Shifters Everywhere - Interview With Alison Armstrong

1) Tell us about your book/series

Although my book series Feral Rebirth involves vampires, my Consorting with the Shadow: Phantasms and the Dark Side of Female Consciousness book (a collection of essays and short fiction about women in horror) includes a discussion of the shapeshifter archetype in the films Ginger Snaps, Cat People, and Black Swan. I focus on female shapeshifters.

2) What type of shifter do you write about and why?

In that book I write about the female characters from those films, who shapeshift into a werewolf (Ginger Snaps), a cat (Cat People), and a black swan ballerina. I chose to write about these films because they depict different types of animal transformations and reveal the positive as well as negative aspects of shapeshifting.

3) Tell us something interesting or unusual about your main character

I love all three of these female shapeshifters (the werewolf, the cat, and the black swan) because they express rage and feral autonomy, reveling in their animal aspects and the freedom to transcend their human female form.

4) If you could turn into any animal, what would it be and why?

A semi-feral cat who could exist independently from humans but who also could partake in some of the comforts domestic cats have. As a cat, I would be free to express my wild nature, bare my fangs and claws, maybe even become part of a shapeshifting cat colony. In feline form, I would be more agile, break free temporarily from my human consciousness and human expectations, especially the ones restricting women.
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5) What will you be working on next?

My next project will be editing the anthology Life, Death, and Transmutation: A Charity Anthology of Dark Nature Poetry and Fiction, for which I have contributed two poems

Author Bio:


Alison Armstrong is the author of three literary horror novels (Revenance, Toxicosis, and Dark Visitations), a novella (Vigil and Other Writings), in addition to a collection of writings addressing women and horror archetypes (Consorting with the Shadow: Phantasms and the Dark Side of Female Consciousness). Her work focuses on inner terror, stealthily lurking, solipsistic dread and nightmare flash epiphanies. Having obtained a Master of Arts in English, she has taught composition and literature at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor, MI and Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn. In addition to her novels and novella (available on Amazon and other online retailers), she has worked as a co-editor of Nature Triumphs: A Charity Anthology of Dark Speculative Literature and has had writings published in that anthology as well as several other horror anthologies and The Sirens Call ezine.