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02/15/2026 BLACK HISTORY MONTH: Nicole Givens Kurtz

  • Writer: Candace Nola
    Candace Nola
  • 15 minutes ago
  • 6 min read

As we do every year in the month of February, Uncomfortably Dark takes time out to honor Black authors and Black history from every era, past and present. If you already read widely and diversely or want to get started; please add these authors to your Must - Read lists and to those TBR piles!


A massive thank you to fellow author Eliza Broadbent for this huge undertaking for this month, enabling Uncomfortably Dark to honor at least one author a day, or more!

Nicole Givens Kurtz has been called “a genre polymath who does crime, horror, and SFF (Book Riot).” They’ve named her as one of the 6 Black SFF Indie Writers You Should be Reading, 30 Must-Read SFF Books by Black Authors, and The Best of the West: 8 Alternative History Westerns (Sisters of the Wild Sage). She’s a two-time Atomacon Palmetto Scribe Award winner, an HWA Horror Diversity Grant Recipient (2020) and a Ladies in Horror Grant Recipient.


With over 20 years in publishing, she’s written for Pseudopod, Fiyah, Apex Magazine, White Wolf, The Realm (formerly Serial Box), Subsume, and Baen. Nicole has over 50 published short stories and is the author of the Cybil Lewis and Death Violations cybernoir series as well as the Kingdom of Aves fantasy mystery series. She’s written the critically acclaimed, weird western anthology, Sisters of the Wild Sage: A Weird West Collection.


Nicole has conducted workshops for Clarion and is an active instructor at Speculative Fiction Academy. She is the owner of Mocha Memoirs Press. She’s the editor for the groundbreaking SLAY: Stories of the Vampire Noire anthology and Blackened Roots: An Anthology of the Undead with Tonia Ransom.


Nicole is a professional-level member of SFWA and HWA.




Today, we honor Nicole Givens Kurtz!



1. What kind of horror do you write/publish, and what brought you to the horror genre in particular?


I tend to write weird westerns and quiet horror. Horror has always been a big part of my reading life, since I was in grade school. Perhaps even before that, as my favorite book as a child was Where the Wild Things Are. I loved the idea of hanging out with monsters and rebelling against my parents. LOL! The scary stories always resonated with me, and as a middle schooler in the 1980s, I consumed as much Stephen King as possible.



2. Who would you consider your influences and inspiration?


Early on it was Stephen King, Poe, and Shirley Jackson, but when I went to college I found some southern gothic authors and although problematic, I learned much about quiet horror and the terror of everyday life. I also found Tananarive Due and fell immediately in love.



3. What piece of writing has meant the most to you, and why? This can be both your own and/or another author’s.


The piece of writing that has meant the most to me, most recently, well, there are two. One of those is Zin E. Rocklyn’s FLOWERS FOR THE SEA. It’s a novella, but never has I read something so deeply visceral, unflinching and raw. I love horror that sticks with me, that lingers and resonates long after I’ve finished the text, and that story definitely did. It made me realize the true power of horror and its honesty.


The second piece of writing that I left me gagged was L. Marie Wood’s THE PROMISE KEEPER. It’s a vampire story unlike anything I have ever read and the power of women joining together, of found family, of obsession and the depths of love in that novel bowled me over. Even now, I have goosebumps now, thinking about it.



4. What’s your writing/editing journey been like? What challenges have you faced?


One of my writing challenges is finding time to write. I have a day job and I also run a publishing company, both of which often take priority. Despite being a professional author for over 25 years, I still struggle with imposter syndrome. It can be crippling, and that keeps me from writing, sometimes for months at a time. I’m already a slow writer, but when the syndrome is at its worst, I make very little art.



5. Who do you think everyone should be reading right now?


Right now, everyone should be reading diverse authors. This isn’t a new thing, but people should read diversely all the time. There’s amazing stories being produced in the horror genre by amazingly talented authors, like Pedro Iniguez, Marc Abbott, L. Marie Wood, Paula Ashe, Alex Jennings, Kenya Moss-Dyne, Candace Nola and so many more. Your posts during Black History Month will reveal so many stellar choices as well.



