Cosmic Dread: Writing Weird Fiction with Dr. Jilly Dreadful

...as you contemplate the vastness of the universe. In this workshop, you’ll experiment with how to write your own cosmic horror.

Cosmic Dread: Writing Weird Fiction with Dr. Jilly Dreadful

📅 September 17, 2026

🕕 6–8pm

📍 Long Dark House

🏷️ $15

Maximum: 8 writers

We’ll discuss strategies for evoking dread, how to name the unnameable, and how today’s horror writers are using the form to write about real issues while subverting the genre’s racist and misogynist origins.

Two guided writing exercises will get you creating your own cosmic horror on the spot. This is a generative writing workshop, so no previous ideas are necessary walking in. Just prompts, quiet time, community, and space to share (if you want).

Bring a notebook or laptop and an open mind about the size of the universe. Leave with new friends, actual paragraphs, and a healthy fear of the void.

About your guide into the abyss:

Dr. Jilly Dreadful (www.jillydreadful.net) writes feminist speculative fiction about cyborgs, mermaids, and the uncanny places where bodies and technology collide. Her debut collection Cosmobiological: Stories won the Sundress Publications Prose Manuscript Contest. Her fiction appears in Lightspeed Magazine and She Walks in Shadows, the all-female Lovecraft anthology that won the World Fantasy Award. Her work has been featured on io9, Gizmodo, Buzzfeed, and longlisted by Ellen Datlow for Best Horror of the Year. She holds a PhD from USC, is a member of SFWA, and runs The Brainery: online speculative fiction writing workshops that have been featured on Wired.com—alongside two free local workshops in the DMV area.