Tell us a bit more about you and where you’re from.
Leanna: I grew up in Savannah, Georgia, which means I grew up with ghosts—with nooses hung from oak branches outside of CVS stores and dolls dressed as brides thrown from windows. As a ghost tour guide, it was my job to pass down their stories, riding trolleys over ballast stones in the night. It was the best gig of my life.
Ever since, I’ve been chasing the storytelling dragon, my ambition aimed in all the wrong directions. I studied acting at SCAD. I climbed into journalism at CNN. Then I became a mother. And the world stopped. Cue sentimental music. Because, while I was covering wars and politics, my daughter needed beanstalks and poisoned apples. The stories we choose to tell are more alive than facts. They shape our culture, our morals, our dreams, and our nightmares. And stories take us home.
What inspired your winning story? Why did that particular theme resonate with you?
Leanna: My character, Nora, is actually more like me than the mother I make the focus of It Won’t Come Off. I was very much like her as a kid, always into my “something scaries.” Like Nora, I was also a child of divorce, influenced by two very different households. There’s a particular kind of guilt that can come with being caught between two parents, and (real or imagined) I always felt that I reminded each of them too much of the other.
I didn’t want to place that burden on Nora. Instead, I wondered what it might look like if the parents were forced to confront their desire to erase parts of their daughter. That’s where the skull-face twist came from, along with the red face paint that won’t wash from her mother’s fingertips.
When, and why, did you start writing?
Leanna: I’ve always been a writer. Even when I was chasing other shiny achievements, there was always a notebook or a Word document somewhere, perpetually mid-progress.
Most mothers, I think, would agree that after your first child, there is a free fall from all the things that seemed to matter before. Your whole life, your ambitions, your heart all get tied around a tiny finger. And the rest of you gets stripped away.
Then you recalibrate as the years go on. You grasp at the things that make you sane. For me, after the flaying, writing was the one thing that stopped my feet from drifting off the earth. And when you have only one thing, you finally, finally have to look at it and take it seriously.
What’s your favorite aspect of writing horror?
Leanna: My love of horror started with the ghost stories of my sordid city, of course. I’m fascinated by what scares a culture, a generation, or an individual. Because a monster is never just a monster. It’s the manifestation of deeper anxieties.
Take the latest horror movie hits: Backrooms and Obsession. They’re among the first major Gen Z horror films, and they’re essentially about fears of isolation, authenticity, and connection. Which makes total sense for a generation that has lived online and spent its formative years navigating a pandemic.
Then we have 90s slashers when everyone had a fear of strangers, that the evil could be anyone. And before that the classic monsters, when people feared anything other or different from themselves. The fear that what was different was dangerous, or that getting too close to it might somehow change you. Yikes.
Horror holds a mirror and offers catharsis.
What’s the best thing about being a writer?
Leanna: The community. Hands down. Especially in horror, I’ve met some of the most encouraging and inspiring people.
Writing is such a communal act. It takes experience to write authentically. It takes the multitudes Stephen King talks about as you weave together snippets of everything and everyone you’ve known. No one writes a good story in a vacuum.
What’s the point of telling a story if it doesn’t resonate or connect you with your people? I am so grateful for mine. I’m especially grateful for those I’ve never even met in person who’ve connected with me through stories. Amazing people, writers.
Who are some of your favorite authors?
Leanna: Of course there are the big names: Stephen King, Paul Tremblay, Rachel Harrison, Grady Hendrix, Stephen Graham Jones, Clay McLeod Chapman, and many more.
Recent novels I’ve enjoyed include The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling, Hungerstone by Kat Dunn, Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker, and Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou, among others.
My earliest influences came not from novels or poetry, but from scripts and stage. I never felt freer than my first brush with The Rocky Horror Show, never more discomforted than F*ing A, and never more inspired than staring at Neverland painted onto a backdrop. I like to think all those spoken words have osmosed into my written ones.
Anything special on your ‘to read’ list for this year?
Leanna: YES! This fall, Frightful Fables Press is publishing an anthology titled Southern Monsters. I am honored to have a short story included, called Bonaventure’s Bride. Many of the authors featured are dear friends and wickedly talented, and several have also been mentors to me. I cannot wait to read the collection in its entirety.
A few others on my list include The Bystanders by Dawn Major, The Flayer by D.C. Phillips, Ghost in the Grove by Frank Reddy, and Kim Poovey’s Dreamist series.
I am always on the hunt for a good read, so if any of y’all have any recs for my TBR list, please send them my way!
How do you make time to write, and how do you utilize that time.
Leanna: As a mom, carving out time to write seems impossible. It’s stolen time. I write a lot on my phone, in the shower, at the park, during those sweet, exhausted hours after bedtime…with one ear always perked up like a feral predator for the sound of my daughter stirring or getting into trouble. I write a lot in my head too: at red lights, while making snacks, or while pretending to be a unicorn in a lost forest as my daughter rides around on my back. Inch by inch, word by word, my stories uncover themselves.
There’s a passage in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil that has become my mantra. It describes robins dropping chinaberry seeds around the base of mansions until trees eventually grow and tear up its foundation.
That’s how I approach writing. Every day I plant what seeds I can, hoping that when my tree finally grows, it will uproot all of your houses.
Anything about you most folks don’t know? Perhaps a hidden talent or hobby.
Leanna: I’m pretty skilled at embroidery. The feral way I can eat a cup of boiled peanuts from the gas station should also be classified as a talent…and maybe should stay hidden.
What can readers expect from you in the future? Where do you see your career heading in the next five years?
Leanna: I have a couple short stories set to come out this fall:
● Bonaventure’s Bride in Southern Monsters Anthology from Frightful Fables Press
● It’s Just Goodnight in Chthonic Matter Quarterly’s fall issue
I am also in the drafting stage of my first novel, a dark odyssey through the underbelly of Savannah, Georgia. It’s a story that means a lot to me. It means a lot to add my words to a city so thick with them, so shadowed by the scramble of ghosts and tongues and fabled history. I can’t wait to share it one day soon.
As far as the next five years go, I’m a shoot-for-the-moon kind of dreamer. So I’m thinking Bram Stoker Awards, New York Times bestseller list, national—no, international—book signing tours, maybe the keys to a few cities and a gold statue the size of Godzilla erected in my honor. You know, only realistic goals. I’m just a robin dropping seeds.
Where can folks find you online?
Leanna: I’m on most social platforms as @LeannaFromSavannah and I would be pleased as punch to grow in this beautiful community with all of you!