6. What’s it like being a Black horror writer/editor at this particular moment?


In many ways, this is a fantastic time to be a Black horror author. The HWA president is a Black woman. There’s more Black authors making the Bram Stoker® ballots. There’s so many wonderful stories being told by Black authors and they’re so different.


But at the same time, it is sad that there are still publishers who are out front and racist. That for some horror still means horrific misogyny, racism, and violence toward women and LGBTQ people. I won’t give that subset of the horror industry too much of our airtime, but that continues to disappoint.


 

  1. All horror is political. How do you think your politics informs your writing/editing?


I’m a Black woman, southern, in the United States. My very existence is political. Whatever story I’m writing, will have political themes and tones, by the nature of who I am as a person, a writer, a queer woman, and a member of this quite flawed country. Sometimes I am intentional with my political statements. For example, in my short story for NEVERMORE, my rendition of Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart”, is titled “The Tell Tale Tattoo,” is about a police officer who worked a protest where one of the protestors were murdered. I wrote this story back in 2024.


Many of the stories in my weird western collection, SISTERS OF THE WILD SAGE, are stories of the “others” in the American West, both in the past and in the future. I lived in New Mexico for roughly seven years, and during that time, I discovered the West was quite different than traditional westerns have shown. When I write my weird westerns, that’s a big focus for me, showing stories of those who lived in the west, shining a light onto them.



8. Do you do any writing or editing that’s not fiction? If so, how did you come to that space, and where can we find it?


I have a bachelor’s degree in Rhetoric, so I spent most of my undergraduate years writing non-fiction. While in New Mexico, I worked as an editor and writer for the Gallup Herald. I’ve had articles written in ePregnancy magazine and for have written non-fiction for APEX [The Wonder of the Weird West], for Journey Planet [The Future is Now], as well as essay collections, “Laure Lyons Hounded by Victorian Ideals” in Villains, Victims, and Violets: Agency and Feminism in the Original Sherlock Holmes Canon and “Wade in the Water,” which was published in Bridging Worlds Anthology.



9. Have you faced any unique challenges in your writing career?

Yes. I am one of the few women who write cyberpunk noir. It’s a niche, gritty, and often dark subgenre of cyberpunk, which itself is already a subgenre of science fiction. I’ve been writing since 1998 and in that time, the rise of ebooks, the fall of paperbacks, the rise of small presses, the fall of numerous small presses, the ease of print on demand, and recently the infiltration of AI slop, I have weathered all of these massive changes in publishing. Authors who are GenXers and who started writing before the new millennium have faced never-before-seen challenges. Being a Black woman during those times created even more challenges, such as gate-keepers, etc.



10. What advice do you have for Black horror writers who are just getting started in the genre?


For new Black horror writers, I recommend two things:

  1. Decided for yourself what success means to you. As you grow, your definition will change but be true to yourself and what you decide is a success. Society’s a fickle mistress and chasing someone else’s vision of success can ruin you. I know this from experience.

  2. Read everything, even stories not in horror. Writers who don’t read aren’t really writers. You cannot be one without the other.



  1. Any final thoughts? What’s the best place to find you on social media, and if you have a newsletter, how can we sign up for it?


I have both an author newsletter and Mocha Memoirs Press also has a newsletter. See below:


Otherworlds Pulp-The Worlds of Nicole Givens Kurtz


Mocha Memoirs Press Newsletter


Published Works and Links:

You can read Nicole’s official bibliography: NGKurtz_Bibliography


Visit Nicole’s YOUTUBE Channel for current panel discussions and virtual appearances.


I have a really long list of published works, so would it be easier to include a link to my website or to my Amazon author page:



Social Media:

Facebook (public profile/page): https://www.facebook.com/nicolegkurtz

Instagram, Threads: @nicolegkurtz

TikTok: @nicolegivenskurtz







Owner: Candace Nola

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