By Anandi Ganguly

2023 was a blur of routine and noise, until The Dangers of Smoking in Bed pierced through, interrupting my daily routine of assignments and caffeine, quiet and terrifying. And it changed something in me. It was unsettling in the most wonderful way: eerie and haunting, yet strangely familiar, like the cautionary folktales whispered to you as a child. That collection opened a door into a form of horror I hadn’t really encountered before, one that was intimate, visceral, and steeped in culture and history. The writing was electric; sharp and deeply felt. I felt an instant connection to author Mariana Enríquez and so when I was given the chance to interview her for Sydney Writers’ Festival 2025 about her latest work, A Sunny Place for Shady People, I was elated.

Mariana Enríquez (b. 1973) is an acclaimed Argentine journalist, novelist, and short story writer known for her raw, genre-bending style. A leading voice in the "new Argentine narrative," her stories straddle the gothic and the grotesque. The Dangers of Smoking in Bed was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and continues to disturb and enchant readers around the world.

Below, I dive into a conversation with her about her writing process, the politics of art, her inspirations, her love for Nick Cave and a lot more.

You have a gift of making horror feel very intimate. Your books have cannibalism, people disappearing but they never feel cold. It feels very personal. So how do you think horror changes when it's felt viscerally rather than being felt intellectually?

For me, in literature, horror is a language that’s useful for telling personal stories. When horror becomes too intellectual, too explained, it stops being creepy or haunting or intimate. It turns into an exercise in style; something that sits on your skin, but doesn’t sink in. The trick is that horror should be entertaining. It should be fun. That’s part of being human. The question for me has always been: how do you make it deep and deeply personal, and deeply serious, but also funny? Because when you start looking closely, you realise you’re talking about everyday life. And in everyday life, intellectual horror just doesn’t loom as largely- that’s out of touch with how we feel. And how we feel is often funny, ridiculous, intense, even insane. Realism, for me, means going deep. If it doesn’t, it’s just another stylistic exercise. And that’s not the kind of literature I care for.

And for many of your characters it feels like obsession kind of lingers under their skin. Threatening to bubble over and spiral into madness; be it sexual, spiritual, or emotional, what draws you to explore compulsion in horror? 

Yes, obsession is one of my things, as a theme in general. I try to explore it in many ways, because I think it’s very present in life. We use that word a lot now, right? ‘I’m obsessed’. One of the things I’ve always explored, and that I’m particularly interested in, is fandom.

At this point, I couldn’t help but interrupt to tell her how much I loved her short story ‘Meat’ in The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, a visceral exploration of worship culture in fandoms, of the way we idolise celebrities and place them on pedestals, sometimes to the point of violence.

She smiled. “It can be all-consuming, exactly.” She continues.

Fandom is something that’s always been part of me. I’ve always been a fan of different things my whole life. Musicians, actors, you know... random stuff, tennis players, I don’t know. And the relationship you build with these objects of fandom is so complex. It’s full of love, it’s full of longing. It can be lonely. Sometimes, it even feels more important than the real people in your life. To me, it’s a way of living in fiction in real life. When you’re deep in an obsession, whatever it is, a romantic obsession, you’re living in your own fiction. It’s very close to fiction in general, because obsession is an alternative reality. It’s self-satisfying. You can stay in it your whole life, move through the world inside it, and not care about anything else. It’s so detached from real relationships that it can make you a monster. The others stop being real. The only thing that feels real is the thing you’re obsessed with. So for me, it’s a very important theme both in life and in writing. And for horror? It’s a gift.

Women are so central to your stories, especially young women. I don’t know if you’ve come across the term “feminine rage”? It’s a very TikTok-era phrase that’s become popular lately, where people are celebrating stories depicting women being violent, because, of course, we’ve long celebrated male violence. I mean, something like The Godfather is essentially just a story about men being violent. But in your stories, you give voice to women who are steeped in rage, trauma, and intense longing. Why do you think horror is such a unique space for exploring women in this way?

One thing that’s very particular about women in horror is that women have always written horror. If you look at literature written by women, especially in the 19th century, there are so many of them working in the genre. There were more women writing horror, in fact, than in many other literary spaces. You see women writing about ghosts, about being mediums, about being feminists and mediums. That whole world of the occult had so many powerful female figures. Women like Helena Blavatsky; there was power in that irrational space. And women claimed it. And of course, in more traditional Latin American storytelling, women are often the ones who carry and pass down knowledge, but it’s narrative knowledge. The kind that teaches you how to do things, how to survive. Many of the most iconic ghost figures in Latin America are women. Take La Llorona, for example- this enormous figure who cries for her lost children. Sometimes she’s killed them, sometimes they’ve been taken from her. It’s very eerie when you see women in Mexico or Argentina, especially from human rights organisations, gathering to ask for their disappeared children, crying just like La Llorona. 

