Authors Bitter Karella, Allison Mick, and Joshua Millican present their folk horror work focusing on environmental horror.
Join us for a reading and conversation from The Dark Woods Project!
The Dark Woods Project is a writers’ collective bound by explorations of Forest Horror (including Redwood Gothic and Eco-horror). The authors delve into the ominous complexities and primal fears of Forest Horror, specifically in the Pacific Northwest. While diverse in perspective and scope, Moonflow by Bitter Karella, Humboldt Cut by Allison Mick, and Dopefoot by Joshua Millican are united by their distinct geography and powerful themes.
Attendees can apply their purchase of a ticket towards a $10 credit for any featured book at the event.
About the participants:
Bitter Karella is a genderfluid transvestite goblin, best known as the creator of the three-time Hugo- nominated microfiction comedy account @Midnight_Pals which asks what if all your favorite horror writers were to gather around the campfire and tell scary stories like in the classic Nickelodeon series Are You Afraid of the Dark? Karella writes gonzo psycho- sexual body horror with a grotesquely humorous edge. His short story “Low Tide Jenny,” originally published in Seize the Press magazine, was a winner of the Brave New Weird award for best new weird fiction of 2022 by Tenebrous Press.
Allison Mick is a Los Angeles-based comedy-horror writer, and the author of Humboldt Cut (Erewhon Books), an eco-gothic novel about a suicidal psych nurse’s return to her hometown in the redwoods. Mick’s writing also appears in Trailer Park Boys: Big A$$ Comic Collection (Devil’s Due Comics) and The Hard Times: The First 40 Years (Mariner Books).
Joshua Millican is a graduate of UC Santa Cruz where he earned degrees in literature and creative writing. He is a journalist (Dread Central), an actor, and an active member of the HWA. Millican’s best- known works of fiction include Teleportasm (Killer VHS Series #3) and Chopping Mall: The Novelization. His new novel, Dopefoot, is a gory cryptid mystery that released June 16th, 2026 via Mad Axe Media.
About the featured titles:
Moonflow:
Annihilation meets Manhunt in three-time Hugo Award nominee Bitter Karella’s debut horror novel—a gloriously queer and irreverent psychedelic trip into the heart of an eldritch wood and the horrors of (cis)terhood. A trans shroom dealer ventures into a haunted forest in search of a new kind of hallucinogenic mushroom only to run afoul of a murderous cult of lesbian separatist hippies and the bound nature god they keep in the temple cellar.
Humboldt Cut:
Jordan Peele and Jeff Vandermeer meet The Overstory in comedy writer Allison Mick’s darkly humorous debut eco-horror novel, as a Black woman returns home to the redwood forests of northern California, only to unearth the monsters that lurk among the trees. The forest births unnatural entities made of human flesh and petrified bark. The redwoods remember what’s been done to them, and avenge the devastation that the logging industry has caused.
Dopefoot:
After accepting work on an isolated cannabis farm in Northern California, a college drop-out finds himself caught in all-out war. Overstimulated smugglers and well-funded mobsters vie for control of this fertile territory. Beneath it all, in the darkest corners of the forest, even darker forces are stirring. V. Castro (Goddess of Filth) calls Dopefoot “a perfect summer read” and “the best Bigfoot lore I have ever read.”
