About
Biography
Christa Carmen lives in Rhode Island. She is the Bram Stoker Award-winning and two-time Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of The Daughters of Block Island, Beneath the Poet's House, and How to Fake a Haunting, as well as the Indie Horror Book Award-winning Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked, the Bram Stoker Award-nominated "Through the Looking Glass and Straight into Hell" (Orphans of Bliss: Tales of Addiction Horror), and co-editor of the Aurealis Award-nominated We Are Providence and the Australasian Shadows- and Ditmar Awards-nominated Monsters in the Mills. She has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA from Boston College, and an MFA from the University of Southern Maine.
When she's not writing, she keeps chickens; uses a Ouija board to ghost-hug her dear, departed beagle; and sets out on adventures with her husband, daughter, and bloodhound-golden retriever mix. Most of her work comes from gazing upon the ghosts of the past or else into the dark corners of nature, those places where whorls of bark become owl eyes, and deer step through tunnels of hanging leaves and creeping briars only to disappear.
- PatZi, Creator & Host of JOY ON PAPER LIVE!, presents READERS MZINE, Issue 1 - May 2026, including a feature on Christa Carmen and Beneath the Poet's House.
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9 Thrilling and Spooky Reads for the Halloween Season
The Reading Lists Staff, Medium -
Halloween's Most Horrifying Horror
The Chill Quill, BookTrib - Dave Simms offers a stunning review of The Daughters of Block Island for Cemetery Dance: "The gothic horror novel just received a massive shot of adrenaline to its bleak-but-beautiful-heart...a stunning novel that arrives in the final month of the year, just in time for the calendar's longest nights of darkness. In this debut novel, Carmen doesn't attempt to top the classics; instead, she subverts them in a unique manner. She embraces the tropes that made the subgenre what it is and forges an enthralling tale of two sisters, a strange town, and a cast of characters that would make the masters proud...If this is any indication of what Christa Carmen can bring into the world, readers will be smiling under candlelight for years to come. An exceptional new talent has arrived."
Interviews
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Michael Writes, Substack: Christa Carmen
Read Interview -
5 Things You Need to Be a Successful Author or Writer Interview
Medium
Read Interview -
Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb
Read Interview -
Fanbase Press Interviews Christa Carmen on the Release of the Novel, 'How to Fake a Haunting,'
with Thomas & Mercer
Read Interview
Events
Time: 6:30 - 8:30pm
Book Around, Pawtucket, RI
The Author & the Mortician: author Christa Carmen in conversation with mortician Jenna.
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Time: 8:00pm
Shirley Jackson Awards Ceremony, Readercon
Awards livestream. Click more to view the livestream.
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Necronomicon
Event runs from August 13-17, 2026. Panels: Representations of the Colonial New England Witch in Weird Film; Poe and Whitman in Providence (dates/times TBD)
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