“I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

Who makes the monsters? To whom do they pray when burdened with the cruelty of their existence, of the world who so named them “monster”?

Deviants of gender, ethnicity, mental health, economic status, sexual expectations, and social norms – persons punished by the scarlet brand of “monster.” These are the monsters who stalk nightmares bound in these pages. An unholy unicorn meets a defiled sacrifice; an engineer embraces and abuses inorganic body enhancements for her family; and Frankenstein’s creature, on his quest for death, may have finally found his mate. From irreverent mothers to genetically modified cats, explore the realms of sacred and profane, the divine and mortal, of those called monsters in this collection of fiction and poetry.

“Where Monsters Pray is a fantastical, horrifying gallop through the terrors that emerge when facing life’s real monster: a shift in perception.” – Kristi Petersen Schoonover, Founding Editor 34 Orchard

Coming July 2024 from Pink Narcissus Press.