Based in Virginia with roots in New York, Creature Publishing specializes in feminist horror, dark speculative fiction, women-driven thrillers, spooky fantastical fiction, literary fiction, and the like.
Founded in 2019, Creature has served as a platform for stories which challenge the status quo, offering titles with a broad and inclusive, transgressive and intersectional, understanding of what horror is and who can make it. As Creature has grown and evolved, our initial interest in horror’s potential for social commentary and catharsis, as well as its potential to cross into other genres and subvert genre altogether, has led to our more formal adoption of writing within the realm of thrillers, sci-fi, and fantasy, particularly when fear or horrific elements continue to play a role, but always where the writing is innovative and powerful, the stories reflecting and widening our understanding of others and the world.
Our books have won or been finalists for the Bram Stoker Award, the Ladies of Horror Fiction Award, and the Foreword Indies.
Our books are creatures—living, forceful entities with desires of their own, capable of inspiring fear, passion, anxiety, dread. The illustration on the spines of our books speaks to this idea. Our name is also a nod to the content of the genre itself; horror is full of creatures, human and nonhuman and all things in-between. They can be sinister or benevolent, familiar or “other.” The monster under the bed, the monster in bed with us, the monster inside. Our creatures have bones to pick. We like it that way.
Amanda Manns, Cofounder and Publisher
(2019–Present)
Amanda holds an M.F.A. in fiction from Virginia Tech where she taught creative writing and edited print and digital literary magazines. She has worked for C&R Press and W. W. Norton and attended the Columbia Publishing Course at Oxford. She appreciates the lyric essay, a well-tended moss tray, and compelling stories of all kinds. Her inspiration for Creature included sources as varied as Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado, Angela Carter, Shirley Jackson, Midsommar, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, those awesome short films from the Berlin Final Girls, and the list goes on.
Olivia Batker Pritzker, Cofounder and Former Publisher
(02/2019–10/2023)
Olivia is a writer, editor, educator, and part-time swamp witch. Her path to cofounding Creature includes a lifelong affinity for strange creatures of all kinds, a passion for storytelling, a decade in the publishing industry developing and promoting books, and countless double espressos. Olivia holds an M.F.A. in writing from Otis College of Art & Design and studied psychology and comparative literature at Brandeis University. You can find her on Instagram @0livia.charlotte or on the streets of Brooklyn, NY.
