Stephen King keeps a relentless pace, with new work arriving quickly. His latest Spanish release, Holly (Plaza & Janés), leans toward thriller territory and stars a private detective who also appears in Mr. Mercedes, Loser Pays, and The Visitor. Yet fresh voices continue to emerge. Writers who, unlike the sometimes hostile debates around fantasy or science fiction, are reformulating the field while paying respect to living masters. Even when they reference the broader terror tradition, they show reverence for the living classics. And there is a new wave of authors who, recognizing the weight of the genre’s history, tread their own paths without diving into a culture war.
María Pérez de San Román, editor of La Biblioteca de Carfax, notes a favorable moment for horror in Spain: a rise in production, translation, and publication, along with growing reader interest and higher quality. Even with the caveats that accompany any vibrant market, she hopes that fans of horror cinema will turn more to literature. In this flourishing period, fantasy elements increasingly appear in the work of mainstream writers. This trend is underscored by Mariana Enríquez, whose celebrated contributions to the genre in Spanish are a benchmark. The festival celebrating its 42nd edition also signals the genre’s prestige, even as some worry about new writers who enter the field without a deep foundation. When such novels come from self-proclaimed literary horror writers, the result can be disappointing.
The five authors interviewed here have earned attention in Spain recently. Four of them owe part of their rise to praise from King, a prolific influencer who often shares early impressions that build momentum before broader acclaim. He is quoted as saying that young writers and filmmakers need support, and that he has long felt like an evangelist for popular culture.
Stephen Graham Jones
Stephen Graham Jones, born in Midland, Texas in 1972, has collected Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson trophies, the kinds of honors that encourage readers to keep the lights on at night. His popularity surged after a pivotal shift toward larger novels such as The Only Good Indian (2020), Night of the Models, and My Heart Is a Chainsaw, the latter recently published in Spain by La Biblioteca de Carfax and translated by Manuel de los Reyes. A member of the Blackfoot Nation and a professor of Literature at the University of Colorado, Jones often comments on the genre he helped shape and its raw material. He reflects on the thrill of storytelling as a primal rush that reminds readers they are alive, even if the terror is not real.
The novel’s core idea centers on the final girl, the survivor archetype of slashers, a motif that haunts the protagonist of My Heart Is a Chainsaw. The book also offers a guide-like bonus for students of the genre and a meditation on memory, fear, and survival.
Jones began his career drawing attention to Native American experiences before branching into experimental literary fiction and pulp horror. Only recently did he merge these strands into a single approach. He concedes that the shift was a conscious move to fuse literary craft with horror storytelling. “I used to write twice, then I became a writer again.”
The book features an underwater Christian cemetery intended to subvert clichés about Indigenous burial grounds, presenting it as a metaphor for the United States’ complicated past. It also explores gentrification as a broader social phenomenon that echoes patterns of colonization and ownership, only on a different scale.
Catriona Region
In Spain, Region has four books in print over the last two years, and King’s endorsement helped propel a rising show of support. He praised a work called The Last House on Needle Street for its promise, suggesting it is a standout in the field. He warned fans about Sun Clock, urging them not to miss the new release. Region discussed these two titles and Little Eve, which appeared during two Celsius Festival appearances. A translated Runas edition of Mirror Bay follows the same formula: precise technical craft and endings that jolt readers, while keeping memory, reality, and madness in a constant tug of war. In this latest arc, memories of teenage summers on a Maine coast mix with a chilling hunt and a disturbing cave setting.
Region’s beginnings in the genre are tied to formative summers at a Dartmoor manor on the Devon moors. That experience, he recalls, formed a deep fear that later threads through his novels. He describes how a childhood sensation of being guided by an unseen presence has lingered and evolved into an ongoing motif. The author shares that these experiences fuel a sense of dread that remains vivid long after the memory fades.
Thomas Olde Heuvelt
Thomas Olde Heuvelt, from Nijmegen, Netherlands, born in 1983, weathered a creative block before Hex found international notice. His latest work, Echo (Nocturna, translated by Ana Isabel Sánchez), is now available in Spain. Hex is a tense tale about a New York Town haunted by a witch with sewn eyes and mouth, a chilling secret that has persisted for centuries. Echo pushes the tension further, forcing the reader to confront a mountain spirit in the Alps, a move that blends folklore with a modern intensity.
Heuvelt recalls that Hex gained traction especially after Stephen King tweeted about it, a moment that validated his work and amplified expectations. He speaks of the pressure to reinvent familiar archetypes rather than merely rehashing a previous success. The aim is to bring a fresh perspective to the core elements of horror, whether it be witchcraft or possession, without losing the essence that makes the genre compelling.
The new book draws on Heuvelt’s experiences as a mountain climber. He notes that mountains carry a soul of their own, with some ranges offering solace while others seem hostile, and that danger can arise from both nature and human error. Echo follows a climber who survives a fall only to become bound to the mountain’s spirit, a story that evokes classic horror while feeling unmistakably modern.
Supernatural elements weave through everyday life, a hallmark of Stephen King and Shirley Jackson. Horror, in this sense, blends beauty with fear, practical dread with existential worry about sanity and the people one loves. It is fear that resonates at the core of the human experience.
Grady Hendrix
Grady Hendrix appears toward the edge of the circle, and Stephen King’s praise of him remains unofficial, perhaps more symbolic than formal. Hendrix has earned respect in Portland for a rigorous, years-long self-managed tour of reviews for the publisher Tor. He read and critiqued hundreds of works, offering insights across many years and formats. His latest novel, How to Sell a Haunted House, released for the Barcelona audience around Halloween, centers on a McGuffin haunted house and a puppet used in Christian-themed performances. Hendrix uses humor to keep readers unguarded, only to remind them that the texture is horror. Across his books, he challenges pulp culture and the Southern Gothic label, revisiting unsettling dolls and other symbols of fear with sharp wit and unapologetic honesty.
His catalog includes Horrorstör, The Book Club Guide to Killing Vampires, and My Best Friend’s Exorcism, works that show how the ordinary can turn disturbing in unexpected ways.
Paul Tremblay
The list would be incomplete without Tremblay, though no recent interview covered his latest book. Tremblay has long connected with Hendrix, sharing a direct lineage of admiration for King’s influence. His Spanish release Pallbearers Club (Nocturna, translated by Manuel de los Reyes) arrives with playful nostalgia and a sharp eye for pop culture, echoing the late-eighties and early-nineties era. Like Hendrix, Tremblay’s work is full of references to childhood and adolescence, often exploring themes of death and memory through a young cast. The story unfolds with a group of kids preoccupied with funerals, a premise that blends whimsy with genuine dread to deliver a memorable horror experience.