I think women have always had a deeper connection to the occult, to the supernatural, because they’ve historically been pushed into the realm of the irrational. That’s their space: the domestic and the irrational. There’s a lot of literature that tries to empower the domestic, and that’s interesting, but it’s not what I’m drawn to. I’m interested in that other part. The part that includes rage, because rage is also irrational.

But it’s different from how we see violence in men. When we celebrate male violence, like in The Godfather, which I love, by the way, it’s often about power. With women, violence doesn’t necessarily bring power. Rage is something else. It’s about accessing that irrational space and horror is a very useful tool for that. It lets us see that rage, that performance of emotion, often as a response to deep oppression. You see this even in Mary Shelley’s work, where, she’s questioning men and questioning medicine with Frankenstein.

You mentioned La Llorona, and it made me think, your work is now translated into over 20 languages, and your stories have resonated with readers from so many different cultural backgrounds. Have you heard from people who connect with your writing in ways you didn’t expect? Maybe interpretations that come from their own traditions or personal histories, ones that are different from what you originally intended?

A lot, actually. In my novel, and in many of my short stories too, there are constant references to the ’70s and the dictatorship. Sometimes, even I get tired of it. I think ‘I wish I could write about something else’. But I’ve come to accept that those years, and also the ’80s, are my formative years. Dictatorships don’t end when they end. The aftermath stays with you. It shapes how you live, how you feel, how you see the world. So it’s inescapable, and I’ve accepted it as part of my writing, even if I get bored of it.

What’s interesting is how that trauma resonates differently for people elsewhere. In Latin America, for example, the dictatorship was backed by U.S. right-wing ideology, especially after the Cuban Revolution, to crush socialism. In Argentina, it was part of that broader Cold War dynamic, and the U.S. was often seen as complicit.

Then I’ll go to a place like Poland, where people grew up under communism. For them, it was that system that represented oppression and destruction. So it’s a completely different historical experience. But even then, we were able to have a meaningful dialogue about what power, control, and generational trauma looked like in each of our societies. That really amazed me. Our histories were shaped by opposing ideologies, but we could still connect over what it felt like.

Some readers told me they didn’t read the story as a critique of America or communism. They saw it as a story about power, about systems that darken a society. That was very refreshing. People aren’t always literal. They bring their own understanding to it. 

She also emphasised this in her session that people can have their own interpretations and don’t have to be on the same page.

I really believe that. Certainty is a trap. It’s what the algorithm wants from you. But we live in such a noisy time now, with all this access to information, and still, we’re losing the ability to have conversations. I’ve realised I need to slow down, think, read more, and not be so rigid. Because I am rigid, like everyone else, and it just makes me angry. I’m mad at everybody, more than usual.

Exactly, And in a way, the more globalised the world becomes, the more closed off people seem to be in their ideologies. That’s not something you’d expect. You’ve previously opened up about growing up in the dictatorship, Argentina was dealing with it in a very different way where they were not openly acknowledging the violence that was happening. It was very hush-hush, a lot of denials and that kind of lurking fear I think is translated in your works and the way you write. So do you think that your writing is a way to confront this national gaslighting that was occurring at the time?

Maybe, I mean- t’s strange to grow up knowing that this harmless-looking place, like a car wash, used to be a concentration camp. And it’s just 300 meters from your house. In many cases, they used military barracks or police stations, but they also used schools, random houses, even the highway. They’re still investigating places beneath the highway, where they’ve found camps hidden in the blocks. It was everywhere. So insidious. Like everyone knew, and no one did. But I’m also really proud of my country. We did something few others did. The dictatorship didn’t end with silence. We put the perpetrators through multiple legal processes, and many of them, especially the top commanders, ended up in jail. To get there, though, we had to talk. For years. About the dead. About torture. About memory. We had to name people. We had to ask: who did what, how many died, where are the bodies? We have a famous forensic anthropology group that still works to identify remains, not just in Argentina but across the continent. They’re even supported by governments now.

So in a way, Argentina became a very necrophiliac culture. There was the gaslighting saying ‘nothing happened’ and then the flood of horror. So much information that it almost silences you again. How do you create a counter-narrative when someone says, “She was pregnant. They took her baby and they killed her”? There’s nothing you can say to that. No way to argue back. It’s absolute.

But with time, history gains nuance. And still, we live with the dead. That was necessary. Because to bring those men to justice, men who had power, who had common sense and the support of the elite on their side, we needed the whole society to understand exactly what had happened. We needed to know who they were. Otherwise, it could have happened again. But that kind of reckoning comes at a cost. The amount of power it took to imprison them, to prevent another coup, to make sure it ended for real-it required a flood of memory and trauma that we still live with. So yes, the dictatorship ended. But in many ways, it didn’t. Not really. Because what it took to end it was so heavy, and we’re still carrying it.

