Stephanie M. Wytovich

Welcome to the garden. Here we poison our fruits, pierce ourselves with thorns, and transform under the light of the full moon. Mad and unhinged, we fall through rabbit holes, walk willingly into fairy rings, and dance in the song of witchcraft, two snakes around our ankles, the juice of berries on our tongues.

Inspired by Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, these poems are meditations on female rage, postpartum depression, compulsion, and intrusive thoughts. They pull from periods of sleep deprivation, soul exhaustion, and nightmarish delusions, and each is left untitled, a nod to the stream-of-conscious mind of a new mother.

Using found poetry and under the influence of bibliomancy, Wytovich harnesses the occult power of her imagery and words and aligns it with a new, more vulnerable, darkness. These pieces are not only visions of the madwoman in the attic, but ghostly visitations that explore the raw mental torture women sometimes experience after giving birth.

This collection heals as much as it scars, and is an honest look at how trauma seeps into the soil of our bodies. Her poems are imagined horrors, fictional fears, and all the unspoken murmurs of a mind lost between reality and dream. What she leaves in her wake is nothing short of horror—the children lost, the garden dead, the women feral, ready to pounce.

On the Subject of Blackberries

An Exorcism of Angels

Asylums once used to confine those deemed mentally unfit linger, forgotten behind trees or urban development, beautiful yet desolate in their decay. Within them festers something far more unnerving than unlit corners or unexplained noises: the case files left to moulder out of sight, out of conscience. Stephanie M. Wytovich forces your hands upon these crumbling, warped binders and exposes your mind to every taboo misfortune experienced by the outcast, exiled, misbegotten monsters and victims who have walked among us. The poetry contained in Hysteria performs internal body modification on its readers in unrelenting fashion, employing broad-spectrum brutality treatment that spans the physical to the societal, as noted in Stoker Award winner Michael A. Arnzen's incisive introduction.

A Collection of Madness

Hysteria

Mourning is the new black... The tradition of Victorian mourning jewelry began with Queen Victoria after the death of her husband, Prince Albert. Without photography, mementos of personal remembrance were used to honor the dead so that their loved ones could commemorate their memory and keep their spirits close. Ashes were placed within rings, and necklaces were made out of hair, and the concept of death photography, small portraitures of the deceased, were often encased behind glass. Mourning jewelry became a fashion statement as much as a way to cope with grief, and as their pain evolved over the years, so did their jewelry. But what about the sadness and the memories that they kept close to them at all times? The death-day visions and the reoccurring nightmares? Wytovich explores the horror that breeds inside of the lockets, the quiet terror that hides in the center of the rings. Her collection shows that mourning isn't a temporary state of being, but rather a permanent sickness, an encompassing disease. Her women are alive and dead, lovers and ghosts. They live in worlds that we cannot see, but that we can feel at midnight, that we can explore at three a.m. Wytovich shows us that there are hearts to shadows and pulses beneath the grave. To her, Mourning Jewelry isn't something that you wear around your neck. It's not fashion or a trend. It's something that you carry inside of you, something that no matter how much it screams, that you can just can't seem to let out.

Mourning Jewelry

The Eighth

Brothel

A poetry collection that strips away civilization and throws readers into the lives of its survivors. The poems inside are undelivered letters, tear-soaked whispers, and unanswered prayers. They are tragedy and trauma, grief and fear, fear of who-or what-lives inside us once everything is taken away.

The Definition of Body Is Buried

The Apocalyptic Mannequin

The Eighth Deluxe Hardcover

Stephen King

Erik T. Johnson

Elizabeth Massie

Richard Chizmar

Richard Thomas

Ramsey Campbell

Chuck Palahniuk

Mort Castle

Jack Ketchum

Gary A. Braunbeck

Josh Malerman

Damien Angelica Walters

Mercedes M. Yardley

Marge Simon

Scott Edelman

Hal Bodner

Meghan Arcuri

Gene O'Neill

Rose Blackthorn

Paul Michael Anderson

Bruce Boston

Eric J. Guignard

Max Booth, III

Erinn L. Kemper

Jason V. Brock

Emily B. Cataneo

Jessica May Lin

Gardner Goldsmith

Jonathan Balog

Sydney Leigh

Ciaran Parkes

Chiral Mad 3 Deluxe Hardcover

Pippa Bailey

Sebastian Bendix

From an early age, we are taught to fear the unknown; to be afraid of what we do not understand. You're about to discover that what you do know can not only hurt you, but can scare you to death! The award winning horror fiction podcast has gathered thirteen amazingly talented authors from around the world to explore the very notion that learning about the unknown can have terrifying results. Step inside, kiddies... It's story time at The Wicked Library

The Wicked Library Presents: 13 Wicked Tales: A Wicked Library Anthology

Stephanie M. Wytovich

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