First Word on Horror
Episode: Dear Final Girls
Created by Philip Gelatt
Starring Stephen Graham Jones
Exclusively on ETCH Studio’s Substack beginning week of February 3rd, 2025

by Sasha Ravitch, Staff Writer

“For six million years we came up on the Savannah with everything wanting to take a bite of us [...] and because of that, because there were always teeth in the darkness wanting to eat us, I feel like horror got hardwired into us, it’s part of who we are as people [...] So, when we engage horror stories, however we engage them, they give us those spikes of terror which remind us that we are human, and we can feel our programming has a reason, now.”
Stephen Graham Jones, Episode 1: “Dear Final Girls,” First Word on Horror

Philip Gelatt’s First Word on Horror is a prescient and powerful concept, with a pleasing execution and result. This fifteen-part documentary series chronicles five of our most esteemed contemporary horror writers: Stephen Graham Jones, Paul Tremblay, Elizabeth Hand, Laird Barron, and Marian Enriquez. Hosted on Etch Studio’s Substack, a new episode is delivered into the inbox of subscribers each Friday, beginning the week of February 3rd. It feels as if the series has been thoughtfully constructed to illuminate the thinning line between lived experience and crafted story, and the subsequent exploration of narratives (and what shapes them) is rendered afresh by each author who takes the stage. Oscillating seamlessly between the telling of fiction, the telling of truth, the telling of both, and perhaps the sharing of neither, these episodes reveal the integral humanness of these supernaturally talented storytellers.

Our initiatory author into the gauntlet of this series is Stephen Graham Jones. Jones is a giant within the horror world, and the long shadow his great light casts spreads far beyond the influence of the niche of genre fiction. He has accrued innumerable (deserved) awards for his writing: including multiple Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson awards, the Ray Bradbury Prize, as well as the Locus award for My Heart is a Chainsaw, and recently the British Fantasy award for Don’t Fear the Reaper. Having received his BA from Texas Tech University, his MA from University of North Texas, and his PhD from Florida State University, he currently lives in Boulder, Colorado where he writes as well as teaches as the Ineva Baldwin Professor of English at University of Colorado.

Jones’ work is emotionally complex, visually rich and harrowing, and remarkably human. Humor and humility temper the searing violence his characters encounter, and in the midst of the most brutalizing Native American Gothic or supernatural western narratives remains a bright-shining silver lasso of hope. Even in moments both bestial and strange, there is a raw, throbbing heart at the core of his stories: something as organic as it is nuclear—a star threatening to go supernova.

It comes as no surprise, then, that his episodes for Gelatt’s First Word on Horror are similarly laden with that aching breadth of humanity, with riveting and ensorcelling storytelling, and with a sort of humbleness and candor that sticks in the back of your mind, clings to the film on your teeth, and lingers longer than you initially expected. Jones’ episodes set the tone for the subsequent authors’ episodes: a structure which elegantly weaves reading aloud from their work with waxing philosophical and poetical about their lives, their relationship with (and to) horror, their relationships with writing, and the unique encounters and experiences which shape their voice, stories, and characters.

Jones’ episodes carry a grounded elegance and eloquence, full of thoughtfulness and sentimental grace. He is one of the most interesting and original storytellers of our time, who has a mastery of both supernatural and slasher horror rivalled by very few: and yet he speaks from a place of profound relatability and reveals vulnerable insights into his evolution as an author and as a human. The confessional nature of the interview we witness engenders the sense that you’re sitting across from a new friend at an old diner, late into the night and full of that characteristic intimacy that such arrangements uniquely allow. Perhaps this is one of Jones’ greatest strengths, in general: an invitation, a seat at the table across from him, a shared story, a shared wink, a shared fright. It’s something which makes you feel less alone, and maybe even less afraid, even in the moments when his writing scares the hell out of you.

These episodes are cathartic and compelling, with Jones’ calming charisma and earned wisdom making the modest time (approximately 30 minutes), absolutely fly by. A must watch for horror fans, and for those trying to come to terms with the human experience.

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