You’ve said before that literature doesn’t need to carry social responsibility. It can be political or purely aesthetic, as long as it’s honest. But today, it feels like writers are constantly expected to take a stand or uphold a clear moral position. How do you defend the freedom to write things that are uncomfortable or morally ambiguous? Do you ever feel pressure to conform to a cause?

I don’t feel that pressure, because I’m really against the idea that writers must constantly pronounce themselves on things, especially when they often don’t know much about them. It becomes performative, hypocritical, and ultimately very safe. Like, what changes if I say I don’t like Trump? It’s obvious. Trump doesn’t even like himself–well, maybe he does. But that kind of statement is easy. You say it, tick the box, and move on. It’s lazy.

I’d much rather hear from someone who does like him, without mocking them. That, to me, is an adult conversation. Literature and art need the freedom to be messy, morally confusing, even irresponsible. Art isn’t supposed to conform. People should. Governments should. We need rules and decency in society. But art? No. What’s considered “decent” or “dangerous” in art always shifts depending on who holds power.

Look at what the Nazis called “degenerate art.” That label would be applied totally differently in another time or place. It’s easy to make propaganda now just by saying, “This is wrong,” and checking every moral box. But I don’t think that’s a writer’s job. Writers should speak from their own experiences and craft. If that brings in politics, great. If not, also fine. I don’t want a writer who’s fascinated by something like colours to suddenly feel they have to throw in a political statement that ticks all the right boxes. That kind of conformity irritates me.

What I really love is when I’m confronted by something I don’t understand. Like Torrey Peters writes as a trans woman, for a trans community, and I don’t always understand what she’s saying - and that’s the point. She’s not writing for me. She’s writing for her people, in her language, shaped by her experiences. And I love that. It would be ridiculous for me, as a cisgender woman, to expect her to cater to me. Feeling offended by that would only make me foolish.

It’s the same with South American writers. Some try to conform to identity narratives that don’t always fit. South America is complicated. If we position ourselves only as victims of the Global North, we ignore the reality that we live on the continent with the highest income inequality; there are people here far richer than many Europeans. Not all of us are oppressed. That contradiction matters. And I think literature should hold space for all of that complexity, not reduce it.

We then moved into a conversation about the state of Hindi cinema in India. I mentioned how, after growing up watching a wide range of Hindi films, I started to notice a shift, particularly in the early 2010s. There was a clear trend of pandering to Western audiences, not just in production style but in the kinds of stories being told. And yet, India has one of the richest storytelling traditions in the world. As I said, “We could make films for a thousand years and still not run out of stories.”

Mariana lit up. “Why are we doing this?” she exclaimed.

“For me,” she continued, “as an artist, you have to be daring. Because making art that conforms is propaganda. And it’s boring. It’s predictable. And the worst thing you can do in art is be predictable”

After a series of heavy questions, I introduced a Rapid Fire Round with a ‘no thinking, just answering’ rule. 

What music album could you write a whole horror story around? Dog Man Star by Suede.

Do you listen to music when you write? Do you listen to certain songs when writing certain characters? Yes. 

Do you use specific music when writing from a character’s perspective? Yes, I have soundtracks for certain characters.

Do you have a go-to comfort food after writing something truly disturbing? I used to have a cigarette. Not a food, but it worked. I don’t smoke anymore, though. So now… not really. I'm usually not in the mood to eat. Well, maybe a banana.

Patti Smith or Nick Cave? Nick Cave.

Which literary character would you resurrect for one day just to hang out with? Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights). 

Describe ‘A Sunny Place for Shady People’ using one album. 

Norman Fucking Rockwell by Lana Del Rey.

What’s the last film you watched and really loved?
Sinners

You say you were more influenced by the ‘weird’ of Arthur Machen than traditional Gothic writers. What is it about his work specifically that resonates with you?

I love that he works in liminal spaces. One thing I really love about Gothic literature is its obsession with architecture and nature. But Arthur Machen feels different. He’s not inside the building, ever. He’s the person walking past, catching a glimpse of something through a window. Or he’s out on one of his long countryside walks in Britain, not like a romantic, immersed in the storm, but searching for something ancient. Roman ruins, old paths. He’s always looking for an alternative path.

His work lives in that space where reality starts to feel strange. Where you catch glimpses of something, just flashes, and you’re left wondering: Was that real? Or is this real? That ambiguity, I find absolutely amazing. There’s so much that’s left unsaid in his stories, which makes them incredibly creepy. He doesn’t explain anything, because the characters don’t know. And I don’t think he knew either. That’s what makes it interesting.

You’ve done a great job of selling me on his work, any recommendations?

