Mike Thorn
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mikethorn.bsky.social
Mike Thorn
@mikethorn.bsky.social
Fiction writer & film critic. Author of Shelter for the Damned, Darkest Hours, and Peel Back and See. Co-host of https://bsky.app/profile/craftworkpod.bsky.social. PhD in English.
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It's alive!

I served as guest editor for this special issue of the peer-reviewed, open-access journal, MONSTRUM: Vegan and Animal Liberation Horror.

- 6 feature essays
- 2 original fiction pieces (by @kkoja.bsky.social & me)
- 3 retrospective reviews

And more! Read now!

tinyurl.com/2hp6967b
Thank you for the thoughtful write-up!
January 30, 2026 at 2:02 PM
Reposted by Mike Thorn
We could listen to Mike, Miriam, and Hajer talk poetry all day! 🤩
New @craftworkpod.bsky.social! @miriamricher.bsky.social & I chatted with Hajer Mirwali, author of Revolutions (@talonbooks.bsky.social, 2025).

We discussed the influence of Mona Hatoum and Mahmoud Darwish, timed writing, the voice of the body & mind, and much more.

tinyurl.com/bdnm5bsa
January 20, 2026 at 7:08 PM
Reposted by Mike Thorn
Also be sure to check out our previous episode: Braided Essays, Collective Solitude, & the Objective Correlative w/ Kasia Van Schaik!

tinyurl.com/mr3jacnp
January 20, 2026 at 12:39 PM
New @craftworkpod.bsky.social! @miriamricher.bsky.social & I chatted with Hajer Mirwali, author of Revolutions (@talonbooks.bsky.social, 2025).

We discussed the influence of Mona Hatoum and Mahmoud Darwish, timed writing, the voice of the body & mind, and much more.

tinyurl.com/bdnm5bsa
January 19, 2026 at 12:40 PM
Reposted by Mike Thorn
Listen to our latest episode!

In this interview, we chat with Hajer Mirwali about cross-disciplinary work, embodied writing, poetic mad libs, and so much more.

@talonbooks.bsky.social

tinyurl.com/bdnm5bsa
January 19, 2026 at 12:25 PM
I highly recommend Hajer Mirwali's excellent poetry collection, Revolutions, which has stuck with me since I finished it last week.

talonbooks.bsky.social
January 14, 2026 at 2:37 PM
Reposted by Mike Thorn
It's publication day! My book is now officially out and available to buy! @bloomsburyacad.bsky.social @bloomsburylit.bsky.social

Gothic Celebrity: Fame and Immortality from Lord Byron to Lady Gaga

www.bloomsbury.com/uk/gothic-ce...

#GothicCelebrity
November 27, 2025 at 4:25 PM
Reposted by Mike Thorn
Today is Kathe Koja’s birthday!!! This is also a reminder that Kathe is one of the greatest living authors of horror/dark fiction and she had the most explosive, remarkable debut since Barker’s Books of Blood. They don’t crash land on the horror scene like they used to. Love you, Kathe! ❤️
January 6, 2026 at 8:00 PM
Forever grateful!
January 7, 2026 at 2:18 PM
Reposted by Mike Thorn
The Cipher gets a lot of (deserved!) praise, but also "Angels in Love" has lived rent-free in my head for over 30 years now.

Many happy returns, Kathe Koja!
Happiest birthday to the visionary @kkoja.bsky.social , my favorite living writer & a major creative influence. She's also one of the realest and most gracious people I've encountered in this world of fiction.
January 6, 2026 at 4:40 PM
Happiest birthday to the visionary @kkoja.bsky.social , my favorite living writer & a major creative influence. She's also one of the realest and most gracious people I've encountered in this world of fiction.
January 6, 2026 at 1:56 PM
Happy birthday to the great @ramseycampbell.bsky.social, a true master of dark literature.

Interviewing him was one of my personal highlights of 2025. Listen here: tinyurl.com/56eb5arb
January 4, 2026 at 8:16 PM
​Finally, the issue also features two student forum contributions:

"Interpreting Ginger Snaps as a Trans Story", by Emerson Reault

&

"'All Mixed Up': It’s Alive!, It Lives Again, and Kristeva’s Maternal Herethics", by Luka Romney

tinyurl.com/2hp6967b
January 2, 2026 at 6:47 PM
Fred Barrett provides a retrospective review of Stuart Gordon's King of the Ants, observing vegan allegory in the “dehumanizing” cruelty meted out by the film's human antagonists.

@fredbarrett.bsky.social

tinyurl.com/2hp6967b
January 2, 2026 at 4:22 PM
I reassess Rob Zombie's debut feature through an animal liberationist lens in "'They All Run Like Scared Little Rabbits': The Vegan Ethos of Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses."

tinyurl.com/2hp6967b
January 2, 2026 at 3:44 PM
This Property Is Condemned (Sydney Pollack, 1966)
January 2, 2026 at 3:37 PM
Miriam Richer's review, "Citizens of Ulro: A Review of Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead", offers a critical reassessment of the (anti-)anthropocentrism in Nobel laureate Tokarczuk's novel.

@miriamricher.bsky.social

tinyurl.com/2hp6967b
January 1, 2026 at 8:29 PM
Ah, thank you, Kathe. Very glad you picked up on the humor.

Love yours, too. And I love how it *looks* on the page, btw (I see this as a consistently major feature of your work)
January 1, 2026 at 8:14 PM
My new story, "Cogno", reckons with the terrifying world of tech-bro longevity and extractive violence at the expense of ... maybe everything.

(a tribute of sorts to The Island of Doctor Moreau)

tinyurl.com/2hp6967b
January 1, 2026 at 5:38 PM
"The Playground", an original work of fiction by Kathe Koja (The Cipher, Dark Factory, Straydog), traces a shift in ecological sensibility to what might be called a necessary violence.

@kkoja.bsky.social

tinyurl.com/2hp6967b
January 1, 2026 at 4:28 PM
In "'Oh, you’d probably like it if you didn’t know what was in it': Carnism, Cannibalism, and Repression in Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre", Dru Jeffries locates resistance to dominant carnist cultural narratives in Hooper's masterpiece of cinematic horror.

tinyurl.com/2hp6967b
January 1, 2026 at 4:17 PM
Britt MacKenzie-Dale's "'Hear my tale': Bearing Witness to the Nonhuman, from Frankenstein’s Monster to the Animal Industrial Complex" offers an animal liberationist reading of Mary Shelley's classic novel.

tinyurl.com/2hp6967b
January 1, 2026 at 3:51 PM
Reposted by Mike Thorn
This is the energy I'm bringing into 2026
December 31, 2025 at 4:24 PM
William Taylor's ​"'The factory is a fertile body': Impersonal Flesh, Miscarriage, and the Failure of Queer-inhuman Affect in Elle Nash’s Deliver Me" discusses compulsory carnist capitalism, queer subjectivity, and systemic violence in @saderotica.bsky.social's acclaimed novel.

tinyurl.com/2hp6967b
December 31, 2025 at 7:45 PM