Anne McDermid

LITERARY AGENT FOR ANDREW PYPER

What is the market like for literary horror? The phrase didn’t mean anything in Canada until very recently. As someone who comes from England originally, I would argue that literary horror is a bit of a British thing going back to the Victorian period. The English market understood that deep, dark, and scary things could be written at a higher level. I don’t know whether literary horror is in itself a new category, or whether it’s just that it’s become fresher in the past five or six years. Certainly now it’s established in the international community. I would argue that the Canadian market is following because ordinary Canadian readers are reading it.

Are there more authors? A mere five or 10 years ago, they would not have existed. They would have had to go to New York to find a publisher. That’s the huge difference: publishers like Simon & Schuster Canada are taking these people on. – Alex Huls