Leticia’s Creative Obsessions: Bodies are Weird!

Our bodies are beautiful. Our bodies are vulnerable. Our bodies are gross. Our bodies are weird.

All of these things are true, and each one of our relationships to our bodies is very different. Some days I’m in love with this resilient vessel, other days I am endlessly frustrated with this skin suit I reside in. Sometimes, especially when you live with chronic illness and pain, the best we can hope for is body neutrality rather than always striving for body positivity.

My body has been the focal point of my creative life for the last several years. You can read more about this journey for me in my essay, “The Body is a Horror Classic“ published by Defunkt Magazine in 2022. My experiences coming to terms with chronic illness and being disabled, navigating new health concerns, and after three pregnancy losses and five surgeries meant that my body and health, as well as the medical trauma and grief I was carrying dominated my thoughts, and my writing.

This is how I realized I was writing my next short story collection, The Remedy is the Disease, out in May 2026 from Undertaker Books. I wanted to encompass the many feelings I had about my body, and my relationship to medical neglect, pain, loss, and grief, as well as resilience, healing, and finding community among other people who understand the pleasures and horrors of being embodied. My work in my first book, Las Criaturas, was stepping into the surreal, the weird, and horrific, but this new collection is moving more confidently and openly into dark fiction and body horror that I hope makes readers feel a lot of different feelings of disgust and dread, while also making space for acknowledging tenderness, self-love, and care. You can read some of the stories from this forthcoming collection in A Night of Screams: Latino Horror Stories, “This Night Worlds,” published by Mystic Owl Magazine, “Open Wound” published by Uncharted Magazine, and “Holding Space” in Broken Olive Branches, a charity anthology with proceeds donated to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund and ANERA (American Near East Refugee Aid).

What I’m Reading

Here are some of the books that inspired the surreal, weird, horrific, and speculative dark fiction in The Remedy is the Disease:

1. “No Matter Which Way We Turned” by Brian Evenson (from Song for the Unraveling of the World). This story in particular makes me feel so uncomfortable and I think it’s because it reminds me of what it means to be ignored by others after violence or when I first received my diagnosis, or even how people are ignoring the ongoing pandemic we are living through. Brian Evenson’s work is s unsettling and bizarre and I am slowly savoring the stories in this collection and will be picking up Good Night, Sleep Tight next.
2.  Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova is a gorgeous and gruesome novel about Magos, a Mexican woman who loses her son Santiago from a congenital condition and cuts out a piece of his lung in her grief. She begins to feed the lung and nurture it as it begins to grow into its own creature, who she names Monstrilio. Told from the point of view of Magos, her best friend who helps her care for her new son, her husband who she reunites with, and Monstrilio himself, this novel is such a complex meditation on what grief does to us and what we become capable of.
3. Tiny Nightmares: Very Short Tales of Horror edited by Lincoln Michel and Nadxieli Nieto is a great collection of very short horror stories, and there are some great surreal folktale and body horror stories I was inspired by in this one, including “#MotherMayhem” by Jei D. Marcade, “Fingers” by Rachel Heng and of course “Leg” by Brian Evenson.
4. An Altar of Stories to Liminal Saints by Rios de la Luz. Rios de la Luz is one of my all-time favorite writers and just a generally wonderful person. All of her work is beautiful and strange, but also familiar in how it centers the stories of queer Latinx women who are resisting the violence and control of cis men. I particularly loved “Dirt,” “Postpartum is Forever” and “Tame the Coyotes.” Read all of Rios’ work!
5. Mine: An Anthology of Body Autonomy Horror edited by Roxie Vorhees and Nico Bell. I am still working my way through this anthology, but its focus on horrific stories that make us think about embodiment and what others can do to our bodies, and how we wrest control from them is so compelling. So far, “Pre-baby Bodies” by Anne Gresham and “D.E.B” by H. V. Patterson are my favorites.
6. Fruiting Bodies by Kathryn Harlan is a surreal book with a lot of variety, but body horror creeps into several of these stories, including the title story, “Fruiting Bodies,” about two lesbian lovers living in a remote cabin and one of the lovers who cuts mushrooms off of her partner every day. Mushroom or fungal horror is having a moment (think Mexican Gothic, What Moves the Dead,
7. The Secret Life of Insects by Bernardo Esquinca (work in translation) is a collection of short stories by this Mexican author whose work does so much to unmoor the reader in such a short period. These stories illustrate what horror and surreal writing can be, drawing on both gothic storytelling themes and jarring modernity and are both repellant and inviting.
8. The Nightmare Box and Other Stories by Cynthia Gómez. I love Cursed Morsels Press, a “Publisher of short horror and Weird fiction. Anti-fascist, anti-capitalist, and pro-queer,” I mean what’s not to love? Gómez’s debut collection of dark fiction takes place in Oakland, CA. The description on the website sums it up perfectly: “Its twelve stories center ordinary people—Latine, queer, working class-as they wield supernatural powers against oppression, loneliness, and dread.” I am loving this collection so far!
9. Bound in Flesh: An Anthology of Trans Body Horror edited by Lor Gislason. Ghoulish Books is a local San Antonio bookstore and small press that I am in community with and love, and this anthology of trans body horror is another great example of a collection of trans and nonbinary authors who are writing about body and gender dysmorphia, the weirdness of embodiment, violence and how we connect to our bodies.
10. The Skin You’re In: A Collection of Horror Comics by Ashley Robin Franklin. I can’t tell you how excited I was to receive my gorgeous hard-cover copy of this collection of some of Franklin’s creepiest horror comics. I love Ashley’s work and she is also a wonderful local Austin creator who taught a wonderful Horror Comics workshop for my organization, Austin Bat Cave. Several of these comics are body horror-centric and I can’t wait to get into them! Also, Silver Sprocket Press publishes some of the best indie artists I have ever read, and you should support them!

