignored. The expansive continent of Asia contains myriads of such stories from impossibly ancient roots. But what does “the land” in folk horror mean for people of the Asian Diaspora?

It is in the bodies of Asian immigrants and their descendants which the Folk Horror concept of land is carried, intertwined with flesh, an invisible thread of sorrow, fury, and longing, wordlessly weaving into the tapestry of our identities. If Folk Horror is about what is hidden within the land, for the Asian Diaspora, our bodies are the fertile soil of buried sorrow and sacrifice, for we carry it in our very DNA. A tapestry that connects us to the past, our ancestors, our present, and our future.

Stories unique to our cultures and experiences as part of and intermixture of Western culture; the intersection of East and West, rooted both in the home left behind/of our ancestors and the home ahead, in our experiences of the present, our hopes of the future. A haunting at the intersection of the past rearing forth into the present (think Iris Shim’s film Umma) in sinister ways.

From the porcelain doll in imperial regalia, silent and shelved; the fetishization of Asian women’s bodies; the tragedy of a silk-moth forever pursuing the moon; a child who loses memory of their family upon taking a Westernized name; or the festering wartime shame passed from mother to daughter. What things could be dug up from our fleshy earth? What horrors to behold? What terrible beauty?”

Season 3: Episode 10 of Floaties for Krakens features Silk & Sinew authors Geneve Flynn, Christopher Hann, and me. We had a wonderful time with host Camille Maria Acosta discussing monsters from our respective cultural folklores. I talk about my beloved Mae Nak (the Thai “monster” I will forever defend), spirit houses, and how much I hate the model minority myth. These subjects are all part of my contribution to the anthology, “Guilt is a Little House.” It was a truly fun and illuminating conversation, and I learned so much about Geneve’s and Christopher’s fascinating monsters (and what Geneve’s grandmother kept in her purse!). Much gratitude to Kristy for gathering us and Camille for hosting us.

Check out the episode on YouTube here.

This is a three-part series, so please be sure to check out the first Silk & Sinew roundtable (S3:E8, with Rena Mason, Audrey Zhou, Kanishka Tantia, and Seoung Kim), as well as the upcoming one (TBD).

And, may I offer you the preorder option for Silk & Sinew?

Thanks for reading, and I hope to have more news to share with you soon. In the meantime, keep up with me on BlueSky and Instagram @JAWMcCarthy and at jawmccarthy.com.