Black Spot Books announces a new anthology, INTO THE FOREST: TALES OF THE BABA YAGA [Black Spot Books, November 8, 2022], featuring new and exclusive stories inspired by the Baba Yaga—the witch of Slavic folklore—written by some of today’s leading women-in-horror.
Edited by Lindy Ryan [UNDER HER SKIN], INTO THE FOREST includes twenty-three original stories from New York Times bestselling authors, Bram Stoker Award® winners, and “freshly hatched” voices from around the globe. Featured contributors include Gwendolyn Kiste, Stephanie M. Wytovich, Mercedes M. Yardley, Monique Snyman, Donna Lynch, Lisa Quigley, and R. J. Joseph, with an introduction by Christina Henry. The collection also features a poem from Bram Stoker Award® winning poet, Stephanie M. Wytovich.
Reflective of the wild and temperamental nature of the Baba Yaga, the stories in INTO THE FOREST range from dark fantasy and folklore to horror as each go deep in the dark forest, to a cottage that spins on birds’ legs behind a fence topped with human skulls. A guardian of the water of life, Baba Yaga lives with her sisters and takes to the skies in a giant mortar and pestle. Those who come across Baba Yaga may find help, or hinderance, or horror, and each story reflects the diverse and inclusive experiences of women as they look to Baba Yaga as their muse.
“Whether readers are meeting Baba Yaga for the first time, or this is one of many trips to her familiar chicken-legged hut, we invite you to journey with us to meet the witch who waits deep in the forest,” says Ryan. “These stories are, like Baba Yaga herself, limitless and unpredictable. They are wild. They are fierce. And they are feminine. These are the voices of women in horror—hear them.”
Lindy Ryan is an award-winning author, editor, and short-film director. She serves on the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) Board of Directors, was a 2020 Publishers Weekly Star Watch Honoree, and is the co-chair of the Horror Writers Association Publishers Council.
Into the Forest will be available in paperback and e-book on November 8, 2022.