There were so many other works I wanted to include in this list of short horror and surreal fiction as well as other works that inspired my body horror journey, but you can check out more suggestions on my Goodreads list. Some honorable mentions that I have taught in my workshops before are Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder (soon to be a feature film), The Low Low Woods by Carmen Maria Machado, The Vegetarian by Han King, We Are Here to Hurt Each Other by Paula D. Ashe, all the work by Agustina Bazterica and Mariana Enriquez and more!

This year I decided to re-read Frankenstein, one of my favorite books of all time. It is often called the first science fiction novel, but I also think of it as one of the first body horror novels. Frankenstein wrestles with the fragility of the body, with life and death, with bodily autonomy and autonomy over our lives. Then I decided to read several books and watch films inspired by Mary Wolsencraft Shelley’s Frankenstein, including Eternal Frankenstein (Rios has a story in this one), Eynhallow by Tim McGregor, Chicano Frankenstein by Daniel Olivas, and several others. In my final post of the year, I will write more about each of these books.

What I’m Watching

Uzumaki Junji Ito is fast becoming one of my favorite horror comic artists (I know, I know, I’m behind). I’m lucky that our local library has a great selection of graphic novels and several of his books are available for me to check out, and this anime series on HBO Max is based on his manga and is as disturbing and entrancing as you can imagine.

Some of my other body horror favorites are, of course, The Thing (a great winter weather watch too), Death Becomes Her (a classic!), Gaia (2021), Malignant (2021), and so many more! If you have a film or series in this subgenre that you think I should watch, please comment with suggestions!

Creative Prompts

This month I taught my virtual workshop, What Happens Inside: A Body Horror Workshop for Gemini Ink. The participants and I had a lot of fun using body horror and surreal work to explore our fears about our bodies as well as how body horror can also be a space for empowerment to name the systems and violence that do our bodies harm and how we can love and protect our bodies as vulnerable as they are.

Here is a writing exercise from the class you might try out: What disgusts you? What is something you are afraid of happening to your body? Write this into a scene or create a character for whom this worst-case scenario happens. How can incorporate something weird or surreal into the scene? Don’t feel confined by strict reality. You might find it challenging, but you may also find it therapeutic.

What’s Happening with Leticia?

My new zine, Home Love, is available for purchase from my website.

I got to share my writing processes and work for Gemini Ink’s Writer’s Desk Blog and a short piece I wrote about writing horror and my own experiences with the “shadow people,” for author and librarian Helen Power’s Biblioocult Blog.

I will be reading some of my poetry from my chapbook I am currently submitting at the Garden Party Collective’s 2024 Online Reading on December 18th at 7pm CST. You can register here to attend this virtual reading and hear some of my work!

Book Leticia!

I’m lining up my events for 2025, but if you would like for me to participate in a reading, event or would like for me to lead a workshop for your community, comment or reach out on my website!