From Out of the Shadows, a Spotlight On Women

In reviewing various short story anthologies I’ve made a habit of using the Boy’s-Club-o-meter to measure what proportion of the stories included are written by men; the balance is invariably skewed towards men, often to an alarming extent. It kind of behooves me to make good on that and read some anthologies of specifically womens’ writing, so I’m going to start off with She Walks In Shadows from Innsmouth Free Press (also republished as Cthulhu’s Daughters), edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles – the former of whom is the chief editor and main operator of Innsmouth Free Press.

The product of a successful crowdfunding campaign, She Walks In Shadows consists exclusively of stories written by women about women, with illustrations and art by women and edited by women for good measure. In this respect, it’s the sort of thing which the world of Cthulhu Mythos fiction badly needs. Ann K. Schwader leads us in with Ammutseba Rising, a poetic story and a call to the daughters of humanity to rise in the name of annihilatory chaos – just what’s wanted to set the scene. I am not keen on the whole Lovecraftian poetry thing, but this is mercifully short and less embarrassing than many examples.