When Henry James described the Victorian multi-plot novel as “large loose baggy monsters,” he didn’t have twentieth and twenty-first century horror in mind, but the echoing effects of the Gothic on writers like Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Charles Reade, and others. These writers drew on the multiplied plots and perspectives of the Gothic to represent how social worlds were constructed and constrained. 

In contemporary horror, writers and filmmakers have turned to the narrative strategies of the multiplot to describe how communities and communal histories are made and unmade. This panel will examine how horror writers use the affordances of multiple plots and perspectives to make and unmake communities and communal histories. 

Writers of interest include (but are not limited to!):

· Stephen Graham Jones

· Tananarive Due

· Victor LaValle 

· Paul Tremblay

· Silvia Moreno-Garcia

· Mariana Enriquez

· Stephen King 

· Peter Straub

· Joyce Carol Oates

· Clive Barker

· Anne Rice

· Isabel Cañas

· Gabino Iglesias

· Dan Simmons

· Jeff Vandermeer

Multi-plot horror and its focus on the construction of communities could extend beyond prose to contemporary horror in television and streaming, from adaptations and extensions of multi-plot novels such as 'Salem's Lot, The Terror, The Haunting of Hill House, and The Outsider to original series such as Widow's Bay, Stranger Things, and Twin Peaks.  Submit abstracts of 250 words by September 30, 2026 to https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/22347. Send inquiries to Joshua Gooch (goochj@dyc.edu).