The Great God Pan. It's a novella; it’s very creepy. It’s told in fragments, personal narratives. There’s this woman, and these strange events, someone sees something, someone kills themselves, all these elements feels like scattered puzzle pieces. The idea is that she’s giving people an experience of the Great God Pan, something hidden and terrifying, some truth behind reality that’s impossible to truly see. Because if you do, you die. It’s deeply religious too, in a way. Like that biblical idea of ‘you will see my face and die.’ That idea of seeing what’s finally real. I find that fascinating. I could talk about him for hours.

You mentioned in your session earlier that gothic, to you, doesn't always need dark and gloomy, as evidenced by the title of your latest collection, ‘A Sunny Place for Shady People’. Great title, by the way. Can you elaborate a little more on that?

Thank you. When I started writing horror and fell in love with the Gothic, I realised it’s ultimately about imprisonment. Often, it’s a woman trapped inside her mind, a castle, or under some decadent, oppressive power. In classic Gothic, that power is often the Church, hence the abbeys, cemeteries, cathedrals, and crumbling castles. The atmosphere is heavy with decay and control.

In the Northern Hemisphere, Gothic is tied to darkness with long winters, cold nights, fog. But I started asking: what if we kept the core themes of power, haunting, entrapment but changed the setting?

That’s what Southern Gothic does in the U.S. Writers like William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor place those same trapped, twisted characters in decaying Southern mansions. The power is still rotting. The landscape itself is haunted by guilt. Something unforgivable happened there, we saw this in ‘Sinners’ as well, and it lingers.

And that can be translated anywhere. In Australia, put someone in the middle of the desert, that vast, echoing silence, and it’s just as terrifying as a castle. Maybe more. The land carries ghosts, trauma, and gaslighting. Think of the Stolen Generations. Your parents are gone, your name is gone. That silence is Gothic. So to me, the Gothic isn’t about fog or forests or night or darkness. It’s about oppressive atmosphere and crushing power. That can happen anywhere.

Maybe on a beach?

Even on a beach. The setting doesn’t matter. The haunting does, and it has a beauty. A grandiose beauty that you can have in any part of the world. I mean, you can have Gothic in Antarctica or Ethiopia.

My last question for you is this: the people who’ll read this interview are mostly young writers, around 19 to 25. Many of them are navigating a lot of uncertainty, trying to find their voice in a world that feels increasingly overwhelming, with so much instability and rapid change, especially geopolitically. What advice would you give them, as they try to write and create meaning in a time like this?

First, I want to tell them: it’s always felt overwhelming. You're feeling it now because you're young, but when we were young it felt overwhelming too. In the ’90s we had wars in the Balkans, neoliberal governments across Latin America, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Everything felt unstable. So, relax a little. The world has always been fucked up, and somehow, people survive. As for finding your voice, I always say: start with what you love. What you’re truly passionate about. Don’t overthink it. I’ve had young friends who love crime fiction but feel like they should write poetry or something more ‘serious.’ And I tell them, “No, write the crime story. That’s where your voice is hiding”.

People often say, ‘write what you know,’ and young writers think that means they have to mine their life experience. But at that age, you’re still figuring it out. You’re overwhelmed, emotional, maybe even a little lost. It’s hard to write clearly from that place. So start with a genre or theme where you feel grounded. That’s what I did with horror. I loved it. I wanted to do it in an Argentine context, to write about women, to shift perspectives. I wasn’t thinking strategically, I just followed what excited me. And that’s where my voice emerged.

Don’t come at it from the other side. Don’t obsess over publication or whether your story is going to ‘work’. Focus on what brings you joy to write, and your voice will follow. Then, with time, you’ll become capable of other things.

I published my first novel at 21. It made a small splash, partly because I was young, cute, punk and seemed ‘demonic’- that had a bit of shock factor. But that faded fast. I published another novel ten years later, and no one cared. I still liked it. Then I put out my first horror collection, and again, no one noticed.

Samantha Schweblin and I were just two women in Buenos Aires; she was a designer, I was a journalist. We were writing, completely anonymous, with no real hope of success. But we kept at it. We were loud, persistent, and eventually got an agent. Our books were published abroad. We started showing up at festivals, winning awards. Suddenly, there was interest in Latin American women writers. But that happened in our 30s. Our early years were just quiet work. No big recognition. Four books in, and still nothing. It took time.

So no, I don’t mean you have to wait. But you do need to understand that this is the nature of writing. Sometimes it takes a long time for people to read you. To see you. That doesn’t mean you’re not a writer, if it has to come, it’ll come and if not, then it won’t, but you have to be truthful to yourself.

I’m sure the readers will appreciate that. Thank you so much, Mariana, it was lovely talking with you.

Thank you!